Road Trips and Hike Reports

This hike was a repeat of the route we did on February 11th of this year.  We wanted a hike that had a good amount of exercise but not a really long drive since it was going to be almost 80 degrees today.  Also, I've had a stye on my right eye for a week and I'm trying to do warm compresses every few hours. The trail was in great condition. We saw a family at a lean to at the summit of the hill but we didn't see any other people on the trail itself  and even the area the car was parked was super serene.  We also had a nice deer sighting at the start of the hike in a field.  It's a repeat worthy section of the Finger Lakes Trail that isn't too far from home. Pictures by Brian.

We've been to Sprague Brook a few times, it is one of my favorite hiking spots in New York.  For a county park it's an astonishingly extensive destination with a good size campground, numerous picnic facilities, playgrounds AND an enormous trail network with plenty of wild feeling trails and some un-bridged stream crossings. The other times we've been here we always did the same 8+ mile loop and I assumed that loop was probably the only or most obvious long hike you could put together at this park.  I downloaded a Sprague Brook trail map from Alltrails and was surprised when this trail route was mostly different than the route we had done before.  I opted to shave a little bit off what would have been closer to 8 miles by taking a slightly less circumferential route than the one uploaded to Alltrails. It was actually a little rainy during most of our hike but the dense foliage kept us almost completely dry in spite of the rain.  There were lots of different landscapes along