13.05 - Day 119 - Ithaca

Monday 13th May - Ithaca, New York (Day 119)

After breakfast waffles and bagels in the sunlit breakfast area, Sienna and Seb plug away at schoolwork in our large room at Rodeway Inn. The moment we’re ready to head out, the sun disappears and it becomes grey and drizzly. As the kids are excited to find Solitaire on the car’s screen we take the car for charging outside Trader Joe’s where they play whilst Kate and I plan ahead. 

We’re hoping to do a couple of walks; the area is known not just for the lakes but all its gorges and accompanying trails but the rain discourages us for now. Instead we drive up some short, steep roads onto the Cornell University Campus, perhaps to sow some seeds of interest for Sienna and Seb, but also for Kate and I to get a sense of University, American style. 

It is sprawling and massive - Sienna instantly won over when she discovers 5 or 6 libraries. Seb was won over by the 23,000 seat American Football Stadium. We mooch around in the dry of the car, past the athletics track, field hockey pitch, climbing wall centre and even a wrestling centre. 

A brief stop at their own Botanical Garden before I take Sienna and Seb into the Cornell shop - two floors of the Big C merch, anything and everything available, illustrating the parochial tendencies. 

After lunch at the Ithaca Bakery we drove - on the very poorly maintained roads - to the base of the Ithaca Falls trail, a picturesque tumbling waterfall complete with a couple of fly-fishermen standing in the river below. These rivers helped drive Ithaca, powering industry in the mid 1800’s, including for a young Ezra Cornell who went on to make his fortune and then bequeath the land on which the university now sits. 

After more schoolwork in the room, at which point it stops raining again, and also a fruitless look for the kids lost garmin watch, we venture out in the car to Buttermilk Falls park where I drop Kate and the kids and pop to get dinner and charge the car. As soon as I pull away it starts raining again. We retreat with a hot rotisserie chicken and ice-cream back to the room. And whilst getting the chicken my Australian drivers license is not accepted for ID so I am not allowed to buy a beer for dinner. Feel like Ithaca is toying with us having been out of sync with the weather all day.