I had all intentions of making one more trip. Maybe to Finger Lakes or Letchworth. Maybe the Pocono Mountains. It wasn’t meant to be this year, and I have no complaints.
It wasn’t for lack of trying or consideration. I did my due diligence and looked at the weather forecast. I looked at the fall foliage forecast too. Everything was pointing toward me staying home as the weather wasn’t going to be great and the leaves were seemingly past peak nearly everywhere.
So instead of traveling, I stayed local. I still took my 2 days off from work, but I slept in my bed instead of a tent. Instead of driving hours upon hours over half a day, I would drive no more than an hour to any location.
On Thursday, I went to Carpenters Falls to see what they have done to the area since I last visited a couple of years ago. The state has done a very nice job creating a very long accessible trail to an overlook of the falls. The vantage point isn’t outstanding photographically, but the way that everything is engineered makes sense to reduce the impact of humans on the environment. When I visited a few years ago, I was able to access the stream and capture an image while standing on rocks in the middle. That would probably have been doable had I been motivated and if there were leaves on the trees, but neither were true.
After checking out the falls, I traveled along one of the trails to the shore of Skaneateles Lake. The light was bad and I knew that I was walking more for exercise and the experience; I had no expectations of taking my camera out of my bag. When I arrived, though, there were some leaves that grabbed my attention that were floating in the water at my feet along the shoreline, so I followed them along as they floated by and tried to capture compositions that suited my taste/vision.
On the way home, I decided to stop by and visit Delphi Falls as well, if for no other reason than I was near Route 20 anyways and it was only a few miles out of my way to stop by and see what the scene looked like. I hadn’t been there since the summer and they have made a lot of progress on the trail that will ultimately lead to the upper falls, but it was closed to non-construction personnel. I took the camera out for a few quick snaps and returned to the car to drive home until the next day.
On Friday, I waited for the morning clouds to move away before going to Stoney Pond for an afternoon walk. There too the leaves were very much past peak and each footstep taken in the woods was so very loud. Even the squirrels sounded large as they played and scurried in fallen foliage. I looked for Osprey to no avail. Again, I took out the camera few times as I had the day before, but more to just practice ICM (I wasn’t thrilled with any) and grab a few snapshots along the way.
After it was all was said and done, I had a great 3 weekends, but the peak of my experience was undoubtedly the second weekend that I traveled in October. And even though I didn’t walk away with any ‘keeper’ images this weekend, it was still time better spent than working in a cramped office.