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After five long days of driving, a weekend of out of the car, some fresh air, and slowing down the pace was much needed!
We spent the weekend camping at Balsam Pond Campground southeast of Syracuse, New York. Rolling mountain views and miles of gravel road surrounded us as we drove to the campgrounds. It’s important to have the directions already programmed into your GPS since signal is very spotty as you get into the mountains. Freecampsites.net is a highly recommended source to find campsites like this one. We got there on a Friday night and a handful of the sites were already taken. There were roughly 15-20 campsites. We were able to get a campsite that was further down the road from the lake making it a less-trafficked area which is ideal for us with Daisy.
The majority of people using the campsite over the weekend were likely locals (we could tell by their New York license plates). It’s a hot spot for fishing as well. We also learned through conversation with a neighbor camper that it was a bass fishing competition over the weekend which explained why it was so busy with boat traffic coming in and out as early at 6 AM Saturday morning.
Sarah was able to sleep in Saturday morning while Andy did some work from the “office”. Sipping coffee made with our Aero Press, dog in close proximity, and breathing in fresh air – what more could you ask for in a workspace?!
We wanted to hike the area on Saturday and luckily there was a forest ranger checking in on the campgrounds Saturday morning. He was able to suggest Finger Lakes Trail to us and let us snap photos of his trail map. Compared to the other campers with their RV’s, screen tents, 2 coolers, fishing boats, etc., it was apparent to the forest ranger that we were “backpack” campers with the minimal amount of stuff we had on-site. He suggested we camp at the lean-to shelter located on the Finger Lakes Trail. He said it would be a lot more secluded and hardly anyone goes back there. It was tempting since the campground we were at was busy and we had one boisterous neighbor site across from us. We decided it would be best to save our site since it was a busy Saturday and go check out the lean-to first.
The Finger Lakes Trail is about 580 miles spanning the state of New York. There is also a network of trails off the main Finger Lakes Trail that makeup about another 400 miles of trail. We were only out to do a loop for the day at the recommendation of a forest ranger. We weren’t quite sure what we were in for but were able to at least take a picture of the trail map so we had some guidance. The trailhead he directed us to was only about a 5-minute drive from our campsite. We decided to hike the loop counterclockwise so we would end at the lean-to shelter which was about 300 yards from the trailhead.
The trail was beautiful and hardly touched it seemed. There were still a bunch of leaves covering the trail from last fall and grasses wanting to overtake the trail. It turned into a peaceful but long hike. We ended up hiking 10 miles and not completing the loop. We came to a road that we had to walk down for about 50 feet then cross to pick the trail up again. The map appeared to show that this was the main trail again and Andy feared we were going to stray from the loop we were supposed to follow. We turned back to see if we had missed the intersection of the loop and main trail. After some back and forth we couldn’t find any other trail, so we decided to just hike back to the car the way we came.
Once we were back at the car, we took the trail towards the lean-to. It was an amazing shelter! There was some precut firewood near the trail, a picnic table, a rocking chair, some cooking utensils, and more. We were definitely impressed by this shelter. It was the nicest one we have ever seen on a trail. We decided though that we didn’t want to move all of our stuff and backpack it in for the night. We were already set up at the campsite and were hungry for some dinner. We were also able to pull out our gear from the car, clean and organize our “home” better at the campsite.
After 2 nights of sleeping in our tent with fresh air flow, all 3 of us felt rejuvenated. We hit the road heading east again. The next stop is Vermont!
Peace, love, and hike thru life!