Taughannock Falls & Americana Vineyards and Winery

Today Swink and I decided to head up Route 89 (the west side of Cayuga Lake) about 20 minutes outside of Ithaca to Taughannock Falls State Park.  I pass this park every time I drive to and from Ithaca to Buffalo and have never taken the time to stop and explore.  The trail that we did was about 3/4 mile long and took us up the left side of the water.  It makes me so angry that I have been here for 3 years and this is the first semester I have really explored Ithaca.  I'm going to make a conscious effort to go somewhere once a week, once every other week if things start to get really busy... but it's a great time to just be by myself or with a close friend and get out in the fresh air.  I really enjoy it.

After freezing our butts off hiking (it was 3 degrees today in ithaca) we headed north up Route 89 to a local winery... Americana Vineyards and Winery to be exact.  There are a ton of wineries on 89 and now that I am finally legal we decided that it would be a great chance to go.  Little did we know that taste testing was borderline free, 8 samples for $2.   We tried finger lake chablis, chardonnay, revolutionary red, cayuga white, americana white, baco noir,  and finally our two favorites crystal lake and americana blush.  Swink bought crystal lake and I bought americana blush.  Americana Blush; a blush wine with the color and taste of peaches. Best to serve with fresh-fruit, shrimp or chicken salads... a perfect wine for me!  :-) For $10 a bought myself a bottle and called it a day!

That's all for now, I have some work to do and people to ichat with!

we followed the yellow line that follows the water on  the left hand side

these are the little falls that you can see from the road, 

i had no idea what was about to come.

breathtaking.

with a little help from self timer continuous (10 frames) we both get to have allot of fun!

 

this was the wine tasting barn, it was nice inside.  Even better, a chocolate lab named Rubie!

Oddly enough we shared our favorites from wine tasting.  

I bought Americana Blush and Al bought Crystal Lake (their most popular wine)