2015-06-07 42 -78

Location

Allegany State Park, by Quaker Lake

Participants

Pedalpusher (talk)
Simon the dog
Myka the dog

Expedition

After working on the house in the morning, I loaded up the dogs in the car and we were off to Allegany right at 14:00. I saw the gas gauge was looking pretty low, but I knew I could make it to Salamanca where I could get cheaper gas. Car filled up, we parked in the lot by the tip of Quaker lake.

It was a hot and sunny day so after we crossed the bridge over the dam, the dogs played in the lake for a bit to cool off. Next, we walked along the road heading into the park, looking for a good place to cross the road and go into the woods. The land next to the road where we wanted to go was very steep. We found a spot where a creek came down the hill and made a shallower angle of accent and headed up there. The hillside was a bit steep but very lovely with a massive carpet of green grasses and ferns.

Getting to the top of the hill, we needed to head north, but it was VERY thick at the top of the hill. So we walked a bit lower in the woods where it was more open until we got close to the hash. Working our way back into the thick brush, we got as close as we could but I didn't get a great reading even walking all over the area. While I was doing the GPS dance, I saw a huge toad that had beaten me to the hash, who I will call Tony the Toad. This area clearly is full of small Velociraptors too, as my legs were quite scrapped up by the time I got to the hash, but I never got a glimpse of any of them.

I eventually got the GPS down to under 20 feet and figured I wasn't going to do any better so I got my pictures. We then wandered around in the woods along the top of the hill for a bit. I turned around when I realized (the painful way) that we had walked into a large patch of Stinging Nettles. It looked like they continued all over in the direction we were walking so I decided to turn back for the lake. The dogs were pretty hot anyway from running up and down hill this whole time, so they could use a cool off again.

After getting back to the lake and another swim, we headed for home and dinner.

Photos

We first stopped to play in the water.
Hiking up the hill to the hash was quite nice.
Made it close.
Accuracy.
Tony beat me to the hash.
I made it.
Myka checking out the hash.
View of the hash area. Trying to do the GPS dance in there was difficult.
After the hash, we continued to hike in the woods. Most of the whole area looked like this.
On the way back, Simon found a creek and pretended to be an alligator.