Road Trips and Hike Reports

  Whetstone Gulf State Park North and South trails (as guided by 50 hikes in Central NY ) Basics: Length - ~ 5 miles Elevation gain - Estimated at 600 feet Nearest city - Lowville, NY This was the same hike we did in April of 2018 . Several things were different this time.  First, Brian wasn't with me.  Second, there was only a slight dusting of snow and ice to be found. It's an amazing natural site and seemingly a lightly visited one at least during the winter.  Read the previous entry for more details.  This isn't the easiest place to photograph.  The views into the gorge were usually obscured with close up bushes or tree branches.  The trail is as much as 300 feet above the stream below and almost the entire trail is within eyesight if not one wrong step away from the nearly vertical walls.  Still, there weren't a lot of really great shots.  Here are the new photos: After lunch in Lowville I did about 10 miles north on NY-812, allegedly the quietest roa

Once we got off the train we were very busy and I totally forgot I had been blogging this trip. So I'm writing it two months after the last entry. Train: My mom learned very definitely that long distance train travel isn't for her.  She didn't sleep the first night which didn't surprise me.  Unfortunately, the 2nd night was no better.  Both those nights were on the Oregon to Chicago train (Empire Builder) in our family bedroom.  One thing unique to the family bedroom (and maybe the accessible bedroom) that is different from the majority of the rooms which are Roomettes or Bedrooms is that the 2 adult size beds in the family bedroom are both across the train car or perpendicular to the rails.  All the other room types have the beds parallel to the windows and tracks.  I'm not sure I have a strong preference in terms of sleeping but either going to the parallel bed on the Chicago to Rochester train suited her better or she was finally so utterly exhausted that she did

 Sunday around noon or 1 I left Eugene after a lunch with my family there.  I saw grandma again very briefly. The drive over the mountains to Redmond was easy and enjoyable. Unfortunately but totally predictably, my mother hadn't packed a single piece of clothing or toiletries when I arrived in Redmond around 3:30 pm on Sunday.  We had a good Mexican dinner with some of Nick's family that I always am happy to see.  Then, as if by telepathy, one of them asked if we would like to come over for ice cream (well it was probably more about the Peach Cobbler she toiled over but for me...) and we eagerly accepted.  It was a fantastic piece of advanced home baking.  We stopped at WalMart and shopped out the last 20 minutes the store was open getting things my mother had on a little list.  She is good at list making I have to give her that. When we got back to the house it was after 8. Still basically on Eastern time, I was getting tired.  No real packing occurred Sunday night either and

Friday I headed out from Rochester on a Delta airlines flight to Atlanta.  Brian had an appointment at work which necessitated me being at the airport at about 9 am for my 12:30 pm flight.  I actually napped a bit on some of the seats in the atrium area before the concourses but it was kind of a long time to hang out.  The boarding for the flight was tense and took a long time.  Somehow the clown car eventually got loaded all the way.  It was a replacement A321.  I'm not sure what was originally scheduled, probably a 737.  My layover in Atlanta was 4 hours.  I spent some time eating at Friday's and enjoyed a big glass of wine.  It took a while but I eventually found a food court with tall counter top like tables with power outlets.  I spent most of the remainder of my time there since I could do whatever on the computer and be connected. The 2nd flight was, very surprisingly to me, on a Boeing 767.  I've only been on a few wide body flights in my life, mostly just the fligh

Brian had to work Saturday so we crammed a lot into Sunday.  We started with breakfast at home then headed out to film a candy review video with a friend and Target coworker of his at the friend's Antique Store.  It was a fun morning and though the store was so busy when we arrived I didn't think we'd be able to get a video done, it quieted down eventually and the entire video went in one quick take. After the video filming we headed towards Buffalo.  I had tickets reserved on a Teddy Roosevelt Inauguration site (run by the National Park Service) for the last tour of the day (3:30-4:30 pm).  I was hopeful for a moderate but challenging hike on the way but the hike I initially chose from the 50 Trails in Western NY book was a lot farther away than I imagined.  Alltrails helped me find this Como Lake park which wasn't too far away from Buffalo.  Erie county (which Buffalo is in) has an absolutely amazing park system with numerous lovely parks, some of the quite large. Pl

 After a self guided tour of the Capitol building we walked a loop around the perimeter of Capitol Park which lies just across State Street from the Capitol complex. As a trail or a hike it wasn't worth writing up but it was very enjoyable looking at the art installations around the edge and the neat planted rows of trees etc.

 I had found a different somewhat longer hike for us to do on the way between Brian's parents in Vermont and our get-away destination of Bangor Maine.  Unfortunately, All Trails and google maps don't really tell you if the destination is readily accessible in a passenger car.  In this case the trailhead was about 3 miles up a gravel road which quickly deteriorated.  After one nasty sounding but seemingly nor harmful scrape along the bottom of the car, we turned around and proceeded back on our route towards Bangor and found this hike instead. The hike itself was serviceable.  There was a very long section of narrow single (sometimes single tiny) split logs to go over an area that is prone to being wet.  The only only people we saw on the entire walk were 2 women coming back out, one of whom had slipped into the mud off one of the precarious logs.  Thankfully our journey over the logs was giggles and a close call maybe but nothing harmful.  I'd say the log balancing skill te

I didn't recognize it when I picked it out last night but this was a repeat off a hike we tried and failed miserably to find once in the past.  Depsite looking through my blog carefully I can't find if I wrote anything from that prior attempt.  This is one of the hikes from the 50 hikes in Western NY book and the directions fail to mention that getting to Country Route 67 requires a brief jog on West Road off of the main highway.  Not sure why we didn't think of it last time but today I googled Steuben County Route 67 and that got us on the right road and from there the book directions worked relatively well. This trail started off going up a truck trail or forest road.  The book called it a demanding climb but it didn't seem so bad.  After that we went on a good long piece of the Finger Lakes Trail which is so often part of our expeditions here.  This is a very quiet and underused part of the FLT.  We actually walked though some poison ivy or sumac or something on the