Cayuga Lake North of Taughannock State Park

Ben paddling in front of Milliken Power Station.

After getting a serious case of “kayaker’s high” from the gorgeous paddle the night before, Rob, Ben, and I decided to meet up at 8am at Taughannock State Park to squeeze in another morning paddle. We put in on the north shore of the park...

We paddled past Camp Barton (a boy scout camp) and kept going north until we were directly across from Milliken Station (Ithaca’s power plant).

We have also formed a habit of making bets on how long it will take to reach certain points. On this particular day, we had a very close race with Ben’s guess of 24 min, 38 sec coming within 38 seconds of the actual time to return to the launch. Rob and I now owe him a beer. But he owes me one for the last time, so I guess that means we're even.

The cliffs on the west side of Cayuga are interesting to check out. There are big boulders in the (incredibly clear) water and little waterfalls that trickle down over the rocks from the hills above. Before returning to Taughannock, we were paddling along and suddenly had a really strange feeling that we were paddling uphill. We think it’s because the water is so clear, and the bottom slope of the lake was really steep (getting shallower as we got closer to the beach). It was probably an optical illusion. Weird but cool…!

Boats ready to go at the launch site on the north shore of Taughannock State Park

Waterfalls along the west side of Cayuga Lake, north of Taughannock State Park

Date: Monday, May 24th, 2010
Distance: 10 Miles