Road Trips and Hike Reports

This trip has been on the calendar for so long it seemed like it would never get here.  We booked the train and the 2 Chicago and Madison hotels back in April when we last saw our friend Jim in Saratoga Springs.  As it turns out the timing is pretty great since we’re preparing to move (to someplace with worse Amtrak connections) and fall is our favorite time to travel in general. Jim arrived Monday afternoon so we had all of Tuesday to hang out before our train left at 11:30 pm.  Brian had to work but Jim shopped for CDs in Rochester in the morning and I did some more packing and cleaning at the apartment.  Later in the afternoon we had just  enough time to watch ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ which was a very challenging and long movie to take in.  At 5:30 we  had a lovely dinner in Fairport at Bocaccinis with Jim’s other Rochester friends.  We watched another movie (this one with Brian) at home before taking Uber to the Amtrak station.  ...

With the move coming up, both my work and personal life has been full of extra tasks and interruptions.  I saw a day with decent looking weather coming up and I had no appointments on my calendar so I told by coworkers I wanted to take Thursday off since I have a fairly involved set of things to do for work Friday night and Saturday. Letchworth Start park is one of New York's premiere state parks and certainly the most well known park in this part of the state.  The majority of casual visitors come in through the main gated entrances to do the most well known gorge trail or a few other family friendly trails on that side of the Genessee river.  There is one other trailhead that I knew about that is outside the gated area that leads to some more primitive trails.  This trip was with my friend Fred who has lived in the area for 20+ years.  He went down 'River Road' near Mount Morris and there are about 10 different small trailheads scattered along that road which ...

We're moving soon to New Hampshire.  There might be more details in upcoming posts but it understandably makes us want to revisit a few favorites here in central and western NY while we still can. This county park is very impressive.  It's very large, has a large campground, a cross country skiing warming hut and an extensive ski trail network which doubles as a hiking network the rest of the year.  There is a main, blazed trail loop which is just called Sprague Brook Trail.  We followed quite a bit of that main trail again on this trip but we shaved off some little fingers that would have made the hike more circuitous and longer. Still, we walked 6.5 miles which was great.  The fall colors were enjoyable and I forgot how much of the trail was along the edges of ravines and other big drop offs.  It reminded me why this is a favorite place to repeat.  For whatever reason this hike took a lot out of both of us.  We really enjoyed our early dinner an...

As members and supporters of the Finger Lakes Trail Conference, we get their magazine covering trail projects, stories about through hikers and members who have made substantial time and effort commitments to the organization.  The last issue we got talked about a new piece of trail that connects Kinsella park (a city park in Corning NY) to an existing part of the Crystal Hills Trail.  The CHT is about 45 miles long and, based on my minimal research, connects from the PA state line to a junction with the Finger Lakes Trail in NY.   It is also part of the ' Great Eastern Trail ' which is a developing long-distance trail network that spans the Eastern US from North to South. The article was really about the news of the little connector trail between the city park and the existing CHT segment and also that a piece of the CHT now goes through Corning Glass lands which eliminates what used to be a road walk.  It wasn't a how-to or even a why-to on using the new trail...

This entry isn't  really  about the trail.  We went to Kinzua Bridge State Park finally in PA.  It's some place I've been aware of since at least the time we moved to PA but just never made it to it.  This was the location of a very tall railroad trestle that crossed a creek and a small valley.  It was an impressive and old structure that very few people paid any attention to until it fell down during a storm in 2003.  The rail line it was on was abandoned and rather than demolish what was left of the bridge, it was made into a mix of man made and natural spectacle in the form of a state park. It's hard to appreciate from the photos how huge this bridge was and how high up you are when you walk to the stub end of what is left of it.  It's an impressive and imagination stirring view but a LOT of people would find walking on the bridge (which is made of boards with some gaps in them) nerve wracking.  There is a lovely modern visitor center/muse...

Brian is in Vermont visiting his family.  This left me with a weekend to fill on my own.  I decided to not let the weekend to go by without getting a hike in.  Little Rock City is a really interesting geologic area near Allegheny state park but not in the park.  Today's pictures aren't the best because it is summer and there is so much green it doesn't give a lot of contrast to show the rock formations clearly. I left the house pretty early so I could get there as early as possible.  While it wasn't hot today, it was very humid and the trail surface was almost all wet with some puddling.  There were some slippery rocks here and there and I didn't get very close to the edges of any of the drop-offs since I was already antsy being there by myself.  I saw just 1 other set of people on the trail and they were on bicycles just crossing the path I was on briefly. Despite the minimal elevation gain, I found this hike more tiring than it should have been....