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Nature

There are many large natural areas between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes (including the lakes themselves). You can venture out to these parks, but when you come back to McLallen House you will still be in a bucolic setting, surrounded by mature trees that are home to a number of bird species.

Taughannock Falls
(tuh-GAN-nuck)

New York Waterfalls

Five important nature areas within minutes from McLallen House:

Taughannock Falls State Park
The falls are 215 feet tall (compared to Niagara's 167 feet) and are the highest in the Northeast. The park is located in the town of Ulysses.

~5 minutes from McLallen House

Finger Lakes National Forest
This is the only national forest in New York state. It straddles the divide between Cayuga and Seneca Lakes.

~10 minutes from McLallen House

Robert S. Treman State Park
Enfield Creek has carved Enfield Glen, a deep narrow defile through Upper Devonian siltstones, over the last 9000 years.

-20 minutes from McLallen House

Buttermilk Falls State Park
Buttermilk Creek drops down from Lake Treman and spreads out over a large expanse of rock to make a broad, easily accessed fall.

~20 minutes from McLallen House

Ithaca Falls
This falls is near the mouth of Fall Creek, right at the edge of residential Ithaca. There are many more falls further up the the creek, which cuts down through the Cornell campus.

~20 minutes from McLallen House

Michael Okoniewski for the NY Times

A local natural curiosity: the Seneca white deer. The Seneca Army Depot in nearby Romulus was abandoned in the early 90s. For 60 years before that a herd of several hundred deer was protected inside the security fence of the 10,400 acre enclosure. After the 1950s a white strain (not albino) of the common white-tailed deer (Odicoileus virginiana) multiplied and there are now several hundred of them. Age and vandalism have taken their toll on the security fence and the deer can now be seen in many areas of Seneca County.

The Museum of the Earth

Before you go out and about and look at all the waterfalls, you may want to learn a bit more about the rocks over which this water falls. The immediate Ithaca area is composed largely of Late Devonian age siltstone and shale. As you travel north along the Cayuga Lake you encounter more limestones and also more fossils.

~10 minutes from McLallen House

Jim Sherpa prepping out the skull of the "Hyde Park mastodon"

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