My dad and I will be taking a trip from Niagara Falls to New York City across NY State (and possibly PA, I guess) in about 2 weeks from now. We are essentially looking to spend about 4 or 5 days on the road in NY State and then another 4 or 5 in NYC. As for NYC, I’m fairly confident we can whip up an exciting program with the use of a guide book, as I have a general idea of what one can do there to while away the time. I could use a couple of suggestions for the first part of the itinerary, though. I’ve been told that this area has some gorgeous nature and we’d love to see some of it. So what would you recommend?
Most of the best nature is in the Adirondacks, which isn’t really along your route. But if you don’t mind taking a side trip, try going to Lake Placid or the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake.
Lake George is also beautiful, but the village is a tacky tourist trap.
I’m starting to think that we might want to go to the Adirondacks on the way back up to Montreal (the final stage of the trip) and make it to NYC faster from Niagara Falls (maybe drive there in 2 days, nice and easy). Alternately, we might want to divert the trip through Pennsylvania and visit Allegheny National Forest and some of the other areas that are colored in green on Google Maps which is my main source of information for the moment 
What about places to stay? Would you recommend finding a motel off the highway or are there better and/or more affordable places … and where do we find them?
Ya’ gotta stop at Cooperstown. Whether you go to see the Hall of Fame or the Cooper homestead is up to you.
July 23 - Sept 6th is the 142 season of horse racing in Saratoga Springs. Usually a summer destination for tourists and on the way to Montreal from NYC.
(I lived there for 10+ years. Never actually went to the track and hated that my favorite restaurants and other places were filled with tourists, but things would go back to normal after Labor Day.)
LetchworthState Park is worth seeing.
There’s also the Finger Lakes.
The best bet on finding good places to stay is to look them up at Tripadvisor.com. You can get reviews of most hotels. You have to decipher them – some can’t be taken at face value, but if there are a lot of good ratings, it’s probably a good place.
Best way to save money is to use Orbitz, etc., then go to the hotel’s web page and see if they’re offering a better deal.
Once the track season starts in Saratoga, BTW, forget about getting a cheap hotel room anywhere within 50 miles. I actually like the Saratoga Downtowner – it’s not luxurious, but you can’t beat the location for the price. Lots of good restaurants there, and a terrific book store.
Once nice thing about hotels these days is that the chains have some decent budget hotels (e.g., Fairfield Inn).
Hooo boy is there ever nature. If you like gorges and waterfalls the southern finger lakes would be a good choice for a trip from Niagara Falls to NYC, since a lot of them line up in a row on the map. The big ones are Watkins Glen, and Taughannock Falls northwest of Ithaca (tallest waterfall in NYS), and nearer to Ithaca there is also Buttermilk Falls, and Fall Gorge and Cascadilla Gorge running through Cornell. And I’ve only mentioned the big ones (i.e. I could go on but you’d get bored :))
There are some pretty neat hikes to the south of Canandaigua Lake, too, but the one with the sort of medium-to-large-sized waterfalls like the ones I listed above is a fairly difficult hike requiring some scrambling skills to see all of it (Clark Gully, in case you’re interested. My favorite hike in the world, per mile. The good portion is less than half a mile and drops around 500 feet, which is a huge slope in NYS, shame it is spread over more than 4 waterfalls. It also has an interesting phenomenon of a disappearing creek: when the creek is still flowing but not at flood level, it drains into its rock bed when it hits flat land, and so is sometimes not even there at the trailhead, but gets stronger as you move up the creekbed!)
On the practical advice level: if you’re passing by it on 88, Howe Caverns is worth a visit if you’re passing by. Neither big nor tiny, but interesting if you haven’t been in a cave in awhile. The cave nearby, Secret Caverns, is not worth the time, though (one of the smaller caves I’ve paid money for. The only ones smaller were two tourist traps in Put In Bay ohio, one of was the largest geode in the world which you could walk through, but the other was just an opening in the ground with a pond, that you couldn’t even walk into! [/hijack])
This next one won’t be on your way, but another unique thing to do is Panama Rocks in Chautauqua County. If you’ve ever been to Rock City, it’s almost exactly the same geology except you can climb into, up, under, and through the crevasses at leisure.
Okay, a nice scenic route form Niagara Falls to New York City.
Cross over at Niagara Falls and turn north. Take Route 18 up to Lake Ontario. Then you can follow 18 along the lake for about fifty miles and then get on the Lake Ontario Parkway. That’ll take you into Rochester (where it turns into Lake Shore Blvd). Get on 590 South and switch to 490 East. Switch to 96 south and head into Victor and then Canandaigua. At Canandaigua take 364 south and then east into Penn Yan. Then take 54 east into Dresden and get on 14 south. This will take you down along Seneca Lake and into Watkins Glen and Montour Falls (don’t miss the waterfall on the main street of downtown Montour Falls). Double back to Watkins Glen (it’s less than three miles) and catch 79 east until you get to 227 (about five miles). Follow 227 up to Trumansburg and get on 96 south. Watch for the signs for Taughannock Falls and go over and see them. Get back on 96 and follow it into Ithaca. Stop at Purity Ice Cream. Stay on 79 east until you get to 38. Follow 38 south until you get to Oswego. Get on the Southern Tier Expressway heading east. Follow Route 17 through the Delaware Valley until you get to Middletown. Take 84 east across the Hudson and get on 9D. That’ll take you down along the Hudson River cliffs until you get to the Bear Mountain Bridge where it turns into Route 202. Stay on it heading south into Peekskill where 202 turns east. Follow it until you get to the Taconic Parkway. Get on the Taconic Parkway heading south and that will take you into New York City.
I think you mean OWEGO, not OSWEGO as OSWEGO is north on Lake Ontario.
There’s a photography museum at the Eastman House in Rochester, if you like that sort of thing. The only thing I remember from the school-sponsored tour is that we got to see the bedroom where George Eastman shot himself. http://www.eastmanhouse.org/
While you’re in Rochester (if you go), pick up some Zweigle’s products, the best damn hot dogs and cold-cuts I’ve ever had. Zweigle’s is one of the few things I miss about living in the Rocheser area. I especially recommend the white hots and the Thuringer. Now take your bounty to Letchworth State Park for a picnic you won’t soon forget.
There are loads of wineries in the Finger Lakes and along the south shore of Lake Erie. Stop in at one for a tour and tasting. Be careful to pick a good one. Traditionally New York wineries used labrusca grapes, a species native to North America. Wines made from labrusca taste like Welch’s grape juice at best, grape Kool-Aid at worst. Hence the poor esteem that many hold for New York wines. Now more and more wineries in the state are using vinifera grapes, the Old World species that is used for wine making in Europe and California. Many of New York’s vinifera wines are actually quite good.
Definitely stop at Dr. Frank. Konstantin Frank is the reason Finger Lakes wineries use vinifera grapes now. Recommend: Riesling, Gewurtztraminer and Rkatsiteli.
My other favorites are Lamoreaux Landing, Glenora, Chateau LaFayette Reneau.
Historically the best wineries have been on Keuka and Seneca lakes, but a serious explosion of wineries has happened in the last 10 years or so, so I don’t know if that is still true.
Don’t forget to visit Binghamton’s Walk of Fame!
Thanks again for some great advice, this is shaping up to be one awesome trip! Couple more questions:
- me and my dad are Dutch. So was New York (both state and city), once. Beyond such names as Rensellaer, Brooklyn, Harlem, Flushing, Amsterdam Ave, are there any interesting leftovers/museums/etc. that might be worth making a detour for?
- (this is mostly about NYC) I’m a big film fan, and a number of my favorite films have been shot in or around Manhattan. Do you know of any tours that would take us around locations were (for instance) Godfather or Taxidriver were filmed?
- I’m not familiar with the American hotel business. For example, I found out today that it is apparently very uncommon for hotel rooms to have single beds; if you want to a room for 2 but you don’t want to sleep in the same bed, you seem to tend to end up getting a room with 2 double beds. Is this really true?
- And more generally, is there some sort of publication that has listings for motels/b&bs for certain areas, that you could pick up before you set out on your trip. We want to keep things flexible if we can so we can make up our mind on where to go, but is this feasible?
Along the vein of Dutch historical notes, there are a bunch of House-Museums in the area surrounding albany, most notably the Schuyer House outside Saratoga and
Cherry Hill in Albany (http://www.historiccherryhill.org/) .
There is also the Albany Institute of History and Art (maybe the wrong name)
that has exhibits focused around the early dutch & english settlers to the upper hudson valley. IIRC it’s fairly albany-centric.
Regarding Hotels, if you are planning on staying in a ~50 mile radius around Albany, you would probably need to have a reservation as the area gets flooded with tourists during the Saratoga Horse Track Season.
There are some good vineyards in the Fingerlakes region. If you like wine, you should check some of those out.
I enjoyed visitin the only metal kazoo factory in North America in Eden, NY (outside of Buffalo). But there’s no accounting for taste.
The New York State Museum in Albany also has an exhibit about what can be learned about Albany’s past through archeological digs, and that looks at Dutch settlement.
There are also some house museums in New York City that date from the Dutch settlement: the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum, the Van Courtlandt House Museum in the Bronx, and the Hendrick Lott House, the Wyckoff Farmhouse, and the Lefferts House in Brooklyn.
In terms of a guide book, you might want to check out Frommer’s Guide to New York State.
If you and your father want something active, check out Catamount Trees. It’s a high ropes course, about two hours north of NYC near the Massachusetts border. Lots of fun, and there’s a wide range of difficulty from light exercise to extremely demanding.