Montville Falls (review, rating)

Montville Falls

Moravia, NY

Hiked: September 25th, 2011

Reviewed: October 2nd, 2011

Interaction: 5 stars

Scenery: 4 stars

Diversity: 2 stars

Accessability: 2 stars

Size: small

Overall: 4 stars

This is an exhilarating, interactive hike that is about ninetry percent creek-walking with no defined trail. However, it is ranked as a difficult hike, and rightfully so. The hiker accesses Mill Creek through on of two cemetaries. We reached it via Section 9 of Indian Mound Cemetary, and began our descent near a large tombstone labeled C.A. Parker.

 Indian Mound Cemetary entrance

Tinker Falls (review, rating)

Tinker Falls

Tully, NY

Hiked: June 18th, 2011

Reviewed: June 30th, 2011

Interaction: 5 stars

Scenery: 5 stars

Diversity: 2 stars

Accessability: 2 stars

Size: Small

Overall: 4 stars

Being younger and perhaps a little more adventurous, I personally loved Tinker Falls, and I really can't wait to go back.

Tinker includes a short, ten minute trail leading up to Tinker Falls; an elegant cascade that you can walk behind, and if you're careful, you can even touch it. However, there is a moderate climb involved to reach it that I would not usggest to the elderly, young children, or the handicapped. You can also continute to climb to reach the top of the falls for a splendid view, a fantastic picnic spot, and to access more trails. Again, I stress that these climbs are not reccommended for the people I mentioned. This is why I rated it with a low accessability; for those who are incapable of the climbs, your visit to Tinker will likely be short and disappointing.

The trail leading up the falls

 The creek along the trail

 At the base of the falls

 The climb up to the falls

 Tinker Falls

It looks small here, I guess it is much bigger in the spring than in the summer. However if it's a lot bigger in the spring, I don't know how safe it would be to get close to it at that time.

Letchworth State Park (review, rating)

Letchworth State Park

Castile, NY

Hiked: June 27th, 2011

Reviewed: June 27th, 2011

Scenery: 5 stars

Diversity: 5 stars

Interaction: 3 stars

Accessability: 4 stars

Overall: 5 stars

Size: Large

Letchworth is an incredibly large park with its own extensive road system. The park contains 14,350 acres of land along the Genesee River.

A visitor to the park can get more than enough scenery viewing just by driving through the park. The roads run along the edge of the cliff through the park, and there are frequent pull overs along the way where you can stop and check out the view. Most are equipped with binoculars (25 cents) and picnic areas that include charcoal grills.

*To Ban Or Not Ban (a thematic essay)

To Ban or Not To Ban

A thematic essay on William Golding's Lord of the Flies

Written December 2010

William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies is highly controversial in today’s society in many ways. Lord of the Flies offers a chilling and terrifying view of a situation where a group of boys are stranded on an island together and forced to survive without adults and their authority. Their civilized ways slowly digress into savagery as the instinct for survival takes over the need for order. The reader can only watch helplessly as this group of boys loses their childhood and innocence to instinct, cruelty, and even murder. This realistic situation was designed to express Golding’s theory that “man is inherently evil,” especially when there is no authority or law to suppress it. Ironically, despite the excess of violence in the novel, Golding’s work won the Nobel Peace Prize for literature. Golding’s winning of this prestigious award is one of the controversial subjects over this book. Other debates over the book include interpretations of symbolism, quality of the ending, the writing style Golding used, and how long the boys were actually stranded on the island. However, one of the fieriest disputes about Lord of the Flies is its appropriateness for use in schools, including its accessibility to children and young adults.