Western New York Idyll: Scoby Dam

 Coming back from sailing the other evening, hubby and I decided to get fish and chips - and yes you can get this in America and they even sometimes call it "fish and chips", not "fish and fries" as you would expect. In that perverse way of British/American English, they prefer to call it a "fish fry". But on one of the few balmy evenings we've had this summer, where to eat it?
   Off Route 219 going south just after Springville, there's a sign to "Scoby Dam". What in the world is Scoby Dam?

Disused Scoby Dam now. It was built in the 1920s and is no longer needed to provide electricity.
So now it's a park, the evening sun shining on the tree trunks..

Pretty rapids below the dam.

 And a closer look. Not quite Niagara Falls but still...

The house is boarded up with signs of a garden long gone.

Nature's taken over the old works.

As always around here, she doesn't need much bidding.

The placid Cattaraugus Creek above.

.

 And below..

....must be a great place for fishing. Wild flowers abound.

 There's a country lane to amble up.

With diversions on the way.

An almost perfect  picnic spot.

And not a bad sunset.

 In the still, mossy, green-scented dusk, fish and chips never tasted so good.