Some things don't seem to change, and one is that I always write more than I meant to in my trip reports. Here is a link to some pictures which tell the story in a less verbose fashion.
Pictures
This year I went back to Indian Lake, but I tried some of the things I have skipped on previous visits. I left the farm at 6:20 AM on Wednesday the 22nd with the intention of reaching the place where Route 30 crosses the Jessup River before dark. It was a humid day but not too hot, and a west wind had been forecast which I hoped would help me along. I got rained on enough to put on my poncho in the villages of Redfield and Osceola, but after that it just sprinkled a few times until I got to Oxbow Lake where it rained hard one more time. I went to Boonville as usual and then took Route 12 down to Remsen and cut over to pick up Route 365 partway up Hinckley Lake. On the way up I kept seeing little flocks of goldfinches which were very bright on such a dark day, and a lot of crows. I also went by a house with an enclosed porch full of parrots and other birds which made quite loud and unusual sounds as I passed and gave me a surprise.
I had a harder time this year covering the miles on the bike, which may be because I was more tired than usual when I left. I got into Speculator, called home to let them know I had arrived safely and picked up a bit more food, and headed up Route 30. A party of very kind motorists stopped when they saw me walking up a long hill and asked if I needed help, but I told them I was just tired and only had three more miles to go. It was 115 miles from the farm to the Jessup crossing, and I got there a bit after 7. I looked around briefly and settled on the east side of the road as the best looking camping area. I rolled the bike and trailer down the driveway toward the river, and then up into the woods away from the road. I set up my tent well beyond the 150 foot mark, and then noticed that I was under a leaning and extremely rotten dead tree, so I looked around and found another flat spot on the hillside not too far away and moved the tent. I took a quick dip in the river to clean myself up, ate supper and was ready to go to sleep, though it was only around 9. There was a fair bit of road noise at first but after dark it quieted down nicely.
In the morning I carried the canoe back down to the river, along with my food bag and some other necessities for the morning’s trip. There was a steep and muddy bank at the put in, but I was able to mostly keep my footing and got the canoe launched and headed upstream as the sun was starting to get down to river level in some places. The river was very pretty, with lots of loops, interesting trees and little sandy beach areas. I crossed 11 beaver dams on the way up, and while most of them were fairly small one must have been three feet tall. I saw a beaver and several herons (or the same one or two over and over, I don’t know), but was not quick enough with the camera to get their pictures. The big log jam which I have seen and read about in other trip reports appears to have been cut through, there was one spot with several fallen trees that had been cut but it is now paddleable. It took me a couple of hours to get to the first bridge, where I turned around, and a little less time to go back. I stopped for an early lunch on a cute little beach on the way back down but I didn’t get a good picture of that place, I had a drop of water on the camera window that I didn’t see at the time. I was able to paddle down over two of the dams, but I had to lift the canoe over the rest.
When I got back to the road I tied the canoe to a bush on the shore and went up to pack up my camp. I hid the bike and trailer further up the hill and brought everything else down and loaded it in the canoe. I slipped on the mud and almost fell in the river with one of the dry bags, but didn’t quite. The part of the river below the bridge is much easier traveling at first since there are no more beaver dams. There were some snags that partly blocked the river but could It be paddled over. I saw a number of places where the river has deeply undercut the banks, and some of them look like that someday soon large trees will be falling across the river again. I met a group of ducks who sort of hydroplaned ahead of me for a while and then went to one side of the river while I took the other. They could go very fast but it looked like a lot of exertion and they flopped their heads and necks very far back and forth as they flapped and paddled, so it looked like their heads would come off if they weren’t careful.
I took out at the place where a large steel cable crosses above the river between two trees, and carried the canoe and the baggage alternately for about 1/2 mile or so along the path by the river. The path was pretty overgrown but not hard to follow for the most part. Once I got to the part of the river where I could see straight down to the lake I put the canoe back in the water and loaded everything in except me, and walked the canoe down between the rocks as best I could. The trail was getting worse and I figured it was no worse to scratch the canoe on rocks than on tree branches. I eventually got down to the Dug Mountain Falls picnic area and walked up to see the upper falls. I had been here 4 years ago and it was nice to see it again. Then I paddled away north up the very long arm of the lake that is the old riverbed. I took a break at a beach that wasn’t part of a campsite, a mile or two up, and another at the unnamed(to my knowledge) small island with a picnic area by the west shore of the lake. The wind would blow quite strongly from the north, and the die down and blow just as strongly from the south all the way through this section. I think it was a west wind that day and the winds I felt on the lake were being funneled by the mountains along the narrow part of the lake in some way. I went up the east side of Long Island and across the lake to the beach below the Watch Hill trailhead.
By the time I arrived it was 4:30 or so and the sun was passing off the beach, but I stayed on the beach till it left for the day around 5:30. I was planning to spend 4 days camped in the area but didn’t want to break the 3 day camping rule, so I had to find a place for the first night. I had seen some potential flat places on my last trip so I went to look at them and found a very suitable area, well more than 150 feet from the lake. It’s a large enough flattish area to hold larger tents than mine, but I never found a good way to get there without having to scramble up a steep bank on one side or the other. I set up my tent and then noticed a log a couple of feet away with some oyster mushrooms. I took about half of what was there and incorporated them into supper. I tried to take some moonrise pictures but the sky was very clear and the light was so bright that it seemed to overwhelm the camera, but I got one through the trees as I was heading back up to my camp. I was able to leave the rain fly off the tent most of the nights I was there this year, which gave a nice view of the moonlight.
Friday morning I planned to make an early start, and I was on the march about 6:15. I took a small backpack with some food and emergency supplies and left everything else at camp. I headed up the trail to Watch Hill and then down the other side, around the horse loop and down to the old road, which led me to Route 30 just a little way from the Snowy Mountain parking area. There was nobody parked there yet at 7:20 when I crossed the road and headed up Snowy. I had not been there before so I didn’t really know what to expect other than what I had read in guidebooks. The first part was very easy going, with lots of bog bridging, though the ground was pretty dry and hard when I was there. I crossed over Beaver Brook very easily with the low water, but in spring I am sure it must be much harder. The upper part was harder than I had expected, just a long eroded rock pile at a steep angle. I was careful not to slip and my sandal soles are pretty good, so I made it to the top without incident, though I got a little out of breath. It took me 2 hours from the trail register to the clearing on the summit, and a little less to go down.
The summit clearing (where the observer’s cabin used to stand, I think) was very nice and the vegetation at the edges was very much like what I would expect to see at a lower elevation, goldenrod and grasses and such. I took a couple of pictures of the view and after a few false starts found the trail to the fire tower. I had gotten quite warm climbing the mountain, and there had been very little wind, but up on the summit and especially on the fire tower above the treetops the northwesterly wind was quite strong and cold and I had to dig out my fleece shirt. I looked at the view and took some pictures, and then headed back to the clearing which was much warmer to eat the food I had brought and look at the view in more comfort. The air was hazy, or smoky or something so the view almost looked like early morning or late evening with the more distant mountains fading away, but it was between 9:30 and 10 when I took all of those pictures.
I started back down and very soon met two people with a real camera who were going to take more serious pictures, and after that quite a few more people. I hope they were all good at taking turns, as there’s not room for more than 4 people or so at a time in the tower cab. I got back to the road a bit before noon and headed across and back over Watch Hill again. I met a couple of parties near the top, and a very nice toad on the way down the other side who sat very still and showed the white of his eye while I took his picture. When I got back to the lake I spent some more time on the beach and then went up the hill to move my camp to the old location, closer to the beach end of the cove. I found that the forked stick I had cut from a fallen tree two years ago was still right where I had left it, and not too rotten to use, and everything went smoothly about the move except that I slipped on the steep bank while carrying my tent and bent one of the poles a little. I was able to straighten it by pushing against a tree, which was a relief. I should have packed everything properly, but since I was only moving 200 yards or so I didn’t bother.
Once the sun had left the beach again I paddled over to the archipelago between Crotched Pond and Camp Islands that I had found two years ago and spent a while there. The water was higher in the lake this year so the lower beach where I sat before was rather wet, but the upper beach on the main island was still high and dry and had a nice rock back rest, so I sat there. There were some very large ants who came and crawled over me from time to time, and once when I brushed one off I thought I had injured it because it was crawling without going anywhere, but then I noticed that it was in a pit in the sand and was sweeping the sand down past itself. I gave it a little boost and it did fine, and after that I began watching the other ants. It seemed that they could crawl out of pits if they went slowly but if they tried to go fast they would get stuck like the first one I saw. There seemed to be some sort of a moral in this, perhaps.
The sunset didn’t amount to much since there were no clouds in that part of the view, but the moonrise was pretty. I was packing up and loading the canoe, and when I looked up there it was, already over the horizon. I headed back across the lake and when I got to my cove I could hear voices of people out on the water who seemed to be looking for a campsite and to be heading in the wrong direction. I paddled out in their direction to see if they wanted to look at my map, but they didn’t seem to want to be reached so I went back home.
On Saturday I went up the lake to Baldface Mountain in the morning, as I usually do when I’m there. I went up to the top and spent an hour or so looking at the view but took no pictures since I had already taken those views twice before under better light conditions. The summit chipmunk (or one of its friends and relations) was on duty and scurried around in an entertaining way. There was a lot of blowdown on the trail so when I got back to the canoe I picked up the folding saw which I had foolishly failed to bring in the backpack and went partway back up to cut through a couple of large tangles and some smaller fallen logs. I was able to cut through one that was thicker than the saw is long, which surprised me. I think the curved blade may help with that. Several parties passed me going up while I was cutting, and a couple of folks helped move branches at the biggest tangle. There were two logs across the trail that were far too big for me to cut.
I headed down the lake a mile or so to the island with the cliff that I have visited each time I go, and spent an hour or so there. The wind had picked up from the south and the waves were pretty big by this time. After eating lunch I got back in the canoe and headed another mile or so south to the comma-shaped island which is another of my favorites. I spent the bulk of the afternoon on the upper beach there, and swam out to the small rocky island outside the harbor. I am trying to learn to swim more strongly, I can stay afloat and move slowly in any given direction but I need to improve my skills. Here also it was apparent that the water was at least a foot higher than two years ago, as the part that had been a puddle surrounded by dry land was now all open water, but easy to wade through.
5:30 was the time I needed to decide whether to go back up Baldface as I had planned or head back to camp, and since the wind and waves seemed to be letting up a bit I decided to go ahead back north. I was hoping to get some nice sunset pictures, but the sunset was a little odd. I did get a couple of pictures in other directions that I liked, though, and I also carried the saw with me so I could cut through the double fallen trees right below the summit. I got to the summit about 7 and the wind was still coming up strongly from time to time. I left the summit at 7:33 and got back to the lake at 7:51, and by then the wind had died and the waves were just ripples. I gratefully headed out of the cove and south, and it took me about 90 minutes to cover the 4 miles or so back to the Watch Hill cove, including some stops to take pictures of the moonrise and to change the camera battery. I don’t know how long it might have taken me to get back if the wind had stayed strong, but I’ve heard before that the wind often drops around sunrise and sunset and it often seems to be true. I had gotten quite warm coming down the mountain in a hurry, but since I was paddling vigorously most of the way home I was able to stay warm enough without having to dig out my warm clothes from the dry bag and try to put them on in the canoe. I could see headlights of occasional passing cars on Route 30 through the trees as they went up the big hill by the lake. During the day the road is completely hidden. I also saw a bat a number of times that evening, and on some of my other moonlight canoeing excursions. The last section from Parson’s Point and campsite 12 back to Watch Hill felt interminably long, but I think it was just because of the way the shoreline is shaped, so it looks like the end is near but then it isn’t.
Sunday I was planning to mostly spend a quiet day on the beach at Watch Hill, but the weather changed my mind. I ate breakfast on the beach and then as it was still cloudy and somewhat windy I decided to go back to Parson’s Point picnic area which I had not visited since 2014 and do some walking in the woods. When I came down again to the canoe after hanging my food bag I found that it had begun to rain lightly, so I decided to put on my poncho over my life jacket and paddle under it. It worked pretty well except that the strings on the edges dangled in the water and got wet. When I got to the landing I put the canoe up away from the lake on some fallen trees and left the poncho there, figuring I wouldn’t mind getting wet under the trees away from the wind. I found, as before, that the Beaver Brook falls are beautiful but almost impossible to get into a good picture. The stream forks into three waterfalls that drop perhaps 50 feet down to the lake, along diagonal sort of flumes in the rocks. I enjoyed looking at them and tried to take a few pictures, and then walked up along the brook till I came to the edge of private land. I saw a deer which was also using the path, and a lot of interesting tree shapes. The mossy rock and path section along the stream were just as I had recalled them from four years ago. I’ve not seen anyone eat a picnic at this area, and I think it would be a good place for people who eat lightweight foods or are fairly robust, since the picnic tables are up quite a little climb and some of them require rock-hopping across the brook, but it’s a very pretty spot.
I returned to the canoe, and by this time the rain had pretty well stopped so I folded up the poncho and headed back to camp. When I got there it was still cloudy and windy for my taste so I went for a walk along the path that the Timberlock people maintain that runs from the end of the Watch Hill trail to their lodge. I followed it to a point a little past the Griffin Brook crossing, almost to where their land is shown as beginning on the map. On the way back I found a short cave tunnel beside the path that was big enough to crawl through. I wasn’t really dressed for crawling on sharp rocks, but with going slowly and carefully I got through with just a couple of additional scrapes on my knees. There were a lot of interesting trees along this area too, including a yellow birch that I think must have sprouted on top of an old stump, and then as the stump rotted the tree roots grew down so that the shape of the stump is still discernible in the open space between the roots.
When I got back I ate a somewhat late lunch on the slope above my tent, sitting on the poncho as the ground was still damp. Having a tarp with a clothesline under it is a great luxury when camping, in my opinion. Since the rain had been over for a while I sat on the beach for a few hours and alternately read my book (Martin Chuzzlewit) and looked at the view. The sun peeped through momentarily a few times, but mostly it was cloudy. Around 6 I decided to try climbing the hill behind where I was camped to see what it was like on top. It looked solidly wooded from the water, but not at all high and quite steep. I went past my tent and straight up the slope from there, and found another log with a lot more oyster mushrooms. I left them since I didn’t have anything to put them in and didn’t want my hands full for the climb, and in less than 5 minutes to my surprise I found a large open area near the top of the slope with some partial views across the lake to Moose Mountain and Moose Island, and the two smaller islands NE of it. I took some pictures and came back down, missing the oyster log by 100 yards or more, but once I could see my tent I knew which way to go to find it. I collected about half of what was there, and took them down to the beach with my food bag to have supper. I sat on the beach and looked at the view while eating, with a nice rock to lean on.
After supper the wind had died down again and I made another short voyage, around the bare rocky island due east, and then between the unnamed islands with campsites to the picnic area at the end of Moose Island. It was deserted, as were all the picnic areas I visited this year, and I looked around at the nice little paths and beaches and fireplaces and such before heading down the south side of Moose and back home again. It was a nice evening for a short paddle, and the islands are all very scenic. Later in the evening I took a couple of moonrise pictures from the beach and noticed that the moon was unusually colorful. I wanted to get more moonrise pictures so I headed out in the canoe and went south till the moon was hidden again, behind the shoulder of Moose Mountain. I was able to get some picture with clouds that I liked, and a lot of failed pictures where the moon was egg shaped because of the motion of the ripples in the water making the canoe wiggle.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the wind on Monday morning, and I had a long way to go south so I packed up pretty early and had eaten and left by 7. The wind wasn’t a problem, but it still felt like it took a long time to get all the way down that long arm of the lake to the Jessup. I found another little triangular cave in a cliff partway along, and was able to fit myself into it, folded up. I had landed there to stretch my legs which were complaining, as they tend to do after a while in the canoe.
When I got back to the mouth of the Jessup the water level was a bit lower, and I couldn’t find a good way to walk the canoe back up through the rock garden. I took it out onto the path on the east side of the river and alternately carried the bags and canoe, as before. I figured if I did each one in short sections I would get a chance to rest while walking back unladen, and that seemed to work better than doing the whole carry each time and then having the whole walk back in between. The trail in this part was dreadful, with mud pits, overgrown sections, and one part where it ran along a bank about 15 feet above the river with a drop on the right and a bank on the left and the trail only about a 6 inch wide ledge stomped into the ground. With the trees all around it was hard to get through this path, but I did, with some complaining. Once I came to the bend in the river where the path came down to the water it looked like there was enough water to put the canoe in and reload the bags, so I did, and walked the canoe upriver again after cooling off in the water. It was not too hard to find a way through, and much more comfortable and pleasant than the carry path. I figured that I would make as good time if I moved 1/3 of the speed in the water as on the land, since on land I would cover the ground 3 times versus once in the water. Once I got back to the put in I got back in the canoe and paddled back to the road crossing, with a break on one of the little sand points for a snack. I got back to the bike around noon and unhid it and the trailer, lifted everything out of the canoe up onto shore and got the canoe up the muddy bank without incident.
I was on the road again at about 12:30 and headed back into Speculator to get more food, since I was running a bit low. I called home to let them know I was on the way and took an alternate route for the first few miles, going south along the east end of the lake to South Shore Road and taking that into Lake Pleasant. Along the way I crossed a bridge with a pedestrian walkway and a sign that said “Cherry Brook Scenic Fishing Area”. There were a few people standing on the bridge but they weren’t fishing, possibly because either they or the fish were insufficiently scenic, or perhaps for some other reason which escaped me. Not being a fisherperson myself I am not sure what connotes scenicness in either instance. The road was pretty, but consisted for a while of a series of very steep hills up which I would walk the bicycle combination, and then I would coast down the other side. The Lake Pleasant end was a bit more manageable in the usual way.
My other deviation from the direct route that day was to follow the side road around Piseco Lake. I met a large flock of turkeys in the road in the village, but a car came and they fled before I was able to get close enough to get a good picture. I had been debating whether I had time for the Echo Cliff trail and had decided that if I got there by 4:30 I would give it a try. I arrived at 4:24 and was pleased to find no one in the parking area. I rolled the bike and trailer into the woods a bit and headed up the trail. It was very nice, but I was in a bit more of a hurry than I like to be. I got to the top in 19 minutes and looked at the view and took some pictures for 5 minutes and made it back down in 15. The air was very obscure again, so it looked like late evening though it was really a little before 5. I met a lady on her way up as I was going down but otherwise didn’t see anyone. I rode on again and stopped for a quick swim in the part of the lake that’s right by the road in the state land section. The bottom was mucky but the water was clean and nice, and cooled me off well. There was a car parked a bit up the road and a couple of people swimming there, and near Nobleboro I heard someone calling from a house I was passing who turned out to be one of the same people who had seen me there and was surprised that I had come so far since they had seen me.
I had planned to try going up Haskell Rd in Nobleboro to the state land there but decided I didn’t feel like a dirt road and wouldn’t really have time to appreciate anything I would find, so I pushed on a few more miles to Gray-Wilmurt Rd where I had camped two years ago. This piece of woods was full of all kinds of cute mushrooms, just like last time, but none that I could eat so I just looked at them. I rolled the bike and trailer far enough off the road to be legally camping and took the headlamp and camera down to the gorge. I climbed down in a safe spot and found a beautiful hanging garden of mosses and ferns near the bottom, but it was too dark under the trees to get a good picture. The gorge had a bit less water in it than the other time I was there, so I was able to wade and swim out into the middle and get a better view. The water in the middle of the still part is over my head, and it’s only knee deep in between the rocks lower down. I would like to explore it more fully in the daytime on a future trip as it’s a very pretty spot, but with the dark coming down I swam around a bit and then went back to the camp spot, set up my tent, ate supper and read and went to sleep.
In the morning I got out to the road just before 7, after almost forgetting to get a picture of a mossy stump I had seen near my campsite with a yellow birch growing out of the top. I wonder if in 50 years it will look like the one by Indian Lake. I had been told it would be a hot day with a west wind, and it was hot, but I was glad to have the wind since it kept me cooler even though it held me back a little. I did fine except for the few sections of road where I was heading north, when the wind didn’t help much, and then I could feel my temperature going up. I made it back to Swancott Mill at 11:45, which was 15 minutes before my goal, so I spent some extra time in the water there as well as eating lunch, and swam again briefly in Redfield where the road crosses the reservoir. I got home about 10 minutes to 3, having covered 76 miles or so. When I got in I found out that a heat advisory had been issued, and the thermometer showed a maximum temperature of 92, though it was down to 87 when I arrived. I actually made a better average speed on this leg of the trip (11.76 MPH) than on the other two legs which were both in the upper 10s. I think this was because of the elevation, probably. Overall I had a very pleasant trip, and I will plan to return to Indian Lake sometime, perhaps in a couple of years. The beach at the foot of Watch Hill has come to seem like home in a way, now that I have been there in 4 of the last 6 years, and the view from it seems to be permanently imprinted on my mind from having spent so much time looking at it.
Pictures
This year I went back to Indian Lake, but I tried some of the things I have skipped on previous visits. I left the farm at 6:20 AM on Wednesday the 22nd with the intention of reaching the place where Route 30 crosses the Jessup River before dark. It was a humid day but not too hot, and a west wind had been forecast which I hoped would help me along. I got rained on enough to put on my poncho in the villages of Redfield and Osceola, but after that it just sprinkled a few times until I got to Oxbow Lake where it rained hard one more time. I went to Boonville as usual and then took Route 12 down to Remsen and cut over to pick up Route 365 partway up Hinckley Lake. On the way up I kept seeing little flocks of goldfinches which were very bright on such a dark day, and a lot of crows. I also went by a house with an enclosed porch full of parrots and other birds which made quite loud and unusual sounds as I passed and gave me a surprise.
I had a harder time this year covering the miles on the bike, which may be because I was more tired than usual when I left. I got into Speculator, called home to let them know I had arrived safely and picked up a bit more food, and headed up Route 30. A party of very kind motorists stopped when they saw me walking up a long hill and asked if I needed help, but I told them I was just tired and only had three more miles to go. It was 115 miles from the farm to the Jessup crossing, and I got there a bit after 7. I looked around briefly and settled on the east side of the road as the best looking camping area. I rolled the bike and trailer down the driveway toward the river, and then up into the woods away from the road. I set up my tent well beyond the 150 foot mark, and then noticed that I was under a leaning and extremely rotten dead tree, so I looked around and found another flat spot on the hillside not too far away and moved the tent. I took a quick dip in the river to clean myself up, ate supper and was ready to go to sleep, though it was only around 9. There was a fair bit of road noise at first but after dark it quieted down nicely.
In the morning I carried the canoe back down to the river, along with my food bag and some other necessities for the morning’s trip. There was a steep and muddy bank at the put in, but I was able to mostly keep my footing and got the canoe launched and headed upstream as the sun was starting to get down to river level in some places. The river was very pretty, with lots of loops, interesting trees and little sandy beach areas. I crossed 11 beaver dams on the way up, and while most of them were fairly small one must have been three feet tall. I saw a beaver and several herons (or the same one or two over and over, I don’t know), but was not quick enough with the camera to get their pictures. The big log jam which I have seen and read about in other trip reports appears to have been cut through, there was one spot with several fallen trees that had been cut but it is now paddleable. It took me a couple of hours to get to the first bridge, where I turned around, and a little less time to go back. I stopped for an early lunch on a cute little beach on the way back down but I didn’t get a good picture of that place, I had a drop of water on the camera window that I didn’t see at the time. I was able to paddle down over two of the dams, but I had to lift the canoe over the rest.
When I got back to the road I tied the canoe to a bush on the shore and went up to pack up my camp. I hid the bike and trailer further up the hill and brought everything else down and loaded it in the canoe. I slipped on the mud and almost fell in the river with one of the dry bags, but didn’t quite. The part of the river below the bridge is much easier traveling at first since there are no more beaver dams. There were some snags that partly blocked the river but could It be paddled over. I saw a number of places where the river has deeply undercut the banks, and some of them look like that someday soon large trees will be falling across the river again. I met a group of ducks who sort of hydroplaned ahead of me for a while and then went to one side of the river while I took the other. They could go very fast but it looked like a lot of exertion and they flopped their heads and necks very far back and forth as they flapped and paddled, so it looked like their heads would come off if they weren’t careful.
I took out at the place where a large steel cable crosses above the river between two trees, and carried the canoe and the baggage alternately for about 1/2 mile or so along the path by the river. The path was pretty overgrown but not hard to follow for the most part. Once I got to the part of the river where I could see straight down to the lake I put the canoe back in the water and loaded everything in except me, and walked the canoe down between the rocks as best I could. The trail was getting worse and I figured it was no worse to scratch the canoe on rocks than on tree branches. I eventually got down to the Dug Mountain Falls picnic area and walked up to see the upper falls. I had been here 4 years ago and it was nice to see it again. Then I paddled away north up the very long arm of the lake that is the old riverbed. I took a break at a beach that wasn’t part of a campsite, a mile or two up, and another at the unnamed(to my knowledge) small island with a picnic area by the west shore of the lake. The wind would blow quite strongly from the north, and the die down and blow just as strongly from the south all the way through this section. I think it was a west wind that day and the winds I felt on the lake were being funneled by the mountains along the narrow part of the lake in some way. I went up the east side of Long Island and across the lake to the beach below the Watch Hill trailhead.
By the time I arrived it was 4:30 or so and the sun was passing off the beach, but I stayed on the beach till it left for the day around 5:30. I was planning to spend 4 days camped in the area but didn’t want to break the 3 day camping rule, so I had to find a place for the first night. I had seen some potential flat places on my last trip so I went to look at them and found a very suitable area, well more than 150 feet from the lake. It’s a large enough flattish area to hold larger tents than mine, but I never found a good way to get there without having to scramble up a steep bank on one side or the other. I set up my tent and then noticed a log a couple of feet away with some oyster mushrooms. I took about half of what was there and incorporated them into supper. I tried to take some moonrise pictures but the sky was very clear and the light was so bright that it seemed to overwhelm the camera, but I got one through the trees as I was heading back up to my camp. I was able to leave the rain fly off the tent most of the nights I was there this year, which gave a nice view of the moonlight.
Friday morning I planned to make an early start, and I was on the march about 6:15. I took a small backpack with some food and emergency supplies and left everything else at camp. I headed up the trail to Watch Hill and then down the other side, around the horse loop and down to the old road, which led me to Route 30 just a little way from the Snowy Mountain parking area. There was nobody parked there yet at 7:20 when I crossed the road and headed up Snowy. I had not been there before so I didn’t really know what to expect other than what I had read in guidebooks. The first part was very easy going, with lots of bog bridging, though the ground was pretty dry and hard when I was there. I crossed over Beaver Brook very easily with the low water, but in spring I am sure it must be much harder. The upper part was harder than I had expected, just a long eroded rock pile at a steep angle. I was careful not to slip and my sandal soles are pretty good, so I made it to the top without incident, though I got a little out of breath. It took me 2 hours from the trail register to the clearing on the summit, and a little less to go down.
The summit clearing (where the observer’s cabin used to stand, I think) was very nice and the vegetation at the edges was very much like what I would expect to see at a lower elevation, goldenrod and grasses and such. I took a couple of pictures of the view and after a few false starts found the trail to the fire tower. I had gotten quite warm climbing the mountain, and there had been very little wind, but up on the summit and especially on the fire tower above the treetops the northwesterly wind was quite strong and cold and I had to dig out my fleece shirt. I looked at the view and took some pictures, and then headed back to the clearing which was much warmer to eat the food I had brought and look at the view in more comfort. The air was hazy, or smoky or something so the view almost looked like early morning or late evening with the more distant mountains fading away, but it was between 9:30 and 10 when I took all of those pictures.
I started back down and very soon met two people with a real camera who were going to take more serious pictures, and after that quite a few more people. I hope they were all good at taking turns, as there’s not room for more than 4 people or so at a time in the tower cab. I got back to the road a bit before noon and headed across and back over Watch Hill again. I met a couple of parties near the top, and a very nice toad on the way down the other side who sat very still and showed the white of his eye while I took his picture. When I got back to the lake I spent some more time on the beach and then went up the hill to move my camp to the old location, closer to the beach end of the cove. I found that the forked stick I had cut from a fallen tree two years ago was still right where I had left it, and not too rotten to use, and everything went smoothly about the move except that I slipped on the steep bank while carrying my tent and bent one of the poles a little. I was able to straighten it by pushing against a tree, which was a relief. I should have packed everything properly, but since I was only moving 200 yards or so I didn’t bother.
Once the sun had left the beach again I paddled over to the archipelago between Crotched Pond and Camp Islands that I had found two years ago and spent a while there. The water was higher in the lake this year so the lower beach where I sat before was rather wet, but the upper beach on the main island was still high and dry and had a nice rock back rest, so I sat there. There were some very large ants who came and crawled over me from time to time, and once when I brushed one off I thought I had injured it because it was crawling without going anywhere, but then I noticed that it was in a pit in the sand and was sweeping the sand down past itself. I gave it a little boost and it did fine, and after that I began watching the other ants. It seemed that they could crawl out of pits if they went slowly but if they tried to go fast they would get stuck like the first one I saw. There seemed to be some sort of a moral in this, perhaps.
The sunset didn’t amount to much since there were no clouds in that part of the view, but the moonrise was pretty. I was packing up and loading the canoe, and when I looked up there it was, already over the horizon. I headed back across the lake and when I got to my cove I could hear voices of people out on the water who seemed to be looking for a campsite and to be heading in the wrong direction. I paddled out in their direction to see if they wanted to look at my map, but they didn’t seem to want to be reached so I went back home.
On Saturday I went up the lake to Baldface Mountain in the morning, as I usually do when I’m there. I went up to the top and spent an hour or so looking at the view but took no pictures since I had already taken those views twice before under better light conditions. The summit chipmunk (or one of its friends and relations) was on duty and scurried around in an entertaining way. There was a lot of blowdown on the trail so when I got back to the canoe I picked up the folding saw which I had foolishly failed to bring in the backpack and went partway back up to cut through a couple of large tangles and some smaller fallen logs. I was able to cut through one that was thicker than the saw is long, which surprised me. I think the curved blade may help with that. Several parties passed me going up while I was cutting, and a couple of folks helped move branches at the biggest tangle. There were two logs across the trail that were far too big for me to cut.
I headed down the lake a mile or so to the island with the cliff that I have visited each time I go, and spent an hour or so there. The wind had picked up from the south and the waves were pretty big by this time. After eating lunch I got back in the canoe and headed another mile or so south to the comma-shaped island which is another of my favorites. I spent the bulk of the afternoon on the upper beach there, and swam out to the small rocky island outside the harbor. I am trying to learn to swim more strongly, I can stay afloat and move slowly in any given direction but I need to improve my skills. Here also it was apparent that the water was at least a foot higher than two years ago, as the part that had been a puddle surrounded by dry land was now all open water, but easy to wade through.
5:30 was the time I needed to decide whether to go back up Baldface as I had planned or head back to camp, and since the wind and waves seemed to be letting up a bit I decided to go ahead back north. I was hoping to get some nice sunset pictures, but the sunset was a little odd. I did get a couple of pictures in other directions that I liked, though, and I also carried the saw with me so I could cut through the double fallen trees right below the summit. I got to the summit about 7 and the wind was still coming up strongly from time to time. I left the summit at 7:33 and got back to the lake at 7:51, and by then the wind had died and the waves were just ripples. I gratefully headed out of the cove and south, and it took me about 90 minutes to cover the 4 miles or so back to the Watch Hill cove, including some stops to take pictures of the moonrise and to change the camera battery. I don’t know how long it might have taken me to get back if the wind had stayed strong, but I’ve heard before that the wind often drops around sunrise and sunset and it often seems to be true. I had gotten quite warm coming down the mountain in a hurry, but since I was paddling vigorously most of the way home I was able to stay warm enough without having to dig out my warm clothes from the dry bag and try to put them on in the canoe. I could see headlights of occasional passing cars on Route 30 through the trees as they went up the big hill by the lake. During the day the road is completely hidden. I also saw a bat a number of times that evening, and on some of my other moonlight canoeing excursions. The last section from Parson’s Point and campsite 12 back to Watch Hill felt interminably long, but I think it was just because of the way the shoreline is shaped, so it looks like the end is near but then it isn’t.
Sunday I was planning to mostly spend a quiet day on the beach at Watch Hill, but the weather changed my mind. I ate breakfast on the beach and then as it was still cloudy and somewhat windy I decided to go back to Parson’s Point picnic area which I had not visited since 2014 and do some walking in the woods. When I came down again to the canoe after hanging my food bag I found that it had begun to rain lightly, so I decided to put on my poncho over my life jacket and paddle under it. It worked pretty well except that the strings on the edges dangled in the water and got wet. When I got to the landing I put the canoe up away from the lake on some fallen trees and left the poncho there, figuring I wouldn’t mind getting wet under the trees away from the wind. I found, as before, that the Beaver Brook falls are beautiful but almost impossible to get into a good picture. The stream forks into three waterfalls that drop perhaps 50 feet down to the lake, along diagonal sort of flumes in the rocks. I enjoyed looking at them and tried to take a few pictures, and then walked up along the brook till I came to the edge of private land. I saw a deer which was also using the path, and a lot of interesting tree shapes. The mossy rock and path section along the stream were just as I had recalled them from four years ago. I’ve not seen anyone eat a picnic at this area, and I think it would be a good place for people who eat lightweight foods or are fairly robust, since the picnic tables are up quite a little climb and some of them require rock-hopping across the brook, but it’s a very pretty spot.
I returned to the canoe, and by this time the rain had pretty well stopped so I folded up the poncho and headed back to camp. When I got there it was still cloudy and windy for my taste so I went for a walk along the path that the Timberlock people maintain that runs from the end of the Watch Hill trail to their lodge. I followed it to a point a little past the Griffin Brook crossing, almost to where their land is shown as beginning on the map. On the way back I found a short cave tunnel beside the path that was big enough to crawl through. I wasn’t really dressed for crawling on sharp rocks, but with going slowly and carefully I got through with just a couple of additional scrapes on my knees. There were a lot of interesting trees along this area too, including a yellow birch that I think must have sprouted on top of an old stump, and then as the stump rotted the tree roots grew down so that the shape of the stump is still discernible in the open space between the roots.
When I got back I ate a somewhat late lunch on the slope above my tent, sitting on the poncho as the ground was still damp. Having a tarp with a clothesline under it is a great luxury when camping, in my opinion. Since the rain had been over for a while I sat on the beach for a few hours and alternately read my book (Martin Chuzzlewit) and looked at the view. The sun peeped through momentarily a few times, but mostly it was cloudy. Around 6 I decided to try climbing the hill behind where I was camped to see what it was like on top. It looked solidly wooded from the water, but not at all high and quite steep. I went past my tent and straight up the slope from there, and found another log with a lot more oyster mushrooms. I left them since I didn’t have anything to put them in and didn’t want my hands full for the climb, and in less than 5 minutes to my surprise I found a large open area near the top of the slope with some partial views across the lake to Moose Mountain and Moose Island, and the two smaller islands NE of it. I took some pictures and came back down, missing the oyster log by 100 yards or more, but once I could see my tent I knew which way to go to find it. I collected about half of what was there, and took them down to the beach with my food bag to have supper. I sat on the beach and looked at the view while eating, with a nice rock to lean on.
After supper the wind had died down again and I made another short voyage, around the bare rocky island due east, and then between the unnamed islands with campsites to the picnic area at the end of Moose Island. It was deserted, as were all the picnic areas I visited this year, and I looked around at the nice little paths and beaches and fireplaces and such before heading down the south side of Moose and back home again. It was a nice evening for a short paddle, and the islands are all very scenic. Later in the evening I took a couple of moonrise pictures from the beach and noticed that the moon was unusually colorful. I wanted to get more moonrise pictures so I headed out in the canoe and went south till the moon was hidden again, behind the shoulder of Moose Mountain. I was able to get some picture with clouds that I liked, and a lot of failed pictures where the moon was egg shaped because of the motion of the ripples in the water making the canoe wiggle.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the wind on Monday morning, and I had a long way to go south so I packed up pretty early and had eaten and left by 7. The wind wasn’t a problem, but it still felt like it took a long time to get all the way down that long arm of the lake to the Jessup. I found another little triangular cave in a cliff partway along, and was able to fit myself into it, folded up. I had landed there to stretch my legs which were complaining, as they tend to do after a while in the canoe.
When I got back to the mouth of the Jessup the water level was a bit lower, and I couldn’t find a good way to walk the canoe back up through the rock garden. I took it out onto the path on the east side of the river and alternately carried the bags and canoe, as before. I figured if I did each one in short sections I would get a chance to rest while walking back unladen, and that seemed to work better than doing the whole carry each time and then having the whole walk back in between. The trail in this part was dreadful, with mud pits, overgrown sections, and one part where it ran along a bank about 15 feet above the river with a drop on the right and a bank on the left and the trail only about a 6 inch wide ledge stomped into the ground. With the trees all around it was hard to get through this path, but I did, with some complaining. Once I came to the bend in the river where the path came down to the water it looked like there was enough water to put the canoe in and reload the bags, so I did, and walked the canoe upriver again after cooling off in the water. It was not too hard to find a way through, and much more comfortable and pleasant than the carry path. I figured that I would make as good time if I moved 1/3 of the speed in the water as on the land, since on land I would cover the ground 3 times versus once in the water. Once I got back to the put in I got back in the canoe and paddled back to the road crossing, with a break on one of the little sand points for a snack. I got back to the bike around noon and unhid it and the trailer, lifted everything out of the canoe up onto shore and got the canoe up the muddy bank without incident.
I was on the road again at about 12:30 and headed back into Speculator to get more food, since I was running a bit low. I called home to let them know I was on the way and took an alternate route for the first few miles, going south along the east end of the lake to South Shore Road and taking that into Lake Pleasant. Along the way I crossed a bridge with a pedestrian walkway and a sign that said “Cherry Brook Scenic Fishing Area”. There were a few people standing on the bridge but they weren’t fishing, possibly because either they or the fish were insufficiently scenic, or perhaps for some other reason which escaped me. Not being a fisherperson myself I am not sure what connotes scenicness in either instance. The road was pretty, but consisted for a while of a series of very steep hills up which I would walk the bicycle combination, and then I would coast down the other side. The Lake Pleasant end was a bit more manageable in the usual way.
My other deviation from the direct route that day was to follow the side road around Piseco Lake. I met a large flock of turkeys in the road in the village, but a car came and they fled before I was able to get close enough to get a good picture. I had been debating whether I had time for the Echo Cliff trail and had decided that if I got there by 4:30 I would give it a try. I arrived at 4:24 and was pleased to find no one in the parking area. I rolled the bike and trailer into the woods a bit and headed up the trail. It was very nice, but I was in a bit more of a hurry than I like to be. I got to the top in 19 minutes and looked at the view and took some pictures for 5 minutes and made it back down in 15. The air was very obscure again, so it looked like late evening though it was really a little before 5. I met a lady on her way up as I was going down but otherwise didn’t see anyone. I rode on again and stopped for a quick swim in the part of the lake that’s right by the road in the state land section. The bottom was mucky but the water was clean and nice, and cooled me off well. There was a car parked a bit up the road and a couple of people swimming there, and near Nobleboro I heard someone calling from a house I was passing who turned out to be one of the same people who had seen me there and was surprised that I had come so far since they had seen me.
I had planned to try going up Haskell Rd in Nobleboro to the state land there but decided I didn’t feel like a dirt road and wouldn’t really have time to appreciate anything I would find, so I pushed on a few more miles to Gray-Wilmurt Rd where I had camped two years ago. This piece of woods was full of all kinds of cute mushrooms, just like last time, but none that I could eat so I just looked at them. I rolled the bike and trailer far enough off the road to be legally camping and took the headlamp and camera down to the gorge. I climbed down in a safe spot and found a beautiful hanging garden of mosses and ferns near the bottom, but it was too dark under the trees to get a good picture. The gorge had a bit less water in it than the other time I was there, so I was able to wade and swim out into the middle and get a better view. The water in the middle of the still part is over my head, and it’s only knee deep in between the rocks lower down. I would like to explore it more fully in the daytime on a future trip as it’s a very pretty spot, but with the dark coming down I swam around a bit and then went back to the camp spot, set up my tent, ate supper and read and went to sleep.
In the morning I got out to the road just before 7, after almost forgetting to get a picture of a mossy stump I had seen near my campsite with a yellow birch growing out of the top. I wonder if in 50 years it will look like the one by Indian Lake. I had been told it would be a hot day with a west wind, and it was hot, but I was glad to have the wind since it kept me cooler even though it held me back a little. I did fine except for the few sections of road where I was heading north, when the wind didn’t help much, and then I could feel my temperature going up. I made it back to Swancott Mill at 11:45, which was 15 minutes before my goal, so I spent some extra time in the water there as well as eating lunch, and swam again briefly in Redfield where the road crosses the reservoir. I got home about 10 minutes to 3, having covered 76 miles or so. When I got in I found out that a heat advisory had been issued, and the thermometer showed a maximum temperature of 92, though it was down to 87 when I arrived. I actually made a better average speed on this leg of the trip (11.76 MPH) than on the other two legs which were both in the upper 10s. I think this was because of the elevation, probably. Overall I had a very pleasant trip, and I will plan to return to Indian Lake sometime, perhaps in a couple of years. The beach at the foot of Watch Hill has come to seem like home in a way, now that I have been there in 4 of the last 6 years, and the view from it seems to be permanently imprinted on my mind from having spent so much time looking at it.
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