We left yesterday morning for our first of three state park trips this month, to Robert Treman State Park in Ithaca, NY. This trip is different from our previous trips in a couple of ways…

• It’s so close to home (about two hours), we decided to drive both the RV and the MINI so we could have an easy way to travel around to several different state parks in the area (and out to dinner on Tuesday to celebrate our 25^th anniversary!) while leaving the RV setup at the campsite.
• Our campsite does NOT have full hookups…just electricity. So, when we need to empty our tanks or fill up the water tank, we’ll have to move the RV.

The drive was quick and uneventful. We made a stop en route, at Taughannock (“tuh-GAN-uck”) Falls State Park in Trumansburg…about 20 minutes north of Ithaca. The falls here are beautiful – just a single drop, but an incredibly long one. In fact, it’s the tallest single-drop waterfall east of the Rocky Mountains.  Mark and I had been here 10 or 15 years ago, and I remembered it was pretty spectacular, but didn’t remember much else…so it was nice to see it again. It was about 90 degrees and humid, so we were grateful for all the shade on the trail, but it was still toasty. The forecast had originally been for rain most of the day, but fortunately, we only saw a few drops as we left Taughannock.

From there, we continued south to Ithaca, to Robert Treman State Park. For those of you not from NY, Ithaca is at the southern end of Cayuga Lake, the longest of the Finger Lakes.

We registered at the office and headed to our campsite with a stop at the shared sewage dump station (we figured, since we wouldn’t have hookups at our site, we should start with completely empty tanks). It was right on the way to our site, along the side of the road. On the wrong side from where RoVer’s connections are. So we studied the map and tried to figure out the easiest route to turn the RV around and approach from the other direction. The road Mark chose was a bit bumpy with several low-hanging branches, which can be VERY destructive to the top of an RV. Fortunately we made it through without any issue. Back to the dump station, dumping complete.

Now turn around again to get to campsite E003. And we finally arrived. Mark backed in easily and for the first time, we had to level the RV side-to-side instead of front-to-back. Some blocks under the left side wheels did the trick…went very smoothly! We were anxious to get the electric connected, since it was such a hot day and we wanted to get the AC running ASAP. Where’s the electrical box? No sign of it anywhere on our site. The sites on either side of us have their boxes, and there’s just one box at each site, so they weren’t shared ones. I’m looking for a phone number while Mark is climbing around in the brush and grass. Busy signal for the park office. Finally Mark finds, below us (the campsites are almost in a tiered setup, with the ones backing up to ours at a lower level) and well off to one side, a post with two electrical boxes…it appears one of them is for us. But of course, no one could bother to put the number 3 on the box to make it clear. Ugh. So he gets the electrical cord out and, because the box is so far away, it’s about two feet too short. Ugh again. Fortunately, on the advice of one of his cousins, Mark had purchased an extension cord. Dug it out from storage under one of the beds (we figured it wasn’t something we’d need very often!) and got everything connected. By now RoVer’s temperature was in the high 80s, so it took quite a while to get it down to 75 degrees, but it did cool off nicely.

It’s definitely different not having a water connection – we’ll be using more paper products this trip, since washing dishes uses a LOT of water, and fills up the gray tank pretty quickly too. So, we’ll be a little less environmentally friendly to try and make our tanks last as long as possible. I’m really sad about having fewer dishes to wash. Not! Supposedly, there is a shared water hookup nearby, but we didn’t have any luck finding it after dinner. 

The campsite behind/below us is a young couple in a tent. They arrived shortly after us, and he yelled over to us, asking if we had an air pump. Apparently, they brought a new air mattress for their tent and it said “PUMP” in large letters on the box, with much smaller letters below that said “don’t forget it”. Oops, apparently he thought the pump was included in the box. What a nightmare that would be. And some pretty poor package design, if you ask me! Fortunately, because we have our new e-bikes with us, we did bring our electric air pump for the tires. Boy were they grateful. But they still have to sleep in a tent in this crazy heat. I am happy to acknowledge that what we do is glamping, what they do is camping. And I’m glad we could help them out.

Tuesday morning’s forecast had originally been pretty rainy, but it shifted and we decided to explore the park a bit. But since there was still a chance of rain, we decided to drive instead of taking the bikes. We’ll save those for sunnier days! On the very short drive to the first hike we wanted to do, we did spot what appears to be our shared water hookup. Not sure our hoses are long enough to reach it from where the RV is parked, but we’ll give it a try once the tank is emptier. We parked and headed out on the Rim Trail to Lower Falls. Starting in July, it will be open for swimming, but today it was absolutely peaceful and beautiful. I think we saw about four other people – love being able to make these trips on weekdays when places are much less busy than weekends!

From there, we drove to the Upper Park Entrance (there are two entrances; the only way to get between them is to drive or hike and we didn’t want to start out on a several mile hike with rain still threatening). We found a turtle hiding in the grass along the road. We figure we have a lot in common with turtles…we both bring our house with us when we travel. However, since he doesn’t appear to have a kitchen or bath, I think he’s in the ‘camping’ group, not the ‘glamping’ group!

It’s a short hike out to Lucifer Falls which are completely different from Lower Falls but equally impressive.

The gorge on the hike is amazing to see – the layers of rock, the breaks in the rocks, the plants/greenery growing out of the rocks. There was another beautiful waterfall along the hike, plus lots of stairs to climb…but totally worth it!