Buttermilk Falls is in Ithaca, NY near a busy shopping area. Our trip here was Eh…

We stayed Wednesday night to Friday morning due to campground availability – weekends are heavily booked at the state parks right now. I overheard a park employee describing it more like a city park and while that didn’t feel exactly true, it was funny to see store building tops from our walks. I imagined sneaking away to Starbucks a couple of times (especially on Thursday when I had the boys alone).

I could have made it a little better with more planning – like calling the park to see what was going to be available.

Swimming will be available starting July 4th and is only open on Fri, Sat, and Sun. We went on July 1st – 3rd. The bathrooms are not open in the lower park until sometime in the late morning as far as I can tell. The ones in the campground are closed from 11-12 and 4-5 for extra cleaning. I know most of this is because of COVID-19 precautions so I can’t really complain.

The campground was nice but very stony. We bent our stakes trying to get them in the ground and sort of worried about our tent caving in or a strong wind blowing it away. It did not blow away. We appreciated that the site was shady and near the bathrooms.

We definitely did some hiking – going from the campground to the lower park entrance twice and back via the Owl Creek trail. We also hiked to the scenic overlook via the same trail. It’s amazing! You can see across to farms on the other side…of something 🤣 (maybe Cayuga Lake?). Near the overlook is also a huge rock wall presumably created by glaciers which people have signed by scratching their names with a rock. That’s where we saw our first snake. We saw our second snake on the portion of the Rim trail that leads to the park entrance. I had the boys make a list of everything else they saw.

• lots and lots of chipmunks – these guys were everywhere!
• squirrels
• several different varieties of butterflies
• frogs and tadpoles (learn more about frogs here)
• dragonflies

It was a hot few days – we kept hydrated and took lots of breaks when we needed to.

Another hiking option is the Rim Trail/Gorge Trail loop. These are two seperate but connecting trails – currently they have them operating in a loop due to COVID-19. They describe them as fairly challenging so I didn’t attempt without another grown-up but I saw other families doing it.

Other nice things to do included a playground and large playing fields. My 6 yr old gave the playground two thumbs up!

The park was beautiful and I would visit again on a day trip during the week. I’d camp on the weekends if it was available.

Amenities: fairly nice camping, swimming, bathrooms, hiking, playground, large picnic area, ball fields

Rating: ☆☆☆ 3/5

Pokemon Go fans: We didn’t have a chance to play! But I checked a map and there doesn’t seem to be any pokestops or gyms at this park.