Vaughan to Ithaca: Cornell, the gorges and Cayuga Lake by chauffeured car

Ithaca, the campus and the gorges

Ithaca is "gorges" on its own T-shirts and the joke is accurate: Cascadilla and Fall Creek gorges run through Cornell's campus with stone stairways down them, Six Mile Creek runs through the town, and within fifteen minutes are three state parks of waterfalls — Taughannock's 65-metre single drop, Buttermilk's staircase of cascades, Robert H. Treman's Enfield Glen and its swimming hole under Lucifer Falls. Above it all on East Hill is Cornell, the Ivy League campus that a Vaughan Grade 12 student with the grades puts on the list, and across the valley on South Hill is Ithaca College; between them the Commons is a pedestrian street of bookstores and the Moosewood Restaurant, and Cayuga Lake's east and west shores are the wine trail. It is a five-and-a-half-hour drive that a chauffeured SUV turns into a weekend, and the Visit Ithaca site has the town; the border guide has the Lewiston bridge.

The road

From Thornhill the 407, the QEW, the Lewiston–Queenston Bridge, I-190 and I-90 east to exit 46 at Rochester, I-390 south to Avoca, I-86 east to Horseheads and Route 13 north through the hills to Ithaca; or, from Geneva at the head of Seneca Lake, the Route 96 run down Cayuga's west shore with the wineries beside the road. Five and a half hours by the estimate and six with the booth and a stop; the Syracuse post is an hour north for a family combining two campuses, and the Finger Lakes post has the region the drive passes through.

Cornell, and the visit

Cornell's admissions visit is an information session in the Klarman Hall and a student-led tour of the Arts Quad, the Slope, the libraries — Uris and its Cocktail Lounge, Olin — the clock tower's chimes concert, the Collegetown edge and the gorges' bridges; the admissions visit page books it weeks ahead. A family's morning is the session at ten and the tour at eleven, lunch at the Statler Hotel's Taverna Banfi or in Collegetown, and the afternoon's own walk: the Johnson Museum of Art's fifth-floor view over the lake, the Cornell Botanic Gardens and the Plantations, the Dairy Bar's ice cream from the university's own herd, and Beebe Lake's loop. Ithaca College's tour across the valley is the second campus for a student with both on the list, and the SUV does both in a day that a family car does one of, because East Hill's parking is the reason.

The gorges, on foot

Cascadilla Gorge's trail climbs from downtown to Collegetown beside eight waterfalls in a kilometre of stone steps; Fall Creek's trail from the suspension bridge drops to Ithaca Falls' forty-five-metre curtain at the campus's edge; Six Mile Creek's Wells Falls is the swimming hole the students use. A family walks Cascadilla up and Fall Creek down as the Saturday afternoon, with the chauffeur collecting at the falls' lot.

Taughannock, Buttermilk and Treman

Taughannock Falls State Park, fifteen minutes north on Cayuga's west shore, has the tallest single-drop waterfall in the northeastern United States — sixty-five metres, taller than Niagara — at the end of a flat kilometre's trail along the gorge floor, with the rim overlook for the family with a stroller and the lake's beach across the road; Buttermilk Falls at the town's southern edge is a staircase of cascades beside a stone trail with a swimming area at the base in summer; Robert H. Treman's Enfield Glen, ten minutes southwest, has the gorge trail past Lucifer Falls and the swimming hole under the lower falls with its diving board. The state parks' site has the three; a family does Taughannock on Saturday morning and Treman's swim on Sunday.

The Commons, the Moosewood and the food

The Commons is Ithaca's pedestrian street — Buffalo Street Books, the Ithaca Bakery, the Saturday farmers' market at Steamboat Landing on the lake, and the Moosewood Restaurant, the vegetarian collective whose cookbooks are on Vaughan kitchen shelves; Purity Ice Cream on the way to the lake, Ithaca Beer Company's taproom and the Cayuga wine trail's tasting rooms up the west shore are the rest. Vaughan's vegetarian families know the town before they arrive.

The wine trail, for the parents

Cayuga Lake's wine trail — sixteen wineries on Route 89 up the west shore and Route 90 on the east — is the parents' Saturday afternoon while the Grade 12 student walks the campus alone: Sheldrake Point, Hosmer, Thirsty Owl, the Finger Lakes Cider House at Good Life Farm, with the SUV driving and the tastings spat or swallowed as the parents choose; the Cayuga Lake Wine Trail's site has the map, and the Riesling is the region's grape.

The weekend, in shape

Friday at noon from Thornhill, the Lewiston bridge at 1:40, the Thruway and I-390, Ithaca's hotel — the Statler on campus or the downtown Marriott — by 6:30, dinner at the Moosewood; Saturday's Cornell session at ten and tour at eleven, the Dairy Bar, Taughannock's trail at 2:30, the west-shore wineries until five, Ithaca Beer for dinner; Sunday's Ithaca College tour at ten or Treman's swim, the Commons' brunch, the SUV at one, the Lewiston bridge at 5:30 with the 48-hour exemption on the wine — within the alcohol limits — and Thornhill by 7:30. Two nights, the SUV as a return with a Saturday on daily hire, one number in the booking engine, and the travel desk holding the Statler for the admissions weekend.

What the chauffeur replaces

Five and a half hours each way through the Finger Lakes' hills; the Lewiston bridge as the driver; East Hill's parking during a campus tour; two campuses in one day rather than one; and the Sunday drive home with a Grade 12 student asleep and the parents talking about the two hills. For a couple the trip is a car's; for a family of four with an admissions weekend and a wine afternoon it is the SUV's one fare and the parent who tasted.

Seasons

October for the gorges' colour and Cornell's fall visit days; April and May for the falls at full flow and the admitted-students' weekend; summer for Treman's swimming hole and Taughannock's beach, with the campus quiet and the tours running; winter for Ithaca's snow and the gorges' ice, with Route 13's hills the chauffeur's care. The Ithaca Festival in June and the Apple Harvest Festival on the Commons in late September are the town's weekends.

Pairing it

Ithaca pairs with Syracuse an hour north for the two-campus weekend, with Watkins Glen and the Finger Lakes forty minutes west for the gorge and Seneca Lake's wine, with Corning an hour south for the glass museum, and with Letchworth on the road home.

The admissions weekend, in order

A family of four from Thornhill with a Grade 12 daughter: Friday's drive with the SUV and the Statler Hotel's check-in at 6:30 — the hotel is the university's own, on campus, run by its hospitality school, and the travel desk holds it for the visit dates; Saturday's Klarman Hall session at ten, the tour at eleven with a sophomore from Mississauga, lunch at the Statler's Taverna Banfi, the daughter's own afternoon in the libraries and Collegetown while the parents do Taughannock and two wineries, dinner at the Moosewood; Sunday's Ithaca College tour at ten across the valley, Purity's ice cream, the Commons, the SUV at one. The two hills compared on the Thruway home, and the application's essay begun in the back seat.

Cornell's own attractions

Beyond the tour, Cornell holds a day of its own: the Johnson Museum of Art's I. M. Pei building with the lake from the top floor, the Herbert F. Johnson collection's Asian galleries, the Cornell Botanic Gardens' arboretum and the Mundy Wildflower Garden, the Lab of Ornithology's Sapsucker Woods four miles north with the bird-feeder garden and the sound library — a Vaughan birding family's hour — the Dairy Bar's ice cream, Beebe Lake's loop, and the clock tower's chimes concerts at 1:10 on weekdays; the university's visitor page has them. A family that is not applying does the campus as a park.

Costs, plainly

The Ithaca weekend is a return with a Saturday on daily hire in the booking engine; the tours are free, the Statler and the wineries' tastings are the family's own, and the 48-hour CAD 800 exemption covers the wine within its alcohol limit. Against the fare are five and a half hours each way through the hills as a driver, the Lewiston bridge, East Hill's parking during a tour and the wine afternoon's designated-driver problem; a couple does it in a car, and a family of four with an admissions weekend books the SUV for the parent who tasted and the student who slept home.

Taughannock, in detail

The gorge trail from the park's lower lot runs a flat kilometre along the creek bed under two-hundred-foot walls to the falls' amphitheatre — a stroller does it — with the overlook on the north rim reached by the SUV from Taughannock Park Road for the family that wants the view from above and the photograph of the drop; the lake's beach across Route 89 has a swimming area, a marina and the summer concert series on Saturday evenings, and the state parks' site has the concerts' schedule. In winter the falls freeze into a column and the trail is a walk on snow, which is the January version for a family visiting a student already there.

The Cayuga Lake cruise and the farmers' market

Saturday morning at Steamboat Landing on the lake's inlet is the Ithaca Farmers Market — the wooden pavilion, the Cornell dairy, the Cambodian and Ethiopian food stalls, the bakeries and the crafts — and the lunch a Vaughan family buys before Taughannock; from the same landing the Discover Cayuga Lake cruises run ninety minutes up the lake on summer afternoons with the falls' gorges visible from the water, and a family with a stroller does the cruise as the afternoon the gorge trails cannot be. The market's site has the hours.

Booking it

Book a return from your Vaughan address with a Saturday on daily hire, or a daily hire for the weekend; tell us the tours' times, the hotel, the seats and every passenger's citizenship for the bridge, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Book the Ithaca weekend