Road Trips and Hike Reports

We headed out from the apartment about 9 am after loading the car up and saying goodbye to the cat.  Our first flight doesn't leave (from Buffalo) until almost 4 pm so we had a lot of time to kill.  Breakfast was a bagel at Bruegger's and then we headed west on US-20.  As planned, we stopped at Como Lake Park , an enormous Erie county park that we visited once before.  It was nice getting a good leg stretcher in with warm dry weather.  We are both wearing jeans today so we're thankful it was just in the 70's when we walked. From Como Lake Park to the airport was only a 20 minute trip and we were picked up by the parking shuttle driver immediately so didn't have any hanging out time.  I forgot to grab my normal driving glasses but my prescription hiking sunglasses should work for driving and I do have my reading glasses with me also.   Getting through check-in, baggage and security was all very fast with no line to speak of.  We ate in the air...

Today we headed out uncertain of what to do with our day.  I'm getting over a chest cold I think I got from somebody at work.  Brian caught what I have and isn't as close to being over it as I think I am.  We don't feel awful but not great either.  After pouring over the saved hikes in Alltrails I decided to look at a road atlas and see if there was any substantial piece of road I could get to that would be new to me.   I identified a triangle from about Pulaski to Verona NY (along NY-13) and then NY-49 along the top of Oneida Lake which I had not marked as having been on and most of it was also designated scenic route.  So that's what we did today. The park in Camden was a surprise discovery.  It's not a place we'd heard of our seen before but it's a really nice deeply forested piece of land right in Camden.  Camden isn't very big or well known but it's a real town not a 1 stop sign nothing. The park is apparently 117 acres so it's not huge ...

The longer we live in one spot, the harder it is to find places to go that we haven't been to before that aren't crazy far from home.  Somehow this place escaped our attention until now but it was a really good find.  The trail network had a lot of junctions and possibilities to extend or shorten the plot we were following from Alltrails.  There was a very small shelter at one point along the trail and we only saw a few people.  

We'd been to this surprisingly large city park once before but I think we took a different and longer route this time.  Summer's grip has finally released in our area and it was great to have a really substantial long walk without being totally worn out from heat or humidity. This park is really exceptional.  Despite being minutes from the 104 expressway and just minutes from all kinds of big box stores and other suburban stuff, it is quiet and natural feeling.  We started walking through the tall grass, almost Savannah-like fields.  After circling the large field there was a very quick and dramatic scenery change from open field to very woodsy.  Most of the hike was woodsy and partially shaded.  While there weren't any really big hills, there were lots of modest ups and downs that dded up over the course of the 7 mile long walk. It was a really good day.  

This hike was from a different starting point than another hike we did previously, the Erie-Attica  trail but it connected back to the far point of that trail.  I didn't have a published guide for finding this starting point but I looked closely at Alltrails maps and it looked like there was a trailhead for something labeled 'Genessee Valley Greenway State Park' which I think, technically, is the entire 90 mile trail but I wasn't sure if maybe there was a special facility at the spot Alltrails shows... I  In hindsight I don't think there is anything special where that map marking is but it was still a rewarding adventure.  There was a small parking area along W River road.  From there we headed south along the trail.  A lot of it was very typical generic greenway stuff..     But later it got a lot more interesting with 2 good sized bridges. One of them was fascinating because the level we walked on (which is level with the trailbed) was actually t...

This was a quick leg stretcher on a very hot day.  I think we were on our way to something else but found an hour to get in a walk.  The Sterling Nature Center is right along Lake Ontario and has a nice remote feeling despite being fairly easy to get to if you happen to be heading East/West along NY-104 which runs across the southern short of Lake Ontario.