We awoke early, made coffee, tea, and hot oatmeal. It had been a cold night and we were ready to move.

Along the way, we met some interesting trees. Emily was infatuated with Striped Maples.

And we couldn’t resist a picture with this happy fellow:

There were interesting bark patterns… some with a broken mosaic feel to them like this one:

And others (which I apparently neglected to photograph) whose bark we could only describe with the very Dr. Seussian word “gruvulous”. These were enormously tall trees and without binoculars we couldn’t see what kind of leaves they had. We found one down, though, so Emily took off along the trunk to get to the branches in hopes of finding leaves:

Alas, the tree had been dead long enough that there were no leaves… The mystery remains… If only I knew where Emily put that tree book…

By the time we reached the new forest of tiny trees, we had cell phone reception and called for a ride. We suspected it would take longer for the car to arrive than it would for us to walk the rest of the way out of the woods, so we stopped for a little coffee break.

Well, I had coffee… Deb sketched. Emily snacked…

And here we are… tired, sore, but feeling pretty proud of ourselves for completing Map 1 of the Finger Lakes Trail!

(Can you see the gears turning in my head… “What next?”)

Day 3 <– Click