Road Trips and Hike Reports

It was going to be another hot day but we still managed to get up and head out on a good hike.  This was not a hike I'd looked at before but it was right along Hemlock lake which is apparently one of the least developed of the Finger lakes.  Interestingly, the trail head for this hike WAS somewhere I'd seen before. In fact I tried to take note of it when I was driving the moving van almost exactly a year ago.  But I didn't write down the location and our previous travels never took us past this particular spot on NY-15A. This was a favorite hike for both of us.  The setting even at the start is gorgeous.  There was almost no traffic noice, the lake had only a few quiet boats on it and there are no houses or obvious signs of human influence along the whole trail.  The first mile leads steadily down from the top of the valley down to a beautiful overlook that will probably be full of water some other time of year.  Even absent the water it was a nice steep gorge to peer int

It's hot here this week.  Despite that we headed out very early (before 8 am) to a spot described in our 50 Hikes in Central NY book.  The book is kind of old and it suggested parking on the 'abandoned road' that becomes the first part of the hike.  That road isn't abandoned anymore though it is a rough dirt road.  I cautiously parked in a little gravel area in a field which I believe is part of the State Forest.  After walking a quarter mile up the not so abandoned road we were supposed to get on the Finger Lakes trail but interestingly there was a sign saying trail closed and pointing further down the road saying 'new trail'.  The road itself was blazed as a horse trail and a snow mobile trail.  Soon the road came to a T junction and there were signs for Mohawk trail, Seneca trail and Finger Lakes trail.  Of them only the FLT was really what I'd call a trail, the others being more forest roads at least at this spot.  We pretty much gave up on the book a