The final night of my Finger Lakes Trip I spent the night up at Sugar Hill State Forest, a series of 9,500 acres of state land, popular for horse owners. This parcel has two main camping areas, about 90 miles of horse trails, 3 lean-tos geared to equine users, and one nice new lean-to that is accessible solely by foot.
You don’t see signs like this located in downtown Albany.
This is all conveniently located about 15 miles from Watkins Glen, at the headwaters of Townsend and Glen Creeks that make up the water that flows through the Glen.
While I didn’t spend a lot of time going around and grabbing pictures of the Horse Camp, I did take some pictures and have some from when I visited this area during the previous summer. This was in part because the last day was rather gray, with heavy rain at times, and I was frankly quite tired.
There also is a firetower at the main horse camp area, which is filled with RVs, horse trailers, and horses during the summer weekends. This is shown below:
Here is the fire tower:
Here is the main horse camp, with new bathroom facilities including flush toilets. This was installed two years ago due to the popularity of the horse camp and contamination concerns by the overuse of the conventional pit privy.
Horses tied up. I took this last year, when they where still building the replacement bathroom for the pit privy, and therefore the porta-potties.
Some wildflowers noticed along a short walk…
A bed of fog over Kueka Lake from the Firetower from last year.
Thunder clouds approaching from the west from the Firetower. It was not of course thundering when I was on the tower. I’m not that stupid.
Descending the firetower, looking east towards Seneca Lake.
Rather then camping at the main horse camp, where there where several people set up with horses, I decided to camp at the lower area, which is much less popular, but as nice if not nicer.
They still have lots of things for the horse owner to use.
In the evening it started to rain. It didn’t bother me much, as I had the tarp over my truck and the picnic table, and thanks to the cement base under the table, there was no mud or muck to get kicked up.
This was my camping arrangements, as seen in the morning. Not bad, especially for a free campsite.
Making some coffee in the morning. I drank an incredible amount of coffee during this week.
Where I camped, after everything was all packed on up.
Farms from off Six Nations Hill in the rain, looking south.
Maps from the DEC of Six Nations Horse Camp:
I drove the following route on Day 3 of the Finger Lakes Trip, in yellow. The loop is where the firetower and main horse camp is. Following the green line due south, takes you to the southern horse camp where I spent the night camping.
Day 4 I visited Corning and checked out Big Flats, which is now unfortunately little more then suburbanite crap. Corning was kind of neat, except that it started to pour when was down there. I then drove down to Sayre, PA, and through northern Pennsylvania so I could pick up some fireworks for the forth of July. I probably could have come right back into the state, but I certainly didn’t want to be followed by undercover cops, with my fireworks (yes, I’m a little paranoid).
Rural Pennsylvania was quite pretty, except for the heavy rain and the fact that Route 706 was so damn narrow and twisty. When I got back to NY, I really appreciated how much better our state’s roads really are. I drove back via I-88, occasionally hopping back on Route 7 for some additional variety to my trip. I got home around 4 PM.
The green line follows my return trip. It took about 6 1/2 hours, including stops in Corning and other places.
