July 28, 2019 hike - Finger Lakes Backbone Trail - 5 miles

I found this hike, as I do so many, on Alltrails.  The drive was just over an hour and other than the 20 miles on I-90 Eastbound, there were very few cars out and about on NY-96 and NY-414 past many many wineries, almost all with amazing views perched over Seneca Lake.  I'm still surprised how quiet Western NY is in a lot of places, even in summer, even not particularly early in the morning.  It
is a huge relief to both Brian and I not to be dreading getting in the car.







 
The trailhead involved driving about 4 miles along well maintained dirt roads.  The trail is in the Finger Lakes National Forest, one of the newest and the second smallest National Forest in the US.  There was a pleasant and fairly constant light breeze this morning which helped mask the upper 70's temperature (and maybe about the same for humidity). 



We started off going to the wrong trailhead (they were only .25 miles apart) but that gave us a chance to see a very secluded and beautiful pond.

 


Then we walked to the correct starting point and then walked through a hike-in group camp that had at least 3 families scattered around its large and not very developed area.  The spots that weren't occupied were hard to even spot since there are no structures nor any obvious organization to the loosely scattered spots.

The trail mostly covered level ground with lots of trees (and bugs) around.  The bugs were annoying in spots but we did have a healthy coating of repellent applied.  The hike was basically a four sided loop that really looks like it could be a Midwestern State in shape (we started in upper right and walked clockwise).


Towards the end there were a lot of boardwalk type bridges, one after another after another.  Clearly this part of the trail doesn't get a lot of use because they were fairly well on its way to being swallowed up by nature again.

 


It was nice to get back to the car and wrap our walk up and we both appreciated the solitude of this walk, seeing no other hikers of any sort, only a few campers in the first 1/4 mile of the walk.


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