2020-01-25 42 -78

Location

Allegany State Park, just off ASP1

Participants

Pedalpusher
Simon the dog
Myka the dog

Expedition

Much like any weekend, I was considering where to take the dogs out for a hike and with this hash landing (again) just off ASP 1 in Allegany, I thought it would be interesting to hike the road another time since I would have an additional purpose of an Official Saturday Meetup. These hashes seem to really like the tops of the mountains.

I half considered going somewhere else since we were now pretty deep in the Dark Ages, and I was losing hope of the Wiki coming back online, but the weather was great this weekend for a winter hike (just above freezing). Additionally, they close this road in the winter for a Snowmobile trail between the two main sections of the Park, but with so little snow out there, I knew there wouldn't be any machines rev-ing and whining by. I decided that I should go, because if the Wiki ever did come back, I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on a great hike and an easy +1 to the Official Saturday Meetup.

I think I recall cleaning up the house in the morning and leaving for Allegany a little later than I wanted to, but we got to the Red House Camp Store a bit after 14:00 and was surprised to see I would have some company on the initial part of the hike. An older couple was just getting out of their car with their dog as I was pulling into the parking lot. They got a head start walking up the road while I got my dogs ready and because they had their dog on the leash, mine would have to suffer for a bit until we caught up and got past them. They weren't walking much slower than I was so it took about 15 minutes or so to overtake them. I said Hi and we moseyed on by. They didn't look like Geohashers, but I figured I would see them at the top if they were. Getting far enough ahead of them, I let Simon and Myka off the leashes and they blasted ahead, happy to be free.

We continued up to the top of the Mountain and found our way to the hash. Getting as close as we could on the road, I found a spot to get through the thicker brush along the side of the road and wandered over to the Hash Area. With a small GPS Dance I got a good reading, took some pictures and made our way back to the road. We were still about 45 minutes too early for an Official Meetup, but I figured I'd be right on time on the way back down. Being almost-but-not-quite at the top, we continued our trek uphill. I also wanted to visit an Ingress portal way back in the woods to secure a long lasting Enlightened Portal and grab a couple extra Keys in case I ever have an opportunity to link to it later (there's a ton of giant blue fields in Western New York).

On the way back to the car, I didn't revisit the Hash, but walked by almost right at 16:00. With it just about 30 meters from the road, I could clearly see it and was close enough for a Meetup if anyone was actually visiting for an Official Meetup. In that spirit, (and since I'm the only active Hasher in the Buffalo Graticule) I'm going to call this expedition an Official Saturday Meetup. ~~which upgrades my ribbon to the next tier and ever so slightly more color!~~ On 2020-03-07, I was going through old pics on my phone and found two expeditions I never wrote a report for or even marked on my page. One of them was an Official Saturday Meetup so the count here is actually 21.

Turns out that other couple were just walking up to the Bridal Falls trailhead and then turned back around after walking down that trail. I never saw them again after passing them, but I could see their footprints in the snow.

Happily (but almost sure no one would get to read about this), we headed for home, where I had homemade (both) pizza and beer for dinner.