An old postcard shows the beginning of the upper gorge in the upper section of Robert H. Treman State Park.
“The Treman Show.” Produced by the Friends of Robert H. Treman State Park, this award-winning* half-hour episode of Walk in the Park TV (#44) explores the trails, history, archeology, geology, and plants and wildlife of this scenic and historic park near Ithaca in New York’s Finger Lakes region. It will show on Ithaca, NY’s public access channel 13 this Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 a.m., and again on Tuesday, April 2, at 8:00 p.m. Or, you can watch it right here!
*This video, originally entitled, “Exploring Robert H. Treman State Park,” and part of the Nature Nearby series produced by Tony Ingraham for PEGASYS public access in Ithaca, NY, won first place as the best public access show in Ithaca in 2008.
For ten years, the tour boat/floating classroom MV Haendel has chugged up and down Cayuga Lake revealing the lake’s stories, taking its vital signs, and expanding our awareness of this dominant, beautiful body of water in New York’s Finger Lakes region. I have worked on the Haendel since late in its first season in 2003, mostly as an interpreter of the natural and cultural history of the lake on the boat’s tours out of Cayuga Inlet in Ithaca. The company, Tiohero Tours, has changed its name now to Ithaca Boat Tours, and we look forward to the new season sharing Cayuga’s waters with thousands of visitors, residents, and students.
The MV Haendel heads down Cayuga Inlet toward Cayuga Lake on another tour from the Ithaca Farmers Market.
The other part of the Haendel’s mission is the Cayuga Lake Floating Classroom, where the crew takes school groups, college classes, camp groups, public eco-tours, and scientific monitoring teams out on the water to probe and learn more about what is happening below the surface. Besides teaching thousands about lake science, the Floating Classroom has played a vital role in assessing the health of the lake; most notably in discovering the aggressive, and potentially disastrous, exotic, invasive, aquatic weed hydrilla in Cayuga Inlet, setting off a major institutional and governmental response to try to control and eradicate the infestation.
Cayuga Lake Floating Classroom director Bill Foster instructs a public eco-tour participant during a lake sampling outing.
In this week’s episode of Walk in the Park TV, we take a visual tour of Cayuga Lake on the Haendel, from the Ithaca Farmers Market to Wells College in Aurora, as if we were on the boat itself. There is a lot to see from the water (and from the air in this case as we integrate Bill Hecht’s amazing aerial photography.) You can watch the show on Ithaca’s public access cable TV channel 13 (next scheduled showings: Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 a.m., and Tuesday, March 5, at 8:00 p.m., and at other times the station may add).
In this episode (#39, 2/20/13) of Walk in the Park TV (Ithaca, NY public access cable channel 13), I take you on a tour of the major tributaries and subwatersheds of Cayuga Lake, in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. Using beautiful aerial photography by Bill Hecht, we visit Cayuga’s Inlet Valley; the Lindsay Parsons Biodiversity Preserve of the Finger Lakes Land Trust; Enfield Glen and Lucifer Falls in Robert H. Treman State Park; Buttermilk Falls State Park; Sixmile Creek Nature Preserve; Cascadilla Gorge; Cornell University; Fall Creek and its gorge and Ithaca Falls; Salmon Creek and Myers Point in Lansing, NY; Taughannock Falls State Park; and the rest of Cayuga Lake including the Seneca River and Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. Finally, we trace the flow of Cayuga’s waters through the Seneca and Oswego River system to Lake Ontario, the Great Lakes, and the St. Lawrence River. Watch it here!
This show can also be seen on Ithaca’s public access TV channel 13 this Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 a.m. and next Tuesday, 2/16, at 8:00 p.m.; and at other times the station may decide.
Huh? What could such different regions have in common? Well, there are some commonalities, and there are great differences. The two regions are parts of much larger river basins, the Colorado and the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence respectively. Both are eroded into ancient sedimentary rock layers. One is arid, and often desert, while the other receives abundant rainfall. One has been drastically altered by glaciation, while the other apparently has not. In this week’s episode (#37) of Walk in the Park TV, we return to the Grand Canyon (following last week’s show, “Walk Across the Grand Canyon“) and look at the bigger picture.
The South Kaibab Trail hugs the base of this cliff near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
After that, in honor of the Super Bowl champions, the Baltimore Ravens, we take a look at real ravens, including ravens at the Grand Canyon. And finally, we briefly discuss uranium mining at the Grand Canyon.
See it here online, or watch it on Ithaca, NY public access TV channel 13, this Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 a.m. each day, or next Tuesday, Feb. 12, at 8:00 p.m., and at other times the station may schedule it until Wednesday, Feb. 13 (check just before the hour and half hour and the day’s cablecast schedule is usually posted briefly).
In this episode of Walk in the Park TV, we go up in the air again with Bill Hecht’s dazzling photographs of the Finger Lakes at the peak of fall colors. See it here online!
We see Ithaca, Sixmile Creek valley, Buttermilk Falls State Park (including the effects of Hurricane Sandy), Cayuga Lake, Myers Point in Lansing, Keuka Lake, Bluff Point, Keuka College, Canandaigua Lake, Naples NY, the Hi Tor State Wildlife Management Area, and the Great Hill (or South Hill) at the south end of Canandaigua Lake, considered (and celebrated) by the Seneca Nation of the Iroquois as their birthplace. Great Hill is now a Finger Lakes Land Trust Preserve.
Bill Hecht's photo looking south over Bluff Point at the confluence of the East Branch and West Branch of Keuka Lake in New York's Finger Lakes region.
We fly over Cliffside State Forest in Schuyler County and Cornell University’s Arnot Forest in Tompkins County. We also go back to Ithaca Falls for a couple of short videos of the waterfall, fall colors, and fly fishermen in Fall Creek, set to music. And we reconsider a couple of maple tree species in the western United States, the bigtoothed maple in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, and the bigleaf maple on the West Coast, from California through Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and just into southeast Alaska. Join host Tony Ingraham in this scenery-packed episode of Walk in the Park (#26).
“Ithaca is Gorges” they say in this town at the south end of Cayuga Lake. But there are lots of other beautiful gorges in New York’s Finger Lakes region, including Fillmore Glen by the little village of Moravia in Cayuga County south of Owasco Lake, the next Finger Lake to the east of Cayuga Lake. This lush and scenic gorge is preserved in Fillmore Glen State Park, due to the efforts of Dr. Charles Atwood, a local physician and amateur botanist, who advocated for its protection and establishment of the park in the 1920s. The new episode of “Walk in the Park,” our public access TV show in the Ithaca area, features Fillmore Glen with photographs and video taken recently.
A small waterfall about a mile up the Gorge Trail in Fillmore Glen
Fillmore Glen is named for Millard Fillmore, 13th president of the United States, who was born in 1800 in a cabin a few miles east of the park. He was the first “log cabin president” and the first president born in the nineteenth century. He was also the first president who rose from modest means to the middle class. Find out more about Millard Fillmore in our Walk in the Park video episode, “Fillmore Glen State Park.”
Official White House painting of President Millard Fillmore, by G.P.A. Healy 1857
The climax of Fillmore Glen, and also the part most easily viewed, is the Cowsheds, a waterfall, rock amphitheater, and overhanging rock formation just a short walk from the picnic pavilion and swimming area in the mouth of the gorge.
The Cowsheds is the scenic star of Fillmore Glen.
In the photograph above, large slabs of limestone have fallen from the overhanging roof-like ledge up to the left. Freezing, thawing, wetting, drying, and high water have weathered and eroded out the Cowsheds.
Our show on PEGASYS, “Fillmore Glen State Park,” also includes scenery from Cayuga Lake, Lick Brook Glen, Buttermilk Falls State Park, and culminates with photographs and video of fall foliage in Fall Creek Gorge, Ithaca Falls, and Cascadilla Glen in Ithaca and next to Cornell University. Watch our show on Ithaca’s cable access channel 13 at the schedule below or right here online.
Looking over Ithaca Falls and the city
Watch the show right here without leaving this page:
This episode, “Fillmore Glen State Park,” will premier on Ithaca’s channel 13 this evening at 9:00 p.m. It will be shown again according to the following schedule.
Walk in the Park, the TV show, airs weekly on Ithaca, NY’s public access cable TV channel 13:
Thursday, 9:00 p.m.
Saturday, 10:30 a.m.
Sunday, 10:30 a.m.
Tuesday, 8:00 p.m.
It also is shown at other times as the station manager chooses.
This week’s episode begins showing tonight on Ithaca’s public access cable channel 13 at 9:00. And you can watch it online here!
We visit this little waterfall in Buttermilk Glen.
Recorded 9/26/12 at PEGASYS studios in Ithaca, NY. This week we go to Cornell Plantations for the annual March for the Animals of the SPCA of Tompkins County, a big success despite the pouring rain. Then we sail out on Cayuga Lake at dusk, hike around Lucifer Falls in Robert H. Treman State Park; visit the Old Mill and the archeology sites of the Hamlet of Enfield Falls and the CCC camp in the upper park; check out a pretty waterfall in Buttermilk Falls State Park, and discover zig zag goldenrod along the Gorge Trail there.
See the show right here or catch it on TV during the schedule below!
Walk in the Park, the TV show, airs weekly on Ithaca, NY’s public access cable TV channel 13:
Thursday, 9:00 p.m.
Saturday, 10:30 a.m.
Sunday, 10:30 a.m.
Tuesday, 8:00 p.m.
It also is shown at other times as the station manager chooses.
This week’s new episode of Walk in the Park, the TV show, will first air this evening (Thursday, Sept. 20) at 9:00 p.m. on Ithaca’s public access cable channel 13. Or, you can see it here online!
Taughannock Gorge cuts toward Cayuga Lake, which winds to the north. Photo courtesy of Bill Hecht
Recorded on Sept. 19, 2012, “Talk Like a Pirate Day.” Host Tony Ingraham invites you to Heritage Day at Robert H. Treman State Park near Ithaca, then flies you over Cayuga Lake and Taughannock Falls with the East Hill Flying Club. Next over to Watkins Glen State Park to look at invasive species, to a waterfall and pool in Buttermilk Falls State Park, and to look at white snakeroot up close!
Walk in the Park, the TV show, airs weekly on Ithaca, NY’s public access cable TV channel 13:
Thursday, 9:00 p.m.
Saturday, 10:30 a.m.
Sunday, 10:30 a.m.
Tuesday, 8:00 p.m.
It also is shown at other times as the station manager chooses.
See it here or on TV! Recorded on September 12, 2012, and cablecast on Ithaca, NY’s cable public access TV channel 13. Host Tony Ingraham acknowledges the anniversary of the floods caused by Tropical Storm Lee a year ago by showing the popular short video he made at the time, called “Ithaca’s Gorges Flood.” We also look at the flood’s effects on Owego and Binghamton, NY. For levity, see Granny’s Pig Race at the Northampton, MA Tri-County Fair. And we visit Ithaca Falls, Buttermilk Glen, Enfield Glen in Robert H. Treman State Park, and take a close look at one of our native wildflowers.
There is one more scheduled showing on Ithaca’s channel 13 this week, on Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012, at 8:00 p.m.
The next episode will be shown first this Thursday, Sept. 20, at 9:00 p.m.
Walk in the Park, the TV show, airs weekly on Ithaca, NY’s public access cable TV channel 13:
Thursday, 9:00 p.m.
Saturday, 10:30 a.m.
Sunday, 10:30 a.m.
Tuesday, 8:00 p.m.
It also is shown at other times as the station manager chooses.
Don't Frack NY protestors march from the waterfront to the capital on Monday to deliver their pledge of resistance to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Episode 18 of “Walk in the Park,” a public access TV show in Ithaca, NY. See the whole show online below, or if you have cable in the Ithaca area catch it on channel 13 Thursday, August 30, at 9:00 p.m., on Saturday or Sunday at 10:30 a.m., or on Tuesday, September 4 at 8:00 p.m.
Host Tony Ingraham takes us to Thacher State Park outside of Albany and explains some of the geology behind the Marcellus Shale, which is being exploited by deep horizontal hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” in Pennsylvania and other states for “natural gas.” New York has had a moratorium on fracking while it studies the subject before issuing a generic environmental impact statement that will supersede local regulatory control. Governor Andrew Cuomo is said to be about to allow fracking in several Southern Tier NY counties. Opponents of fracking gathered in Albany on August 27 to pledge resistance to fracking anywhere in New York during their rally and march from Corning Preserve Park along the Hudson River in Albany, past the Empire State Plaza to West Capital Park. This episode of Walk in the Park follows this march.
