Rochester/NY Finger Lakes region

[Dave Buchholz]

Forums are great places. But meeting fellow modelers in our home areas always seems tough to me.

I'm in Rochester NY. I know Bernd is about 25 miles south of me. If there are other modelers in the  Rochester/Finger lakes region of Upstate New York, how about giving us/me, a shout out.

Dave Buchholz

[jbvb]

I put my state (NH) and county (Rockingham) in my Modelersforum profile not long after I joined.  But I'm not sure how I'd search others' profiles for locations nearby.

[Dave Buchholz]

Hopefully they will spot this topic and respond to it.

[Bernd]

I'm surprised with the number of modelers in the surrounding area that no one else beside me and you ae on the forum. You'd figure with the Rochester Model Railroad club there would be at least a few from there.

You might to need to climb higher on the mountain Dave and yell. 

Bernd

[deemery]

You might to need to climb higher on the mountain Dave and yell.   

Huh...   My recollection about that part of New York is it's pretty flat...  

dave

[Dave Buchholz]

Arthritis.

No more climbing for me.

[Bernd]

You might to need to climb higher on the mountain Dave and yell. 
Huh...  My recollection about that part of New York is it's pretty flat... 

dave

It is flat as you get closer to Lake Ontario. Personally I think the lakes name should be changed to Lake New York. After all there is a Lake Michigan.

Anyway, as you go south about 50 miles you get into the Bristol Hills. Where I live there is a geo marker. It shows we are at 1100 feet above sea level and that's not even at the top of the hill yet. I can look into the city.

Bernd

[Dave Buchholz]

I was driving in the Farmington and Palmyra area the other day in the Northern end of the Finger Lakes Region It's geologically a weird place. During the ice ages, the earth was chewed up and gouged, then spit back out into drumlins and eskers as the glaciers receded towards Canada.

[deemery]

You might to need to climb higher on the mountain Dave and yell. 
Huh...  My recollection about that part of New York is it's pretty flat... 

dave

It is flat as you get closer to Lake Ontario. Personally I think the lakes name should be changed to Lake New York. After all there is a Lake Michigan.

Anyway, as you go south about 50 miles you get into the Bristol Hills. Where I live there is a geo marker. It shows we are at 1100 feet above sea level and that's not even at the top of the hill yet. I can look into the city.

Bernd

Wow, didn't realize the elevation grew so fast.  Lake Ontario is at 243'.  (I used to have the topo map for Ft Drum, but I got rid of all my old Army maps when I retired...)

dave

[Dave Buchholz]

Ask you head south via the Genesee River, the are three waterfalls within the Rochester city limits, and three more in Letchworth State Park.

[Mr. Critter]

I was driving in the Farmington and Palmyra area the other day in the Northern end of the Finger Lakes Region It's geologically a weird place. During the ice ages, the earth was chewed up and gouged, then spit back out into drumlins and eskers as the glaciers receded towards Canada.

Eskers are geologically weird. And weird-looking. I first read about them in a Farley Mowat novel, set in the sub-arctic, as a grade school kid.  Never thought I'd see one.  And then, a decade later, teenaged, I was walking in the deep forest in Québec's Mauricie region, headed to a lake beyond another lake that I'd spotted on the map and that looked like it might be a decent trout-fishing hole.  I wasn't following a trail- there wasn't one- navigating by map, compass, and dead reckoning, and I suddenly found myself on what looked for all the world like a snakey elevated hiking path, several feet above grade. Its narrow top was beaten hard as if animals had been using it as a trail for millennia.  No trace of a human footprint.  I loped along for a few hundred feet and then decided to dig a bit to see if it was rock, because it was just too surreal.

It wasn't rock. 

It was a mixture of smooth river-bottom pebbles and bright yellow sand.  An upside-down glacial riverbed, just as Mowat had described it.

I realized what I was standing on, and my jaw hit the tops of my sneakers.

[Dave Buchholz]

You got it. Within glaciers. As they melted, literally streams formed within them. And of course, all the rocks and pebbles went to the bottom sooner of later Given a few eons, thousand years later as they headed downward they formed those snake like mounds of pebbles, many miles long. There are lots of them in the area.

[Mr. Critter]

That one's probably the only specimen I'll ever see.  Been meaning to go back to it for decades.  This time, though, with GPS.  And a survival kit.  It was a bit of a hike.

This Wikipedia entry drawing eerily, closely depicts what I found myself atop of.  It was surrounded by an alarming number of pines, which are thin on the ground in my part of the Canadian Shield.  But pines like to grow in sand, in deep, well-drained ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esker#/media/File:Esker_(PSF).png

[jbvb]

I grew up on a glacial moraine: Newburyport is built on one that was deposited parallel to the last couple of miles of the Merrimack River.  The "Mall" uphill of the downtown is a glacial kettlehole. A 200' x 500' ice block broke loose from the glacier and was mostly buried in sand and gravel. Eventually it melted leaving a hole with no outlet 20-30' deep.  Newton Rd. in Amesbury MA follows an esker for almost a mile but it's never more than 30 feet above the ponds on either side.

The biggest esker I've seen is about 60' high in places. It carries ME Rt. 9 ("Airline Road") for a number of miles  IIRC it's toward the western (Bangor) end of the highway.

[Dave Buchholz]

There is a certain humor about the fact that model railroaders not only have so  many varied artists skills and attention to details that make great creations, and the awareness of how railroads formed America, but also know more about geological features than the average person as well.

You guys are great!


Fifth Dave on the Right.