Day 46 (September 19, 2017)

Up early to a great breakfast of reconstituted potatoes seasoned with urfa pepper. Leave camp at 8:05 for some pleasant morning hiking. We spook a porcupine nosing around some tall pines and he makes an impressive getaway, scrambling straight up one of the trunks, disappearing in the needles high above.

Soon after we encounter some vandalized trail blazes, painted out with black paint. No sign of a re-route though, and the map says the trail's open -- a short section on private land closed during hunting season, but that's not for another 11 days so we should be in the clear. But eventually the blacked-out blazes lead us along an old woods road to a less ambiguous sign:

Here, presumably, the landowners have changed their minds about allowing the FLT through, and made their revisions in black paint and permanent marker. And they've done it very recently, since I got fresh copies of all the maps and newest trail info just weeks ago. And they couldn't wait a couple of weeks until the annual hunting season closure; they had to put a stop to it right away. This is sad. I wish for a more general embrace of the "right to roam" in New York State, in practice if not by law. This is evidence of a push in the opposite direction.

Also sad that the backtrack to the closest bypass is pretty far and leads to a significant amount of highway walking before rejoining the trail. Even locating the backtrack is hard, since the blazes in the opposite direction have also been painted out, a little more thoroughly even. After about a half hour it's obvious that we have left the trail, and failed to return. We've been following the wrong old woods road, and we're lost on a thick steep hillside with pockets of swampy mud. We're genuinely scared to try to find our way back to the trail closure lest we end up on the wrong side of it and further perturb a landowner who's clearly already irked at hikers.

Slightly panicked, we try our best to make a beeline for the nearest road, while skirting obvious private property. After an hour's bushwack and a knee-deep wade across the Trout Brook, we finally join up with an agricultural road that leads us back to NY highway 41, where we can pick up the trail's route. And nobody scolded us or shot at us. Phew.

After a short road walk we're in Taylor Valley State Forest. Signs here warn us of hazardous hiking due to an ongoing tree harvest, but it's actually serene and pleasant, though with occasional down trees and vehicle ruts. Getting pretty hot though. We'd planned to make camp here but are unable to find decent water, just mud and a frighteningly slimy pond. So we hike onward along the shady Cortland Two Road

and down toward the Cheningo Day Use Area, hoping for civilization to bless us with a garbage can. How precious it is to be able to dump even just three days of trash! No luck here through, just a pavilion with a couple picnic tables.

At least it's a good place for a quick rest in the shade. And there are a couple decent apple trees. But we decide to press on uphill to look for some nice water. And we found it!

A fast little creek, with a few gurgling cascades and pools deep enough to have a bit of a bath, great after a hot, tiring day. We need it too... today was supposed to be easy! Good camping is close by too, a really lucky spot.

Dinner is kale cornbread stuffing with beans and sausage -- perfection, but we're so tired and hungry that you'll have to take our word for it because there's no photo!