Road Trips and Hike Reports

This was a different kind of hike than we normally seek out. Instead of a relatively remote area with 1 main trail or a loop, we went to this barely suburban state park.  I'd never heard of it before but I saw it in Google Maps while I was looking around and was surprised at the photos from there.  This 350 acre park makes up for in dramatic texture what it lacks in size.  The main feature is a lake surrounded by very steep high cliffs or bluffs for about 180 degrees of the lake's shore.  There were a lot of suburban parents and little kids on that first, closest to the lake trail.  We turned off of it fairly quickly and all of the other trails we went on had barely anybody on them. This was a wonderful scenery day and there were lots of giant rocks to walk on, hop between and plenty of ups and downs.  The trails were all rugged and very interesting, but not very long.  

As an exercise event, this hike barely qualifies at all.  It is a series of zig zagging mowed paths in forested area with a bog or wetland.  This was a very short after work walk trying somewhere new we hadn't been before.  The scenery made up for any shortcomings this trail had in length or difficulty.  Pictures tell most of the story.  It was almost sunset when we finished.

I recently renewed our membership and donation for the Finger Lakes Trail conference . This time I finally ordered a set of loop hike maps they offer.  Each loop hike (some have a few options) is 1 double sided page with a map on one side and turn by turn directions on the other side.   This hike ended up being one Brian I had done before and not even too long ago.  We didn't realize this until we walked 1/4 mile up the trail and saw the historic cemetery.  Last time we were there we were using Alltrails and it was called Urbana State Forest Trails .  Even though the paper map I have and the Alltrails map seem to match, the hike we actually did was different on those 2 trips.  No matter, I don't seem to have documented the earlier trip. We started off going steeply uphill past a privately owned but publicly usable camping shelter and outhouse.  Shortly after the hill topped out we came to the North junction of the Finger Lakes Trail and the blue trail that pairs up with the FLT

Our Thursday trip to Gaylord was kind of long but it went well.  The reason we decided to stay in that part of the state was to be near Hartwick Pines State Park .  More on that later.  Compared to the other areas we stayed in, this was more sparsely populated and the actual town of Waters where we stayed wasn't much of a town at all.  We ate a light dinner across the highway from our lodging at the Waters Inn .  The Waters Inn is pretty basic.  A strip of about 8 rooms all in one building.  Our room was pretty minimal in size and furnishings, the floor boards squeaked and the shower was minuscule.  So we didn't spend a lot of time lounging around in our room.  We did go on a short hike called the Pine Barron trail which was close to our motel.     We had a light dinner at the bar directly across the highway from our room. It was an interesting chance to people watch although it wasn't really that different than a similarly rural bar we might see here in New York. I imagine