Road Trips and Hike Reports

We last visited this trail January 10th, 2021 .  Hard to believe it's been almost 4 years, it seemed pretty familiar.  One thing that was different this time is that the creek had a LOT of water in it.  The falls were really roaring and impressive.  Today was slightly warmer (or rather, less cold) than the past week but the trail was still firm and frozen.

This was more enjoyable than I expected it would be.  We walked up one long ridge and then made a little loop at the end of it before walking back along the bottom of the same hill.  It felt natural and forested even though it's really quite suburban.

This hike is actually very close to the one we did last weekend.  The Fair Haven State Park and Sterling Nature Center park are just a few miles apart by road.  We've gone to this park about 5 different times but this is the first time we went since the new visitors center opened.  It's a perfectly lovely building and I bought a T-shirt in support but there isn't really much in the building to see or do.  I was pretty surprised this is a Cayuga county park .  I assumed, based on the appearance and the general low-key nature of the park, that it was a private foundation or land trust that owned it. Now that the visitors center is open I was able to get their official little trail map .  While we have tried to explore some of the trails to the left side of the parking lot (if one is facing Lake Ontario), the majority of the trail network, especially the interconnected part, is to the right of the parking lot.  Normally we walk the Dogwood extended trail ...

Our motivation for hiking wasn't great on this day.  But I wanted to find a trail we hadn't done before and that wasn't crazy far away.  This state park on Lake Ontario worked out well. The winds were bracing but there was nobody around and the trails were fun to link together and explore on our own. My surly expression was actually me munching on trail mix!

We didn't have a ton of energy for hiking on this overcast day.  I also had an irritated patch of skin on my inner thigh so a vigorous hike wasn't at all appealing.  I ended up choosing to revisit this sculpture garden which I went to by myself several years ago.  Brian had never been. Not really much to report. There weren't a ton of people there.  Somebody who had ample time and visibility absolutely refused to yield to us in a well marked crosswalk crossing a wide 4 lane road with very little traffic.  I was very angry and threw my plastic cup at her SUV as she whipped by us very illegally.  I'm running into more dangerous and aggressive driving in the last few months.  I imagine people are very tense with elections etc but I find any confrontations while driving very upsetting and they tend to stick in my mind for days.  I'm very thankful I don't have to go into the office very often right now.

The weather forecast wasn't great for today.  But the rain started later in the day the farther East we looked. So I looked at trails that were East of us.  This area, about 85 miles SE of our house, was someplace we'd never been. When we arrived it was a very steep initial climb from the road up to the top of the ravine the road was in.  There was one other hefty climb in the first mile or 2 then a lot of ridge walking with less severe ups and downs.  In addition to being brutally steep at first going up the side of a hill, it then went sideways along a steep slope but lacked any sort of flat shelf for the trail so every step was uneven and challenging plus very rooty.  Thankfully, after the big initial climb which made up the stem of this balloon hike, conditions improved on the loop itself.  There was a good variety of environment from super deep crunchy fall leafy hardwood areas to pine needle covered pine tree areas.  There was also a fair amount ...

Just another chance to get a qualifying hike in after work.  Once time falls back an hour this will be nearly impossible for months.  Scenery and conditions were very good as was the tranquility on this Halloween afternoon.