I was now over a week on the road and in desperate need of laundry and a chill-out day, so John was going to show me around Ithaca a bit. After camp breakfast we headed down the too-steep hill to check out Buttermilk Falls, which we passed in the dark on the way up yesterday. Ithaca is Gorges, as you may have heard, and there are interesting waterfalls all over the place.
We stopped by the Ithaca Bakery, a long-standing institution in town, for bagels and wifi; John hung out while I went to a laundromat, and to REI for some camp stove fuel. After that it was to the Cascadilla Gorge Trail, an amazing set of waterfalls and cascades that Cornell students get to see every day on their way to campus.
Then it was up the 15% grade leading to the main campus. At least we weren’t carrying our full weight.
It really is a beautiful campus, with classic old Gothic buildings. We visited the art museum and the ornate library (where I managed to catch up on uploading photos), and got ice cream from the Cornell Dairy, part of the veterinary school.
I hadn’t known that the restaurant responsible for the Moosewood Cookbook, a classic of vegetarian cuisine, is located in Ithaca. They let us in for a snack at the bar even though we were not nearly fancy enough.
A crank back up the damn hill to camp and we were set for the night. A rest day with just 35km of riding and 360m of climb. We’d be good to go tomorrow.