Photo s & Article By Barbara Arnstein
Now is a perfect time to visit the beautiful Finger Lakes in New York to enjoy the magnificent vistas of fall foliage everywhere, as well as local sights and attractions. The Finger Lakes Region has fourteen counties, including Elmira, Geneseo, Naples, Corning, Ithaca, Rochester and Syracuse. My travel companion and I first visited Hammondsport (which, in 2012, won the title of “America’s Coolest Small Town”, thanks to a contest held by Budget Travel magazine). The view of Keuka Lake and the surrounding hillsides full of fall foliage from Depot Park (on the southern shore of the lake) was breathtaking. The park itself is picturesque, thanks to the old depot building on the shore, and the general charm of the small townhouses and buildings all around. It is currently decorated with whimsical Halloween decorations such as pumpkins painted with funny faces, a life-size skeleton in a cloak, and a giant spider on the gazebo.
All around Penn Yan (a name derived from Pennsylvania Yankee) there are interesting wineries to visit, and we briefly visited a few. Penn Yan is at the north end of the east branch of Keuka Lake. Another good place to visit in that area is the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum, dedicated to the motorcycle and aviation pioneer. 
Later that day we hiked on the Keuka Lake Outlet Trail, which is easily walkable, and offers a lot of beautiful scenery. We enjoyed seeing the foliage and falls there while sharing the trail with a group of bicyclists and there was plenty of room for everyone. At dinnertime, we ate at a popular restaurant called Parker’s Grille & Tap House. The fun decor includes interesting posters and items such as a lamp with a fringed shade whose base is a lady’s leg in a fish-net stocking, like the one in Jean Shepherd’s popular tale, “A Christmas Story”. The menu items include wings, handhelds, smash burgers and pizzas. We had the delicious, oven-fired wild mushroom and goat cheese pizza.
The next day, we hiked up all the steep, narrow stone steps alongside the rushing stream and gorgeous waterfalls at Stony Brook State Park. The trail there includes a series of steep stone stairways that require effort to climb, and are tricky to walk on when they’re wet (which they were when we were there) but the views along the way are well worth the effort it takes to reach them. In certain places, the ledges alongside the water are very narrow, and you really have to watch your step (as signs at the beginning of the trail warn walkers to do). There, the most colorful fall foliage was up at the peaks of the rocky walls around us. Before we left the park, we explored some of the rest of the park, which includes an interesting old shelter with a large fireplace.