Road Trips and Hike Reports

This hike was a rare return to the 50 Hikes in Central NY book.  It's an old book and we often have some challenges following the directions to the trailhead and today wasn't an exception to that rule.  We did eventually find the starting point along a narrow dirt road.  Finding an unobtrusive place to park the car that wouldn't be in the way of the road and not in mud took a few minutes.  When we got out of the car we realized that the hiking boot bag only had my boots in it.  When I picked mine out I didn't think to grab Brian's and apparently he didn't either so Brian did the hike in his street shoes. There wasn't really much to see during the first mile or so. It was just a series of trail blazes leading through a scrubby, maybe harvested a few years ago, forest.  There were quite a few wet spots and puddles but thankfully after the first mile there were almost no wet spots the entire rest of the way.  The scenery also improved with some narrower b...

We previously visited this very beautiful county park last year.  Fall color is still pretty strong here right now but the leaves are dropping fast.  We finally had 2 days with substantial rain Thursday and Friday so everything was wet but that also meant the creeks and falls had a useful amount of water in them now. We actually did 2 separate trails here, the North Rim Trail and the West Branch trail.  The North Rim was very hard to navigate because this park insists on using little colored trail blazes at junctions.  Unlike East Coast standard blazes which tell you (from the color) which trail you are following and (from the arrangement of the 3 blazes in the color you are looking for) which direction to turn and where the trail ends, these little markers just vaguely reassured you that you were on the right trail but not very directly which was to turn.  Many times we walked up to the marker from the back side (just seeing a stick in the ground) and had to in...

 Sometimes hikes that start out seemingly like sad compromises end up being great.  Since we came all the way home (albeit very late) Sunday night, we both had Monday off. Though I was not full of energy after the late night drive home, my first inclination was to find a 'normal' nature trail sort of hike.  Brian wanted something with a good distance but didn't want to need to weak hiking boots.  After some Alltrails scouring I found this trail loop but thought it was largely a repeat hike of the Trolley Trail we had hiked in the past which runs behind NY-31 in the rail bed of a former interurban train.  This turned out to be mostly NOT that same trail and it was a lot more interesting than I expected.   This loop starts at a parking lot near a popular restaurant rich piece of the Erie canal.  As you head west along the canal it quickly gets quieter.  It then heads North through a long and narrow easement used for some small power lines.  It ...

We were on our way to Vermont to celebrate Brian's parents birthdays and anniversary.  The Alltrails hike I downloaded was a longer out and back on the Escarpment trail which runs along the dramatic cliff edges that make up most of the trail network at Thacher State Park.  This is one of NY State's best state parks to visit in the fall and being a weekday there were very few people visiting when we were there. Part way along the Escarpment trail I saw the sign for Indian Ladder and an impressive set of stairs leading down the cliff from the edge where we were.  The stairs (which replaced the trail's namesake ladder) didn't lead all the way to the bottom of the valley but did go down to a shelf that exists 60 or so feet down the cliff edge.  In several spots there are waterfalls that trickle (or gush) off the escarpment edge.  More mysteriously to me, there are also places where reasonable amounts of water come flowing out from UNDER the escarpment.  I don't...

Through a series of family events we ended up being offered some credit at HTR resorts Niagara that the family from North Carolina wasn’t able to use as they had planned.  We looked over our calendar and chose this weekend to check it out. We drove to Niagara after work Friday night and it was an easy trip thanks to some Google Maps offering some clever alternatives to the very busy I-90 and US-20 obvious routes.  It was a pretty good drive. HTR resorts gets a passing grade from us for sure.  The grounds are meticulously clean, the bathrooms are really clean and well equipped and there are a ton of activities from bonfires to zip-lines, all of which are, I think, included in the stay price.  Which is good because this was, by about 2x, the most expensive Yurt we’ve ever stayed in.  I think our total for 2 nights was over 360 dollars, some of which was gifted to us but some we paid ourselves.  Being a nice fall weekend, there were a ton of families with chi...