Road Trips and Hike Reports

We're moving soon to New Hampshire.  There might be more details in upcoming posts but it understandably makes us want to revisit a few favorites here in central and western NY while we still can. This county park is very impressive.  It's very large, has a large campground, a cross country skiing warming hut and an extensive ski trail network which doubles as a hiking network the rest of the year.  There is a main, blazed trail loop which is just called Sprague Brook Trail.  We followed quite a bit of that main trail again on this trip but we shaved off some little fingers that would have made the hike more circuitous and longer. Still, we walked 6.5 miles which was great.  The fall colors were enjoyable and I forgot how much of the trail was along the edges of ravines and other big drop offs.  It reminded me why this is a favorite place to repeat.  For whatever reason this hike took a lot out of both of us.  We really enjoyed our early dinner an...

As members and supporters of the Finger Lakes Trail Conference, we get their magazine covering trail projects, stories about through hikers and members who have made substantial time and effort commitments to the organization.  The last issue we got talked about a new piece of trail that connects Kinsella park (a city park in Corning NY) to an existing part of the Crystal Hills Trail.  The CHT is about 45 miles long and, based on my minimal research, connects from the PA state line to a junction with the Finger Lakes Trail in NY.   It is also part of the ' Great Eastern Trail ' which is a developing long-distance trail network that spans the Eastern US from North to South. The article was really about the news of the little connector trail between the city park and the existing CHT segment and also that a piece of the CHT now goes through Corning Glass lands which eliminates what used to be a road walk.  It wasn't a how-to or even a why-to on using the new trail...

This entry isn't  really  about the trail.  We went to Kinzua Bridge State Park finally in PA.  It's some place I've been aware of since at least the time we moved to PA but just never made it to it.  This was the location of a very tall railroad trestle that crossed a creek and a small valley.  It was an impressive and old structure that very few people paid any attention to until it fell down during a storm in 2003.  The rail line it was on was abandoned and rather than demolish what was left of the bridge, it was made into a mix of man made and natural spectacle in the form of a state park. It's hard to appreciate from the photos how huge this bridge was and how high up you are when you walk to the stub end of what is left of it.  It's an impressive and imagination stirring view but a LOT of people would find walking on the bridge (which is made of boards with some gaps in them) nerve wracking.  There is a lovely modern visitor center/muse...