last week-ish, the kids and i loaded up and headed to western ny to visit fam and have a little change of scenery. my mom was able to take a few days off work, and on one particularly lovely day, we drove out to letchworth state park to “hike” and be in the sunshine and take in the views of the “grand canyon of the east”.
on the drive in, we stopped at the great bend overlook. we had to laugh a little at the bagged up binocular things. i don’t know why. the coronavirus is making the world crazy. but the view of the bend was pretty cool without magnification.
big bends. 
no corona. 
genesee river, doing its thing.
for our hike, we parked at the “inspiration point” parking lot and followed the river up to the falls and train trestle in the distance in the pic. very inspiring, right?
the hike was pretty easy. it mostly follows along the road, that follows along the side of the gorge. lots of pretty views and crumbly rocks and protruding roots.
big deb. little deb. 
under a bridge.
approaching middle falls. 
posing with an incoming stream. 🙂
middle falls was raging. it was refreshing to pass through the mist of the splashing waters.
and this is the exact moment where everything went wrong. observe hazel, trying to push herself up so she could sit on the wall. from my spot on a wall with no deadly dropoffs behind me, i told her not to get on the wall, which didn’t quite sit well with her. and from this point on, so cried and/or argued with isaac. it was miserable.
as we got closer to the upper falls, the view became pretty great. and a little different from our last visit, when we had just started our road trip, and the bridge was under construction.
finally, we reached the end (or as far as we were going anyway). i tried to get the kids to take a pic on this little stone bridge over an incoming stream, but hazel wasn’t having it.
on our way back, we stopped for some picturesque photos at the little overlook. hazel managed to pull herself together for a moment, but resumed crying the rest of the way back. once, she was upset because “isaac was following her”. like we weren’t all walking to the same exact destination. it was madness.
anyhooo. on our way back, we decided to drive through mount morris so we could stop at a gluten free bakery and cafe to get some treats that the boy can eat. only to be rewarded with him getting mad and arguing with me in the bakery because on the way he had told me that he didn’t need a gluten free treat, and i dragged him there anyways. somehow he got over his rage and ordered a loaf of banana bread, and the rest of the fam got these delicious treats…
and thus concludes our day adventuring in and around letchworth state park. (i’ll post about the rest of our batavia trip when i don’t have a lidkid chirping in my ear incessantly, asking about screen time).
Beautiful views!