Lake Otsego and Kaaterskill Falls- Monday, July 02, 2012

For some reason, Emma has had it in her mind recently that she wants to try fishing.  Julie scheduled time in the trip to rent a boat and some tackle and let the girls see what it is like.    We made our way back to Cooperstown to the boat rental place we had been to yesterday.  We rented a pontoon boat—a Harris Flotebote, very similar to the one we had at Disney World last year.  We then set sail on a two hour excursion to see the sights of Lake Otsego.  Captain Julie took us across the narrow lake first, where we stopped near a stone tower.  (We later learned that it’s called the Kingfisher Tower, and was built in 1876).  Here, Julie baited the hooks with the worms that we bought, and the girls dipped their poles in for a while.   Shortly, we took the boat past several nice homes and down to near the town of Cooperstown itself.   It was a sunny day and very peaceful out on the lake.  There were several sailboats out and a party of kayakers too.   We saw the Glimmerglass Queen taking a party of tourists up the lake.  After trying several fishing spots, we went back past the castle tower, about the same distance to the opposite side.  The girls didn’t catch any fish, but they succeeded in torturing several worms to death.  Anna had little patience for the art of fishing, but she did enjoy sitting at the very front of the boat, and even laid down sunning herself on the small platform at the front.  Emma showed a little more perseverance, but even she had given up by the time we made our way back to the dock.   It didn’t help that the two lines had become slightly entangled, worms and all.  We all had fun though and had enjoyed the peacefulness and the gentle rocking of the boat through it all. 

We had covered all that we wanted to see and do in Cooperstown, so we continued on a day earlier than we had planned.  We drove through to Hunter Mountain in the Catskills, hoping to take the ride to the top the way that we did with Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks last fall.  However, they were closed since they don’t open for weekdays until Wednesday this week.   We also checked out the ziplines that they have there, but the best one for the girls also wasn’t open today.  We’re planning on heading back later this week.  We found a local visitor’s center, further down the road, and we got directions to another stop Julie wanted to make.

We parked in the small lot on the side of the winding mountain road in order to go to see Kaaterskill Falls.  The way wasn’t marked and we had to ask other people if we were in the right spot, headed the right way.  In our minds, we had pictured a pleasant, secluded little path through the deep woods to a waterfall, tucked away from the encroaches of civilization.  Instead we had to make our way down along the side of a treacherous stretch of road, where traffic was coming uncomfortably close around hairpin turns.  The non-existent path was very dangerous for pedestrians.  When possible, we walked on the opposite side of the guardrails, but it was not always possible to even do that because of the hillside construction of the road.  Julie even hurt her leg once, trying to cross around the guardrails.  Luckily, we didn’t have far to go.  The waterfalls themselves were right next to the road.  They are pretty, but there was no path to get to them even then, and we had to cross and climb over large dry rocks in the river’s bed.  The falls are probably more spectacular when the spring snow melts, but the water flow is pretty low now.  The girls got close enough to the falls to stick their hands in.  There are two major drops to the falls, but from the base, you can only see the lower one.  The best view of the falls is probably from the roadside itself.   All in all, it seemed pretty anticlimactic, and we had to make our way back up the dangerous roadside then to get back to the car.

So we travelled on to our hotel for the next few nights.  We are here a night earlier than expected, but that wasn’t a problem to add on.  We arrived before 5:00, but were ready to call it a day.  We ordered a pizza and the girls are ready for a swim.