Road Trips and Hike Reports

It had been a long time since we did a hike from one of the 50 Hikes in (Central/Western) NY Books.  This one was from the Central NY book .  The hikes from these books are sometimes a let down because a lot has changed in terms of reroutes and road changes since these book were published in the mid 90's.  My goal for our day was to just grab a book, quickly choose a hike and get on the road without getting mired in decision paralysis especially since we're not always able to seize the morning and be out on the road as early as we were this day.   Getting to this hike was no great challenge but it was very remote with several miles of gravel roads.  We looked up the road (Ratville Road) on the car nav and it helped take us there very nicely.  Still, we came at the hike from the opposite end of Ratville road and the parking area wasn't really as described in the book so we weren't totally sure we were in the right spot.  Then the first few way points in the hike were not

 I thought this was someplace we'd never been but when we go to the busy parking lot at the trail head I recognized it from before. Thankfully though, this hike from Alltrails headed across the road from the one we did prior so it was actually 100% new territory. This wasn't a strenuous hike in any way but it wasn't boring or flat either and considering the barely suburban location it has a good illusion of being wild and isolated.

 This was a hike with a visiting friend from Tennessee.  A favorite often repeated spot for us.