Road Trips and Hike Reports

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

The appeal of this hike was the description in the 50 Hikes in Western NY book. The author explains how this seems like a very unlikely location for a hike since it is basically at the highest point with the land dropping away (gently) on all sides.  The reason there is a lake here despite no obvious watershed to fill it is that while it is the highest point right where it is there are substantially higher hills nearby and that makes the area where the lake is below the water table.   In spite of this cool back story, the lake itself is not particularly grand or interesting and the entirety of the walk described consists of a short connector road from the lake out to the grid of gravel roads that make basically a square around the lake.  Even less exciting, you can't see the lake at all (at least in summer with the trees all leafed out) once you walk 500 feet from the parking spot. So I'd summarize this hike as a bore. The drive down to and from Allegheny county was relaxing a