We’ll, it’s not purely a photo gallery. About five miles of cycling occurred here but they’re credited to the previous entry. Just so you know and don’t become confused when you see a bike in it.
When we left off we were just entering Rochester, approaching the river. If you know nothing more about Rochester than that it’s the home of Kodak, which is where we were when we started planning this tour, you don’t know that it sits just south of Lake Ontario, straddling the Genesee River. And you probably don’t know about the Genessee River either, which is truly impressive - it’s much more significant and carries more water than I’d expected. And the falls - wow. Offhand, I can’t think of another city with a more impressive series of falls splitting it.
There are three falls within the city - the high, middle and lower - that collectively drop over two hundred feet, cutting through the Niagara Escarpment and exposing geological strata down over roughly a twenty million year period. The lower and high falls are both straight drops of roughly a hundred feet, while the middle falls is more modest and greatly influenced by its use for hydropower generation.
We approached from the north, coming first to the lower falls. It’s a beautiful cascade - awesome really, for the quantity of water flowing over it. You can hear it from quite a ways away, and when you near it the air is a cloud of spray.
The lower falls. As striking as it is, it’s not that easy to get a look at. Maybe if we hiked down to the bottom of the muddy trail and looked back up, but I’m not sure.
Looking down the Genesee, with the lower falls on the right. That’s the Driving Park Avenue Bridge ahead. About five miles beyond that the river empties into Lake Ontario. Looking at the map now, I wish we’d taken the time to backtrack and check out the view from the bridge. I can’t tell if you can get a clear view of these falls or not.
There’s a paved bike path that follows the river south to downtown. A short distance from the lower falls the path crosses the Genesee, with the middle falls spilling directly underneath the bridge.
After crossing the river above the middle falls we follow its east side for a short distance and then cross it again, over the Sixth Street Bridge. And then we cross for the third time in only a bit more than a mile, on the very beautiful Pont de Rennes Bridge. Originally built for automobiles but since 1982 restricted to pedestrians and bicycles, it’s a stunning platform that provides a thrilling view of the high falls dropping from the heart of the city.
I wish I’d captured more information about this inspirational mural or noted what building it was on. Just something that caught our attention between falls.
The view downriver from the Pont de Rennes Bridge. The bridge ahead is the Sixth Street Bridge that we just biked across. The middle falls is around the bend to the right just beyond the farthest visible point in the river.
The Pont de Rennes Bridge. Built in 1891 as the Platt Street Bridge, it was pedestrianized in 1982 and renamed in honor of Rochester’s sister city in Brittany - a place that with luck we’ll get to see next spring.
Leaving the falls, we detoured over to the west side to an Amazon locker site to pick up a little package we’re quite excited about; and then crossed the river yet a fourth time, this time over the Main Street Bridge, to our hotel. Between this, our walk to dinner this evening and back across to Starbucks the next morning for breakfast, we got to see quite a bit of Rochester. There’s a lot to like.
One thing that didn’t impress us so much here was our dinner, at an Italian restaurant we have both been enthusiastically anticipating for several days. The first disappointment came when we sat down to the table and Rachael saw that the salmon dish she’d seen on their website and had been looking forward to was no longer on the menu.
Our waitress, a pleasant young woman with a welcoming smile, told us the daily specials. Tonight they included Spanish gazpacho, which excited me. she took our orders, and a few minutes later returned to express regrets that they’d run out of gazpacho. Odd, because the restaurant had only been open for twenty minutes and we were nearly the first customers. Also odd that she announced this with exactly the same welcoming smile she’d flashed when we first arrived. It’s exactly the same smile she again gave every other time she interacted with us, including at the completion of the meal when I pointed out, without smiling, that I was being billed for a bottle of wine rather than the single glass I’d ordered and been served. She only knows one expression apparently, and wears it regardless of circumstances.
Rochester is an impressive city for murals. We weren’t really seeking them out, but they kept showing up. I imagine we just scratched the surface.
The wings at the top of the Art Deco Times Square Building are aluminum, 42 feet high, weigh six tons each, and are known as the ‘Wings of Progress’. This looks like another amazing structure that would be worth a much longer look, inside and out. An interesting fact about it: its cornerstone was laid on October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday of the 1929 stock market crash.
The Flying Mercury, by J. Guernsey Mitchell, was modeled after a figure in the Bargello in Florence. It’s moved around since its first placement - perhaps those winged shoes helped out here - but now stands atop the Thomson West Building as a symbol of commerce.
The Powers Building, built in 1869. The triple mansard roof and the observation tower above it were added later, to maintain its status as the tallest building in the city. Somehow, I liked this building better before learning that fact.
Looking south from the Main Street Bridge to the Broad Street Bridge. Built between 1836 and 1842, it was originally an aquaduct that carried the Erie Canal across the Genesee River.
The view north from the High Street Bridge. For perspective, the Genesee Brewery (in the center) is beyond the high falls. The river drops over a hundred foot cliff somewhere in this maze.
