We arrived at the park around 8:30 and had our choice of parking spots. The Gorge Trail is a combination of rock surface and over 800 steps so I thought we would be more comfortable in our sneakers than in our hiking boots. Since we forgot our hiking poles as well, I guess that, technically, we were going on a 3 mile walk rather than a 3 mile hike.
The trail begins with lots of steps taking you through the Entrance Tunnel and onto the first bridge across the gorge.
From the top of the bridge, we had an excellent view down toward the valley...
...and back up toward the gorge.
The Gorge Trail is breath-taking both in how glacial waters cut through the rock millions of years ago and how climbing all those steps requires a lot of extra breathing. :)
The gorge narrows and in some places we walked under waterfalls.
The Gorge opened up as we came into Glen Cathredral.
Then the gorge narrowed again as we walked up towards Central Cascade about half way up the Gorge Trail.
We crossed another bridge and up some more steps.
The pool below looks like a heart.
We continued on through the gorge...
...and came to Rainbow Falls.
Next, we came to Spiral Gorge...
The gorge opened up again after passing Mile Point Bridge...
...and we could see an old railroad tressel bridge way up above the gorge.
The last part of the Gorge Trail had even more steps...
...and we were very glad to be at the end of all those steps.
We could have taken the shuttle back to the parking lot but decided to walk the Indian Trail back to the parking lot. Remember, we don't have boots and poles so we are walking -- not hiking. :) Thankfully, it was a relatively easy trail.
The trail took us by an old cemetery.
When we reached the suspension bridge,
we walked out to look at the gorge below.
When we reached Point Lookout,
we walked back down to the Gorge Trail and had to take a few more steps back to the entrance.
By the time we got back to the parking lot, it was filling up with people just beginning the walk. We were very glad we started early. Cooler temperatures and less crowds made our Watkin Glens Gorge walk much more enjoyable.
Watkins Glen is such a beautiful hike, I mean walk! It looks like the waterfalls were very nice and had plenty of water! Ken and I need to do that trip again!
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