Road Trips and Hike Reports

We were concerned that there would be unrelenting rain almost our entire trip through the South but thankfully the predicted rain did not materialize on Saturday or even really on Sunday.  So Brian and I headed out with about 6 other family members for a steep but wide trail up the Tower Trail at Crowder's Mountain .  Despite a slow process leaving the house then the two cars ending up at different parts of the park etc, we actually had a reasonably brisk walk up the trail and its ~750 feet of elevation gain.  While the distance was shorter than a lot of hikes we do, the elevation gain, modest though it may sound, was plenty for our winter and flat lander impacted bodies.  Plus it was the perfect warm up for what we hope will be a hike filled road trip. The scenery along the hike was enjoyable and there were some views but it was more a nice family experience than an amazing photo destination so I'll just post one photo Brian took. After the hike we made a sto...

Despite the painfully hard to ignore coronavirus situation, we decided to not disrupt our long scheduled and once delayed already road trip.  Originally we were going to have a mini road trip in Texas as we attended a family wedding but the amount of road trip we could really accomplish would have been very minimal on that trip so we decided to defer until Spring. We worked half days on Friday and then got in the car around 1 pm.  The first night's goal was Richmond VA.  The drive down was mostly relaxing, especially NY-64 and other very quiet state roads we took through NY.  Through PA we took US-15 all the way through the state but the first 60 miles of US-15 in PA are 'future I-99' and even the rest of US-15 in PA is pretty well improved, especially south of Harrisburg so there wasn't as much 45 MPH dawdling as one might think.  Maryland also treats US-15 as a near freeway.  Unfortunately, Virginia does not and it became very slow and tedious.  We...

The Ontario Pathways consist of a network of 2 rails to trails projects that intersect and are managed together.  We actually visited this same trailhead near where the pathway crosses US-20 and NY-5 (those 2 roads are 1 physical road in that area) but this was a longer walk than the first time.  The weather was calm and mild and like the day before, the temperatures were just cold enough to keep everything dry.  The pathway gets differing amounts of traffics in different spots but overall, the most well packed part of this walk was less traveled than most of the waterfall hike from the day before.  Especially as we headed farther North from the starting point, the trail got less and less well trampled which added somewhat to the exercise factor. The trail mostly follows a beautiful creek or river.  I'm not sure what the name of the waterway was but it's more a background feature than a roaring river.  Also, the trail is on enough of an embankment that y...

Its been a little lacking in terms of 'real' hikes lately but we finally got out for a good one on this 3 day post Valentines day weekend.  This hike came recommended to us by our friends Scott and Tom over a really nice dinner out with them at The Cub Room in Rochester Saturday. The plan for the day was to get in a good walk or hike if possible and then explore Ithaca in the afternoon.  The state park is only a few miles from Ithaca.  The drive down NY-96 was quiet and relaxing as it almost always is. We used the 50 Hikes In Central New York book to find this hike which was great because as we hiked from the off the beaten path trailhead we started at we went by the 'obvious' hike starting spot for the vast majority of people that just walk along the bottom of the gorge and both the parking and the gorge itself were way too busy for our tastes. Our loop started at the top of the bluff, went 1.5 miles along the North Rim of the canyon including going down to river...

What a stunner this was.  It was completely spontaneous, we were in town for some mundane reason that escapes me right now and decided it would be nice to try for a walk.  I pulled out the phone and used AllTrails and tried to find something that might be mostly paved or cleared of snow.  This was mostly paved but not really cleared on snow but I'm pretty sure neither of us cared once we got into it because these cemetery grounds are aaamazing.  Wonderful sculpted grounds that went up and down over and over (gently) with numerous beautiful vantage points to look up, down or across the land.  It was both the largest and the most lovingly plotted out cemetery I'd ever been to.

This hike came from the 50 Hikes in Western New York book.  It was a lovely hour long drive from home.  The hike was quoted at 5 miles but a combination of overshooting when looking for 'the third pond' and then failing to find a clear path on the other side of one of the other two ponds (so we used the alternate directions) added considerably to this hike. It was very enjoyable especially considering it was cold out.

This was a funny little walk. We were trying to follow directions from a book and we thought we were on track until we got to the top of the hill and saw the buildings near the reservoir which the book said is where we should have parked.  We were parked at the bottom of the hill but I actually used the GPS coordinates from the book to get to the trailhead.  No matter because this wasn't the type of hike where you could easily get lost.