Saturday May 27th - Various Stiglmeir Park Trails - Stiglmeir Park in Cheektowaga NY - 3.7 miles - Less than 100 feet of elevation gain

This super suburban hike exceeded my expectations in so many ways.  It's at a park I've heard of but had never been to and at 3.7 miles, not a hike we would normally leave our house and drive almost to Buffalo for.  Since the plan for this weekend was to spend 2 nights in Buffalo this worked out well.  Brian worked until almost 3 pm Saturday so by the time we got to the park it was after 5 pm which gave us plenty of daylight for this walk.

A lot of things were surprising about this park and the trails.  The park is absolutely enormous with over a dozen numbered day-use areas.  Picnic areas, horseshoe pits, baseball diamonds, other sports fields.  On this gorgeous Saturday afternoon on a holiday weekend, there were a few hundred people at the park and yet most of the parking lots were only 1/3 or less full. It's just an immense place that is almost certainly overbuilt for 99% of the year.  The trail network was extensive with lots of junctions and options and TONS of boardwalks and bridges and other structures.  Much of the trails went over seasonally wet areas. We didn't bother putting on our hiking shoes for this walk and it turned out to be fine because there was almost no climbing to do and any area that might possibly have been prone to being wet had a boardwalk built on it.  I'm showing just a few of them in the pictures, there were so many it would be ridiculous to photograph them all. 

Another surprise for this hike was how few people we saw on the trails.  The vast majority of the people in the park were using the developed picnic areas for BBQ's and frisbee and whatnot. We saw maybe 5 other couples out on the trails which meant we were mostly alone except for the nearly constant wildlife.  We saw many kinds of birds including Cardinals (a favorite of mine), red winged blackbirds, robins and at least 2 colorful woodpeckers.  We also spotted 2 deer and a lot of chipmunks.  To top it all off the hike was an interesting layout of 2 intersecting loops so there was no repeated trail on any of it.  Certainly a repeat worthy park when we are in the area again.




















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