We took friday off to visit Watkins Glen State Park. Located in the southern part of Seneca lake in the village of Watkins Glen lies a most beautiful state park. The centerpiece of the park is a 400 foot narrow gorge cut through rock by a stream (Glen Creek) that was left when glaciers of the Ice age deepened the Seneca valley, creating rapids and waterfalls wherever there were layers of hard rock.
Every part of this hike was absolutely beautiful
I was feeling a little apprehensive about this day as there were approximately 832 steps along the way of this 1 1/2 mile hike. I had both my knees replaced in 2021, with the left knee replaced in April and the right in October. However, nothing to worry about with the knees as they did just fine! It was actually the rest of my body that sucked. I am vastly out of shape!
I was a wet rag by the time we made it to the top! Fortunately, or maybe I should say unfortunately, both David and I are so out of shape, that we decided to take the shuttle bus back to our car instead of hiking the 1 1/2 miles back with the 832 steps downhill. Going down steps are way harder than going up so I was grateful when David said let’s take the shuttle. He’s a very special person, always considerate.
So we’re walking to the shuttle area and that’s where we see the sign that the shuttle bus is not running! So we decided to take the road back to town instead of hiking back the way we came. Google maps told us it was 1.8 miles (36 minutes) via the road, but we thought in the long run that it would be an easier walk so we went for it.
The scenery was quite beautiful and only an occasional car on the road. What was quite interesting about google maps was the way it sent us on our walk. We started on the road with no issue, and then took a right turn down another road. Well, that road dead-ended to this trail. It looked harmless enough and you could tell it was mowed and maintained, but with no one in sight and private property signs posted around us, all I could think of was here we are, two middle-aged out of shape people walking down a road that’s probably on private property, and no one besides us knows where we are. I’m hearing banjos being played in my head. Well, the story ended happily and we made it back to town safely. Had a nice lunch in town while we cooled off.