Day 43 (Sept 25)

Noisy hoots from an owl very close by, right at dawn. I guess that's our alarm clock. Let's do it.

Rough and washed out trail as we finish up Tuller Hill State Forest and wiggle down to civilization. A nice museum of rusty contraptions:

With heavy hearts we sign into the very last trail register:

And minutes later we're down on the road. Technically we're still on the Finger Lakes Trail for the next 3.6 miles, because it takes a very major detour north towards Cortland in order to get to a bridge across the Tioughnioga River. (That river doesn't actually look too deep. A few nicely placed boulders and I bet we could hop it.)

Along the way, this imposing totem to property rights:

This is elaborate but not atypical. In Canada I think I could count the number of "No Trespassing" signs on two fingers, but pretty much all the private land in New York State is posted. It's generally just the boilerplate "No hunting/fishing/trespassing for any purpose, violators will be prosecuted" but pictures of firearms accompanied by "We don't call 911" (or the slightly gentler "Protected by Smith & Wesson, THEN we call 911") are prevalent. Even many property owners who actually allow the FLT through will still have the POSTED spiel, right on the blazed trail. I wouldn't want to deny landowners the joy of hanging signs around, but perhaps they could be a little more lenient with their prohibitions. I'm imagining some sort of customizable set of rules akin to the Creative Commons licenses: 

"Private property,

No hunting / Hunting by permission only

Trespassing permitted / Trespassers must remain on trail

No camping  / Camping for 2 days max / No fires

No dogs / dogs on leash only," etc, all with cute little intuitive graphics. Well, a fella can dream.

We ruminate on these dreams as we walk, and with little warning, we arrive at the city limits of Cortland:

In the near distance, you can see where the sidewalk ends -- or for us, begins. Here are some sights from our tour of Cortland:

At what point does a hike really end? I think for us, at the Green Arch. We're lucky enough to get a table here for dinner -- what a fantastic place. It's like an Italian version of Peter Luger, with pork chops instead of porterhouses and old fashioneds instead of martinis. After a meal like this, there's no denying that we're no longer in trail mode.

Tonight, a soothing stay at the Cortland Hampton Inn. We chose this town because it has bus service to New York City, so tomorrow we'll hop the Greyhound and see just how unfit for city living we've grown. Fingers crossed. Thanks for sharing our journey! I'll post some coda and statistics soon.