Road Trips and Hike Reports

 I did this trail a few years ago by myself and wanted Brian to see it since it was really fascinating and had so many interesting rock features. It was a 2 hour long but pleasant and interesting drive from our hotel in  State College.

This was a surprisingly challenging hike.  It's only about 5 miles from the hotel we are staying at in downtown State College.  This trail started off near some interesting municipal water infrastructure that takes a very modest stream and runs it through some sort of settling pond and then off into a water supply.  The trail started off following this small stream on a very rocky and rooty trail.  After about a mile the loop portion of the trail starts and it went straight up the side of the ridge very steeply.  The actual amount of elevation wasn't huge but it was steeper and probably longer than almost any hike near us in the Finger Lakes area. The ridge portion of the trail was delightful.  It was woodsy with occasional glimpses of the valleys on either side of the ridge and there was a light breeze.  We didn't see anybody on the upper portions of the trail which wasn't a surprise after going through dozens of spider webs all the way. The downhill leg of the loop wa

 This was an Alltrails find.  The comments on the site just said how amazingly well maintained and marked this trail was and it seemed like a good enough bet for another hot summer day.  We left the house pretty early and got here (around Ithaca) around 10:30 am. This turned out to be yet another part of the Finger Lakes trail which we are seemingly covering segment by segment.  Since this was a loop, only part of it was FLT but it was all beautiful and we saw very few people.  For a very hot day it was the perfect shady quiet spot.