Letchworth State Park, Perry, NY

Monday, May 28th

We left the Niagara Falls KOA en route to Letchworth State Park in Perry, NY. Home town of our dear friend, Mary, who had told us about Letchworth. It’s considered the “Grand Canyon of the East” and was voted best State Park in the USA and voted the #1 attraction in New York State! But, before we get to it, we have to get through the Canada/USA border check on Memorial Day… probably not our smartest scheduling move on this trip!

We arrive at the border to a sea of cars, trucks, and RVs. Oh-kay. This will take awhile. However, there was entertainment to be had in the more than 12 rows of border checkpoints. First, it’s watching various car trunks being searched. Then there was the sketchy looking white van that started out in the Truck lane but was forced to move over to our lane (Cars/RVs) and was two vehicles in front of us. He had to open up his back door and all the side bays. I was sort of happy about that! Then there was the poor motorhome directly to the right of us who was in the Truck lane. You would think they may have just let him go through the border checkpoint in the Truck lane. Nope, he had to move over to our lane. So they had to move the cones, wait for an opening large enough to accommodate him and move him over. Meanwhile all the trucks behind him are stuck there with no place to go. Didn’t hear one honking horn though.

Finally it’s our turn. The agent asks us “what country are you from?” Ummmm….. I would of thought that the USA passports might have given you a clue, but ok, we’re from the USA. Gary was asked to roll down all the windows in the truck. I guess to make sure that we’re not bringing any illegals across. Kya’s back there but the agent doesn’t give her a second glance. (I didn’t have to show her rabies vaccination either time crossing the border, but I did have to show it at both NY state parks we stayed at. Go figure!)  We made it through the border fine after about an hour in line. You can’t bring Canadian fruits, vegies, or chicken or beef into the USA, but since we only bought gelato and chocolate, it wasn’t a problem.

We drove through beautiful farmland and arrived at Letchworth State Park. The campground isn’t big rig friendly but we had found a good spot online. It was a back-in site. The campground loop we were in was practically empty except for where we have to back-in to our site. We have an audience across the road; both sites are occupied and everyone is there sitting outside. Lovely. My favorite. I love backing into a site with an audience. We did oh-kay. Not great, although walkie talkies helped (a recent purchase). At least I’m not having to run around anymore from one side of the rig to the other because that was so much fun. We were lucky on this trip in that most of our parking situations were pull thrus. We have to practice our backing in skills at home over the summer before our fall trip where we’re staying in more Corp of Engineer parks that will require us to back in. Or I’ll need a lot more alcohol on that trip.

We relaxed the rest of the day and wandered around the campground.

Tuesday, May 29th

Letchworth State Park has over 60 miles of trails and is over 14,000 acres. The 22 mile long Genesee River Gorge splits the park in two. There are three waterfalls… Lower, Middle and Upper Falls. There’s also the Mount Morris Dam, the largest “dry bed dam” east of the Mississippi River. We headed out in the truck on the Park Road to various scenic overlooks and to take a guided walking tour of the dam. The dam’s only purpose is to protect Rochester (and environs) from flooding. It is dry on one side so that it can store floodwaters to protect communities downstream from flooding. Thus it’s not used as a reservoir or for power generation. There’s a pile of logs, which look like sticks from a distance, that get caught before they go through the conduits in the dam and destroy the inner workings of the dam. Once a year the logs/sticks get chipped up by an outside contractor. The dam has a visitor’s center, placards outside for a self-guided walking tour and Lucy! Our young tour guide who took us and about 6 others down to the dam. We could take pictures outside but not inside the dam. It was neat to see the inner workings, how they test the depth of the water, and we learned that there are 9 conduits roughly 5 ft wide x 7 ft high that allow water through. The day we were there 2.5 conduits were open. The water level was roughly “normal.”

On the way back up we got to chatting with a son and mom. He was from Kensington, NH and was a bike travel guide. He was in NY for a few days vacation with his mom before heading to Alaska for the summer to do bike tours then in the fall he would be in Portland and Bar Harbor, Maine conducting tours. Fascinating how everyone lives there lives or makes a living!

We had made two trips back and forth over to the dam because we had to drop Miss Kya off at the campsite before the tour began. By the time we finished the tour and got back to the campground, it was about 4:00 and drinky poo time. Plus it was hot! A gin & tonic was in order.

We ended up doing a campfire at night and reminisced about our two month trip which is quickly coming to an end in just a few days! So many fun times and cool people that we’ve crossed paths with!

There was a gorgeous full moon when we were walking Kya for the last time before bed.

Wednesday, May 30th

Today we headed out again on Park Road to check out the rest of the scenic overlooks and see the falls. Beautiful. We took Kya with us and hiked in a bit to see the Lower Falls then I hiked down 125+ stairs to see it up close and more personal. So pretty. From there we drove to the Middle and Upper Falls. The Middle Falls has the largest drop at 110 ft. It’s interesting that we ended up doing Niagara Falls and Letchworth back-to-back. We were able to see some amazing Falls at both locations.

We had a little bit of a tough night. Kya had Gary up about 4x walking her within the space of about an hour and a half. We ended up calling the vet the next day. Looks like she has a Urinary Tract Infection. You can’t make this stuff up! We ended up ordering cranberry supplements (that the vet recommended) which should be there when we get home on Saturday.

Last stop on this trip is two nights at Schodack Island State Park outside of Albany.