Exploring New Trails

 For the past two days we have been hiking new trails, so I guess you can say we have been seeing a new horizon! Yesterday we tried out the hiking trails in the Splitrock Wild Forest Preserve, along Lake Champlain, just north of Westport, NY. 

As you can see from the map, there are many different trails, and after reading about each, we originally thought that we would attempt the Calamity Trail (maybe a bad omen?😉) since it is supposed to go through an old rock quarry. The road access must have been unmarked because we couldn't find it, so it was best to leave that for another day after more research. Instead we decided to 'wing it' and head out on the main trail. Once again, fate was good to us and we found the trails to be in great shape and easy to handle, with gentle inclines and declines and rock formations on each side of the trail. 

"Gary's Elbow' Trail met up with the trail to the Snake Den look-out over the lake (luckily not a snake in sight). We ended up being up higher than we thought and sat on a rock at the edge of the cliff. To add to the ambiance and serenity of this spot, we heard a strange bird call, almost like a squealing, and looked up to see a pair of bald eagles flying next to each other, almost at our eye level. 

There was lots of converging of different trails, but thankfully they were very well marked. 

On the way back, we opted to take the Lewis Bay Clearing trail and came across the remains of an antique car that Dave thinks was from the 30's. There were rusty car parts strewn around and half buried, so I bet it would be a great place to do a little excavating to see what else could be unearthed. This is a forest preserve though, so that isn't possible.

This was a very nice 4 mile walk and on this day we were lucky not to encounter too many other hikers. So many of the trails in the Adirondacks are now overrun with people and our goal is to find the out of the way places that hopefully aren't popular. Of course the terrain has to be easy for us two old goats, so we have our work cut out for us. My next post is on today's hike and we weren't quite so lucky with avoiding people, but it all worked out well in the end. Stay tuned!