Hello Hikers!
Thursday July 14
Ellis Hollow Nature Pr4eserve
There were a couple of strikes against this walk going into it:
- I had to push it off from a nice day to the next day, when it was supposed to storm, so I could have an emergency eye exam (which turned out OK)
- We had a report that a hiker had been here a few weeks earlier and found it hideously infested with flies, almost as bad as the Adirondacks in black fly season
- It was 81 and steamy when we shaped up at the trail head
I always try to stay optimistic when we set off on a hike — but as soon as we got into the shrubbery just beyond the cars I was mobbed by flies all over my head — thankfully they backed off when I got my hat on, and they weren’t bad from then on. Shampoo?
This is a very shady walk and it was bearable under the trees — though it’s possible to bail out of this walk after an hour, and half the group chose to quit and go home then.
Tiger and I walked on with the remaining hikers — a few minutes after we left for home it started to rain somewhat hard.
Official head count: 11H, one D
Saturday July 16
Roy H Park Preserve into Hammond Hill SF, Dryden
Lovely morning, great hike
Official head count: 24H, seven D
Sunday July 17
Shindagin Hollow SF, FLT to the lean-to and beyond
Another delightful morning, nice temps, still damp in the woods after the rain overnight
This trail is one of the 3-4 darkest and shadiest we do — only a few brief spots where any light penetrates, and that’s often very harsh — great on a sunny summer day when you want to stay cool, but very poor for photos
A lot of this trail is full of roots and snags and small flat rocks, and everything was a little slick from the rain — one hiker reported he slipped or tripped, couldn’t catch himself and fell flat on his face
This is one of the main arguments for using hiking sticks — I use two and there’s not a hike where I don’t trip at least once and then save myself from crashing down thanks to the sticks.
For the second Sunday in a row, we had children with us — this trail isn’t conducive to running back and forth or fooling around the way last week’s was, the children were younger than last week’s rambunctious kids, there was only two of them, and they were a little more serious — the 10-year-old boy had visited the Cornell synchrotron and then met with two physics professors his grandad knows — he wants to be a particle physicist — this is how successful scientists get started, I think ….
Still only 70 when we got back to the cars — very nice!
Official head count: 27H, six D — including a mother-son pair — not clear if they know they’re related, and there’s a little bit of disconnect in their interactions.