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).
This week’s Walk in the Park TV episode answers the question, “Does Cayuga Lake ever freeze over?” Cayuga Lake is the longest of the eleven Finger Lakes and is the second deepest, with more than 2 1/2 trillion gallons of rolling water that takes ten years to cycle through the lake. Does this enormous volume ever freeze over in winter? Watch this show to find out. Much of this show is an excerpt from an earlier show I recorded two years ago in my series called Cayuga Lake Heritage, which is available online.
The shallow north end of Cayuga Lake usually freezes in winter. Photo by Bill Hecht
This week’s episode (#38) is showing on Ithaca, NY’s public access cable channel 13, continuing this Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 a.m. each day, and finally next Tuesday, February 19, at 8:00 p.m. It may be shown at other times as well. (Check the schedule which is often shown briefly just before the hour and half hour.) And you can also see it online right here!
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).
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.
Woodland sunflowers bloom near the Lake Treman picnic area in upper Buttermilk Falls State Park, Ithaca, NY.
With more aerial views of gorges and Ithaca, Yosemite Falls in California, a trip through Enfield Glen and Lucifer Falls at Robert H. Treman State Park, a visit to two peace parks in Japan remembering the atomic attacks at the end of World War 2, music with the Horseflies on the Cornell Arts Quad, a walk looking at wildflowers and listening to frog songs along Lake Treman in Buttermilk Falls State Park, watching waterfalls in Glen Alpha and Cavern Cascade in Watkins Glen State Park, and celebration of National Lighthouse Day at Cayuga Inlet. See it all on this week’s episode of Walk in the Park, the TV show, on Ithaca public access cable channel 13. First showing will be tonight at 9:00 p.m., and lasts 29 minutes. See the full schedule.
Our newest episode is now on Ithaca public access TV cable channel 13, recorded August 1, and is available here online. See the cablecast schedule here.
Taughannock Gorge on its way to Cayuga Lake. Photo by Bill Hecht
Host Tony Ingraham takes us from airplane views of Taughannock Falls, to an old growth forest, to Cayuga Inlet lighthouses, music on the Cornell Arts Quadrangle, to potholes, trees, and reflections in Buttermilk Glen, and finally to Glassmine Falls, over 800 feet high, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
Last week, on March 7, Bill Hecht took pictures of the Cayuga Lake area from an airplane, including some shots of Taughannock Falls State Park on the west shore of the lake.
Taughannock Falls and Gorge. Photo taken March 7, 2012 by Bill Hecht. The Falls Overlook is by the gray parking lot to the right of the falls and gorge.
This is what the waterfall looked like in February from the Falls Overlook on Taughannock Park Road. Taughannock Falls, at 215 feet, is one of the tallest waterfalls in the East and drops more than Niagara Falls.
Taughannock Falls from the overlook in February. Photo by Tony Ingraham
And looking from the west; this view gives a good feel for how Taughannock Creek eroded the gorge and deposited the eroded rock and soil into Cayuga Lake, creating Taughannock Point.
Looking east over Taughannock Gorge toward Cayuga Lake. Photo by Bill Hecht. Can you find the top of the falls? How about the overlook parking area? Taughannock is actually two gorges, one above the falls and the larger gorge below it.
Taughannock Falls Gorge Trail is one of the few trails in area gorges that remain open in the winter. It’s a beautiful day, so why not do a little hiking?
Most of our rocks in the Finger Lakes are sedimentary, or formed from sediments that, in our case, accumulated on the bottom of a sea. North America was very different when these rocks were mud. In fact, there was very little that was north about us then at all, as what is now the Finger Lakes was below the equator (my how things move around given 400 million years.).
What is now the Finger Lakes region was a sea basin collecting clay, silt, sand, gravel, salt, gypsum, and lime derived from ancient mountains to what is now our east. (Image from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern_North_American_Paleogeograpy_Middle_Devonian.png)
The Acadian Mountains, now almost completely gone, eroded into our sea and filled it up about 385 million years ago. Eventually the layers of clay, silt, sand, and lime solidified under pressure and became our rock layers of shale, siltstone, sandstone, and limestone.
