Heavily laden but in good repair, we follow the blazed sidewalk out of Watkins Glen, through a handy lakeside park (restrooms, trash cans, and outlets! A hiker's dream! Also the lake is nice.) and up the smaller, less-famous gorge on the east side of town. Not even sure what it's called. Fun, though. Our waiter from last night had advised us to look for the remains of an old fort up here, but we can't spot it.
A bit of road walk on Jolly Road and Middle Road. Jolly Road is as good as it sounds, full of treasure! Deb found $15 and I found a small bottle of Grey Goose vodka.
Who's luckier, really? (Can't just go by weight and price because in these parts vodka is much scarcer than cash ... sadly, that is a glass bottle though.)
Middle Road is a quiet dirt path with a great view of the lake (our last, as is turns out.)
In the distance, the Watkins Glen harbor with its wine and boats. Looks like there's a construction project happening up here, though, maybe the big lakeside condo development we saw advertised in a downtown window last night? I worry for the FLT. Technically this stretch of trail is already a road walk, but it's going to be a lot less pleasant once hikers have to start dodging vehicular traffic. Hopefully the condo board will do the right thing and route the trail along the penthouse terraces, with frequent restrooms and trash cans, maybe a snack bar?
We follow Hector Falls Creek up to the surprise village of Burdett. Somehow my research had failed to reveal this place, but it's real, right on the trail, and there's even a delicious cafe open for lunch (Berta's) as well a couple of bars that open later. No stores though.
We return to semi-wilderness in the Finger Lakes National Forest. Much of this land was once vineyards, and few surviving grapes still greet us along the way.
Toward evening we encounter a gang of Hobart students (from Geneva, at the far north end of Seneca Lake) attempting to harvest salamanders .. for science? Luckily for the salamanders they seem pretty complacent.
Nonetheless we don't really relish the idea of camping alongside these huntresses, so Deb throws up a quick wall:
"Good fences make good neighbors." It's hard not to think about Robert Frost sometimes, what with all the walls and birches and forks in the road.
We're really not sure what the camping regulations are here in the National Forest, so we're just going to assume they're the same as the state forests and camp anywhere we like, on our side of the wall. Maybe we're a little complacent too.
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