Hike #8

The Glen : 8/12 It is a lovely day, but our hiking time was short. My car was in the shop all morning and we are hosting our Quaker monthly meeting/potluck here tonight. We decided to take a quick hike at the IBM Glen. This is a weird park. It was IBM property and was donated to a local nature center. Some of the trails are actually old roads on part of the IBM campus. They were paved but are now broken and reverting to a natural area. The result is a sort of post-apocalyptic feel. Cracked, heaved roads. IBM signs rusted and half covered with growth. Guardrails covered with moss and speed limit signs near roads that you can barely tell were once paved.

It's also got some regular trails including a bit that goes down into a very nice glen with a creek and and old growth forest of mainly hemlock, maple and oak. Pretty, quiet and fun to walk. Much of the 200 acre park has been a favorite nature area for decades.

From the parking area we took the red trail to the blue trail back up and around to the yellow "switchback" trail down into the glen. We continued to follow the yellow trail all the way back to the parking area. Which means we walked just about all the trails in the park. About 3 miles.

We are looking forward to the day when we are free, have a working car and the weather is nice. We'd like to venture a bit farther from home and go on some longer hikes. There are no mountains close to home or even gorges like in the finger lakes. We've got some pretty forest trails but they are all pretty short.