Road Trips and Hike Reports

I presented Brian with 3 options for getting some sort of hike in for our day.  1 was relatively close to home, one was really close to home and the third was from a brochure I had laying around in a basket of travel ideas.  The brochure was about the Allegheny area of Pennsylvania and included a decent list of hiking ideas but very little detail about each one.  Based on just a nice photo and the desire to have our adventure take up most of the day, we headed out to Bradford PA, just south of the NY border. The reservoir is a really beautiful body of water.  There are a few different trails but we wanted to walk the 'Marilla Bridge Trail' but we knew very little about it.  Though described in the brochure as a 2.2 mile trail, it actually goes on considerably farther.  It starts by going over the namesake bridge then around half the reservoir before heading off deeper into a lushly forested area.  We only went about as far as the brochure brochure said...

I originally tried to go to a more wild location in New Hampshire near a river.  The insects at the parking area were so bad that I couldn't imagine doing a hike there even with the bug spray on.  So we abandoned that hike and headed into Sherbrooke early.  I had planned for us to see the Devil Wears Prada 2 in Sherbrooke anyway so I just made sure to find some sort of little hike we could do there also. The park we went to is immediately next to Sherbrooke university and almost in urban Sherbrooke yet it has a ski lift and a very extensive trail network.  Most trails allowed bikes OR hikers but not both.  I'm generally not a fan of hyper-segregated uses for natural spaces but given the high use this park might see at some times and the large number of trails to choose from, maybe the way they are doing it makes sense for this park in particular.  The trail we walked was a forest road basically and it went up and down a fair bit but was basically along the ...

This hike was great.  It started at a big turn around at the end of a dirt road.  There was one van there when we arrived but it was gone when we got back and we didn't see a single person on the trail.  Anytime there is more than 100 feet of elevation gain per mile we consider it a relatively stiff hike.  While the warm weather weather and the climbing did combine to make for a good exercise hike, the trail was very well graded and most of the time the climbs were gradual and mild There wasn't too much of note on the loop but there was a very large pond with a rocky island in the middle and one section had some giant rocks in a rock garden type setting.  The weather was also good with a fairly consistent breeze to keep the sweat and humidity under control.  

This wasn't the hike we intended to go on.  The first one we tried to go on was a piece of the Finger Lake trail that started on a road called Harrisburg Hollow.  Harrisburg Hollow was a rough rutted dirt road. Besides being nerve wracking to drive down in our low slung Chevrolet Cruze, there was also absolutely no parking near the FLT crossing.  So we decided to skip that hike and head to something else.   This hike near Corning wasn't too far away and seemed like a good 2nd choice.  The Alltrails hike for this trail system is just a bunch of forest roads forming a loop.  Once we started walking up the steep forest road I could see some more 'traily' options leading off of it and we basically built our own adventure using the Alltrails map but not the route they originally showed. The weather was gorgeous with nice sun, a steady breeze and low humidity.  It was actually pretty cool (50's) when we started and probably didn't quite hit 70 by the ti...

Brian didn't want to get up as early as I did on this, our unexpected day at home before returning to work.  Since it was going to be really warm (near 90) on the 2nd day we were going to be at Ohiopyle State Park in Pennsylvania, we opted to head home Monday instead of spending a 2nd night in our yurt.  While it would have been nice to have our full 2 night yurt camping trip, it was nice coming home Monday and having all of Tuesday to do something different with.   I got up early and got blood work drawn for an upcoming medical appointment. I also needed to go to Best Buy to try and find a new laptop for my father who has been having frequent crashes on his Dell Latitude.  I had about an hour and a half between getting blood drawn and Best Buy opening plus it was going to be pretty warm here too.  So I decided to squeeze an unplanned mini hike into the time and opportunity I had.  The Crescent trail is a wonderful trail network that is very close to u...

It was a little warm by the time we got to this trail.  This 'state forest wild area' is the largest in Pennsylvania at over 50 thousand acres spanning 3 counties.  I'm not sure what exactly differentiates a state forest wild area from a normal state forest.  The largest state forest in PA is astonishingly large at 300 thousand acres.  The Quehanna Wild Area is a fascinating and under-visited area.  The drive through (on th Quehanna highway) is exhilarating with lots of curves and dips and very little traffic.  It was previously home to a number of defense industry research areas including a small nuclear reactor.  This hike actually started just off of 'Reactor Road' which led to that, now completely demolished, nuclear reactor. The variety of scenery along this loop trail was phenomenal.  There were areas that were very dry and even semi-arid feeling but also wet and muddy areas.  The vegetation varied a lot from mostly hardwoods in some a...