Tuesday - Another Special Day!

By 7:15 all of the household was up and after eating breakfast, we walked to Watkins Glen State Park to hike the Gorge Trail.  It was a gorgeous morning with temperatures in the upper 70's and plenty of sunshine.  Just like Ken and I remembered, it is a gorgeous trail with so many beautiful waterfall areas.  They were exceptional this year because of all the rain we had in the spring and summer.   It is definitely an uphill hike with lots of stone stairways.  I was amazed at how well the girls did on the 1 1/2 mile hike to the top which ended in the State Park where there is a camping area.  

Ready for a family hike!

 Ken took lots of photos that I am just going to let you enjoy!  It really is a breathtaking area -

We had to "dodge" some water puddles along the
way after the rain we had yesterday!

So much beautiful greenery!

What a line up - walking straight and single file!

Looks like a happy hiking group!

Don't you just love it???

The award at the top was the ice cream shop where we all enjoyed some delicious Perry Ice Cream.  Then it was time to reverse our hike and head back down, which was definitely a much easier direction to walk!  When we completed the hike everyone was thrilled by what they had seen!

We had delicious Perry's Ice Cream!

Starting the hike back down the trail!

Of course, we had to stop in one area and make a cairn!
Samantha did a great job!
\

Cali decided to join in also!

We were glad we had gotten there early, because it was a lot
more hikers on our return trip!

I find this area amazing!

"Most" of us were tired when we reached the bottom, but some
just wanted to "show off" and act like they hadn't minded the
hike at all!  Really????

We were supposed to go on the Schooner, First Love, at 3 for a 2 hour sailboat adventure, but the weather became very threatening and they called to ask if we could do the trip tomorrow at noon - they didn't want to be out in the lake in a storm - no problem to reschedule, but it really wasn't what we hoped for.  It required us to change our plans for Wednesday!  So, what did we want to do for the remainder of today?  We did play some games with the girls, but then all of us decided to walk downtown, because the "mommies" and daddies" had not seen the lake, etc.  

We enjoyed walking around the area even checking out the First Love that we would be sailing on tomorrow.  Then we went to the restaurant located on the dock for dinner (good food) before heading back to the house for the evening.  More game playing for the "Hoslers" because the other young girls were happy to "do their own thing"!

On the dock where we will go for our Schooner ride tomorrow!

We did have some heavy rain that evening which produced an amazingly vivid rainbow and then another one decided to join it.  The main rainbow probably lasted longer than any I had ever seen before.

The sky color was so different from left to right.  Unfortunately
the vividness of the rainbow can really not be seen!

We could see both ending points of the rainbow!

We all called it a day by 10:30 and it was a good one!