Road Trips and Hike Reports

The weather today wasn't terrible.  Mild temperatures and, at least this morning, dry.  But it's been REALLY wet here the last week with lots of swollen streams and standing water in fields.  So I thought this was the perfect day for the kind of 'hike' we would normally avoid, the all-paved trails hike.  This State Historic park is about 1/3 the way between our house and Ithaca and we've driven by it many times but it's pretty flat and other than being on the shore of Lake Seneca doesn't have a lot of obvious appeal. The park turns out to be over 2000 acres and part of the site of a former military base, Samspon Air Force Base .  Walking around the park was very strange because there are DOZENS of miles of old roads paved going all over in a fairly tight grid pattern and a few roads that go at odd angles.  Most of the roads are not blocked off exactly but are in marginal condition.  And there is almost NOTHING standing along almost all the roads.  It's l

Blue Marsh is an 1100 acre lake in a 6000 acre piece of property managed by the Army Corps.  The Alltrails hike listing we used for this hike was only 4.1 miles long.  Since we weren't successful at hiking on Sunday (very high winds made driving let along walking difficult) we wanted to make a good showing to ourselves for this hike.  Instead of going just in and back on the same exact trail both ways we made a little balloon at the end of the original suggested hike and walked farther inland from the lake around some large fields then eventually back to return on the same trail we came in about half way back to the car. The most surprising thing about this hike was that it was peaceful, quiet and very isolated feeling. Why is this surprising? Because the trailhead (such as it is) is just a wide shoulder on the side of a truly horrendous stretch of PA-183 which runs between Reading PA and I-78.  I'm guessing this NW/SE running road is used as a shortcut of sorts for traffic n

This was a hike on the way to our long weekend in Grantsville PA (near Hershey).  Conditions weren’t great since it was above freezing but had snowed.  We drove up the snowy sloppy dirt road until it started to seem sketchy which was just a little short of the trailhead anyway.  Turns out we could have driven the last little bit for sure but it looked intimidating and better safe than sorry.  The very beginning of the trail was REALLY wet, like a mini swamp.  Brian’s hiking boots are meshy and open and he started his hike with wet feet.  The trail did get better but there were other wet spots also.  Considering the conditions we did well to get any hike in at all.

This was our snowiest hike of the 2023/2024 winter season which hasn't been very wintery overall so far.  It was just cold enough to have 'useful' not wet snow to walk on and since it had just fallen the night before we were breaking trail the entire way, not that it was very deep.  Towards the start of our walk, an absolutely epic flock of geese took off noisily from the semi-frozen wetland near us.  There were probably 80 or more geese in the flock and they seemed to go on forever as they flew out slowly over the trees that were between us and them.  As they continued we could see the start of the gradual organization into the traditional V shape formation they use for their long flights.  It was a pretty cool sighting but it didn't occur to either of us to try and photograph it. I was surprised to find out (just now as I went to blog this) that this a state 'Wildlife Management Area' not a National Wildlife Refuge.  There wasn't much for signage or facili