Spanning Herkimer and Hamilton Counties, the Moose River Plains Wild Forest offers an array of activities, including camping, hiking, mountain biking, fishing, hunting, and canoeing. Free campsites are accessible from late May to December’s end. Winter highlights snowmobiling along the Limekiln Lake-Cedar River Road linking Inlet and Indian Lake. Must-visit spots encompass Cedar River Flow, Moose-spotting at Helldiver Pond, scenic Wakely Mountain with its firetower, as well as numerous smaller ponds and lesser-known trails. This diverse landscape caters to a range of outdoor pursuits, making it a year-round destination for nature enthusiasts and adventurers.
The revised North Country Trail will hopefully revitalize the largely abandoned trail to Sly Pond and provide really nice views off of Little Moose Mountain, per @CNYHiking.
Good Morning! Happy Monday. So we go around in the grand circle of things. Next weekend, I will be downstate for work, but the following I am planning to take a trip to somewhere. Moose Plains, or maybe Central NY with a one day jaunt down to Pennsylvania for a visit some of the parks in Endless Mountain Country. A lot depends on weather, and whether or not they already have snow at Moose Plains.
Election Day Next Week. I will probably drive or take a bus up to the Board of Elections and vote by absentee ballot, and get it done. Your supposed to be out of the county during election day if you vote by absentee ballot, but if I happen to be in the county, I can either go and vote on lever machine or risk my ballot getting tossed out if I get hauled into court to testify about my whereabouts. The absentee rules in NY State are kind of dumb – they should allow everybody to participate in early voting if they so choose, by absentee ballot.
Got Really Sick Last Week. It just was a really bad cold. But tell that to somebody who is feels as sick as dog. I slept most of Thursday and Friday, with a sore throat, aches, and dizziness. But so be it. Finally on Saturday, had enough energy to spend some of the day awake, working on some code, and then going down to the library to upload photos, and then finally, for my evening walk. At least it was just a cold, so once the virus let up, I didn’t have to go to doctor or spend money besides getting some soup and buying more nyquil, which will probably last most of the winter.
But A Nice Bright and Sunny Morning Today. It’s a Monday, and good to stay positive. To make sure I wouldn’t get hungry until mid-afternoon, I made a good breakfast up of hash browns from Empire Plaza farmers market potatoes, sweet peppers, and mushrooms, some crappy pre-cooked sausage, scrambled up a couple of eggs, and some cheese. Not to bad. Made the regular bus I normally catch with relative ease, and today the bus is a brand new Gillig Hybrid, a 4112H. Life is good.
Google Maps Added to the Blog. I have for some time been sharing Google Maps on the blog, but I never had a Google Maps of the Day feature. I built in hooks for the Google Maps of Day and full KML integration into the blog. There is still some minor bugs in the code, but I hope to post some many new and interesting maps over the cmoing months.
One of my favorite campsites up at Moose Plains is Campsite Number 56. Located in the “Plains”, it is surrounded by dense vegetation, and entirely screened from road via dense brush on each side. Unlike being in the woods, however, it is a largely open canopy, home to many grassland birds and with excellent views of the stars above.
I can set up camp here, backing my pickup truck into the site,and not see another person for as long as I stay back there. I might occassionally hear the rumble of a passing pickup truck, or hear a yell from the fairly distant Campsite 57 on the other side of road – which happens to be about a ¼ mile away, and down at the bottom of a valley, below the sand dunes, down by Summer Stream.
It is my personal sanctuary, where I go up to a couple of times of year. It really isn’t that far, and you drive right in. And it’s almost like your in a entirely different world.
Nobody will kid you about it being a rainy summer. But it seems like no place has been rainier in the past year then Moose Plains. For the past three weekends I spent at Moose Plains it rained. That was Moosefest 2012, last September, followed by Memorial Day Weekend 2013 and Labor Day Weekend 2013. Almost every day, during those weekends, it rained, only stopping momentarily with the sun peaking out occasionally.
Part of the reason why I spent so much time in the rain at Moose River Plains, is I was invested in an idea. Moose River Plains is 120 plus miles from home, so it seems a bit too far to go up there just on a whim, compared to say Piseco-Powley Road at 75 miles or Burnt-Rossman Hills at 55 miles, each way. Often like with Memorial Day Weekend, I get excited about the concept of visiting Moose Plains – the hell with the weather. After all, it had been six months since I had spent any time up at the plains. Labor Day didn’t seem like that much of a wash from the forecast, until it rained almost every day. And the prior year – I knew with my work schedule – that if I didn’t go up to Moose Plains during Moosefest week, in the rain, I wouldn’t be back there until spring time.
So it’s been wet. But I figured spending time at Moose Plains still was better then a day stuck at home – the hell with the gasoline burned to get up there, drive from place to place, or for that matter, to keep the lights burning brightly well into the night. But rain can put a damper into plans. Who really wants to go kayaking on Cedar River Flow in the pouring rain or hiking Wakely Mountain in the rain? Not like your going to see much in the rain, plus dampness makes everything miserable, even if you are plenty warm. Skin chaffs from moisture. So I spend my days under the tarp, reading, listening to podcasts, and watching a smoldering campfire struggle against the rain.
Finally, this past extended weekend, I got a break from the rain. There were blue skies for two and half days, although by Saturday, high clouds and haze at times kind of drowned out the sunshine. A foliage trip, there probably were more hunters on the trails then color on the trees. But as weekend progressed, so did the color. And with the chance to go out and enjoy the outdoors, I finally did get out around to see many places at Moose Plains that I longing to see for some time, once again. I spent two beautiful moonlight evenings, hanging off Wakely Dam, enjoying the stars under the bright full moon. I haven’t camped at Wakely Dam on Cedar River Flow in years. I hiked up Wakely Mountain one day, then paddle around the Cedar River Flow, then Wakely Dam, then Helldiver Pond all in one day. The next day, I camped down at Campsite 56, my favorite wilderness campsite in the plains, followed by a surprising nice day, with good foliage, which gave me a chance to visit Indian Lake, off the Indian River at Moose Plains.
But then again, by 5:30 PM, the rain came again, and once again I camping under the tarp, as the fire struggles to keep up against the rain. I guess rain is just a natural thing.
