Sunday February 24th 2024 - Conservation Trail at Allegany State Park - Near Salamanca NY - 5.4 miles, 837 feet elevation gain

What a wonderful winter day.  After initially thinking we would go to Rock State State Forest it occurred to me that this was a fine day to finally do a hike at Allegany state park, someplace we've never hiked before.  With temps not getting past 20 degrees, I knew it would be VERY quiet at the park.  It also turned out to be exceptionally quiet on the roads both ways which was fine with me.

This balloon hike follows part of the Conservation trail which is built and maintained by the Foothills Trail Club which I was a member of and need to renew with.  It headed up some stairs across the parking lot from the Admin building for the park and quickly and fairly consistently gained most of the uphill climb in the first half mile.  This trail was said to be built to connect from the Finger Lakes Trail (which the far side of the balloon loop does indeed connect with) to the more developed section of the very large Allegany State Park.  There isn't any particularly notable scenery payoff such as a waterfall or a cliff or anything.  It's just a beautiful minimally developed path through some hilly terrain.  The loop at the end does go around a large knob or prominent point but it doesn't really pay off in any big views.  I loved the sign at the function with the Finger Lakes Trail... Pennsylvania this way, the Catskills the other way.  For those without geographic reference, Pennsylvania, while relatively close from this part of NY is a different state and the Catskills are over 250 miles from Allegany state park.  But you can do them both on several connected trails.

We were delighted with the entire experience.  After the hike we had a good lunch at the state park restaurant.  Despite being nearly 2 pm and them opening at 11 am, we were the first table of the day.  Like I said, it was REAL quiet everywhere we went yesterday!



















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