[jontow]

There.. bet that title got your attention.



100 (I cheated: it was only 97, left the coleman pad at home and my butt got sick of the TW seat) mile ride, about 50% dirt, 50% pavement. Temperature outside when I started the ride was about 38F. Got up as high as 52F during mid-day, and was around 45F when I got home. Beautifully sunny all day.



Started by finding a cemetery that I hadn't seen before, on a short dirt road not too far from home. It's called the White Church Cemetery, and the stones average in the mid-1800s; very very few newer than 1910.

Next stop was down a dirt road I hadn't been on since I was a kid; I found a seldom-used spur trail off it that lead to a beaver pond; rather nice scenery if you like that sort of thing.

Back on the main road, another hop to another dirt road, which is mostly hunting clubs and private land on the sides, but there is a nice State Forest area at the far end. Along this road is a corner with a sheer cliff face on the left. I was disappointed, some time in the last 2 or so years, they replaced the old bronze white tail deer statue at the top with a wooden sign (you can't read it, but it says "Stillwater Club", who owns the vast majority of the land in that region). Too bad, the deer was pretty awesome. I didn't take a picture of it, but they built a long walking bridge across the river to more easily get to their club.

Further down the same road, we get to the entrance to the Stone Dam Trail (state forest, as mentioned). Imagine my surprise when I see this:

The logging theme continues for a while, now, as I photo-documented quite a lot of the region I remembered looking a "little different" when I drove up there a few years ago. This logging was all done last year, I've been told.

At this point, I'm *miles* out into the wild here, and I park on top of the biggest hill around to have a look and a snack. Imagine my surprise, again, when I find a beer container museum next to a rock about 150ft off the trail; obviously used by 2 or 3 generations as a hunting watch point. All of these were found in a 3ft radius around the rock. I'll do my best to get these in order by age:

.. To be continued in the next post, apparently I posted too many images

 

[jontow]

Rode a few more miles, then doubled back and found a nice spot to eat my sandwich (shaken, not stirred). I'm sure someone who's carried a sandwich around in a tailbag on a TW offroad can commiserate. Anyway, rode up a rather rough hill and found a nice vantage point and a big stump to sit on.

It's hard to get an idea of the perspective and size of the parcel of land you can see in this photo, but let's say when you're standing where I was, looking down at all of it, you feel pretty damned small.

After pondering for a while (and finishing my sandwich), I wandered on again, not stopping so much for pictures as I maybe should have. Next stop was quite a few miles down the road, and at the very far end of the ride. A dirt road near my childhood home, with an old steel deck bridge over the brook. As it would turn out, I was preceded by Vickie, Nicky, Ken, and Eric.

A deceiving amount of whitewater, looking downstream:

I stopped taking pictures at this point, preferring to get through a very windy section of the journey, all slab back toward home. TW did great at 55mph for about 10 miles with a nasty headwind; and I played on the ATV trails near home for an hour or so.



The whole collection of photos is here: http://bd.zenbsd.net/~jontow/phone/tw200/2012-04-06/thumbs.html

 

[Rainman]

Looks like a neat ride. I liked the beer museum.

 

[admiral]

Looked like you had a pretty good ride. I looked at your other photo's and you have some winners there too. Though there's plenty of logging out here, I always have a "holy cow" reaction when I go back to an area I haven't been in years only to see the tree's gone due to forest fires. Thanks for sharing.

 

[jontow]

Was a pretty good ride all around; a bit chilly, but dressed for the occasion in full carharts. We're actually under fire weather warnings for the past few weeks due to our overly mild winter. I haven't heard of any wildfires yet, but I know a few people that have lost houses, garages, barns, etc.

 

[Gerry]

It is interesting to see the differences in 'our' riding regions. What frequently tickles me is looking at pictures presented by those half way round the world and thinking, that looks just like a place I ride. The video recently presented by our Hong Kong representative reminded me alot of the time I spent churning up dirt in an area we use to call the Hayward hill climbs.



Jontow, nice pictures. When back East, I have been amazed the the density of the forests. In general, the trees are lots smaller than in the areas I frequent, but boy are they packed tight. My guess would be that stepping off the trail for only a few feet can present you with the very real chance of getting lost. In 'my' forest, it is not uncommon to walk thru the forest and still see the ridge a few miles off. Seeing those thinned sections reminded me of home.. Bet it will look very different when the trees leaf-up. Take care & thanks. Gerry



What remains after a big fire and then salvage logging:

 

[operose]

Looks like a nice ride

Did you stop at the top of the ridge? I hope they did not destroy the "blackberry field" on the back side. Last year I must've eaten a gallon of thumb-size berries in a half hour, and returned home with another gallon water jug full



The bridge across the creek at bottom of the back side was in no shape for the toyota to traverse, but did find 15 railroad spikes on a rotten stump. Would like to return with the bike to make it across the creek and back into stone dam

 

[Batman1USA]

If you're not a GeoCacher, you should be. You more than likely passed several on your trip. This adds to the fun and adventure. Just go to geocaching.com and punch in your zip code in "play" "find a goecache" tab. You will see a map with them all over the world.

 

[jontow]

Captain D: I used to be a geocacher, until my Garmin handheld got stolen out of my Jeep. I haven't decided what to replace it with yet, so I haven't bought a new one. Also.. I keep spending all of my money on the motorcycle instead

I suspect there aren't as many up in there as you'd imagine, and with the logging, I'd bet most caches were destroyed or disrupted and removed. I'll have a look to see what's around the area though for next time.

 

[operose]

Actually it looks like there are a ton of them... Not in the "immediate" area perhaps, but very close. We should try to find some of them

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?lat=44.37588&lng=-75.06918&dist=100

 

[Batman1USA]

i just use a cheap Garmin e-trex. Gets you in the general area and under $100.00. MICRO's suck!

Anyhow, enjoyed the photo's and imagined geocaches at every stop.

 

[operose]

Jontow's pic:

Mine from August of 2011:

 

[operose]

A little bit of scale:

Gratuitous truck shot:

 

[jontow]

Just for novelty:

A quick overlay of the august 2011 and april 2012 pics that we took.. completely unplanned, but somehow from almost the exact same spot and nearly the same angle, with similar quality cameras (our cellphones).



Awesome

 

[Gerry]

Operose, in those shots, the forest does not look recently logged. Is this then how the 'woods' look in your general area? My comment was made on the assumption that once 'back East' the forest took on a very different look. Though I have been through Rochester,Albany and Syracuse, perhaps my memory is still fixed in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. It just seemed that should I need to leave the pavement for a restroom break, I better not venture to far into the woods as I often found it to be very, very dense and lots of foliage at eye level obstructing the ability to orient myself.



Your Toyota looks to be a very capable offpavement rig. I like, but kind-of chuckled at your door mod. I did something similar to a VW beatle I used to explore the outback. The welded door help strengthen the pan after I cut off the roof. Thought it looked cool, kind of Jeep like. Little did I anticipate the problems that it would present to the Wife and my less flexible peers. My list of riding buddies dropped off dramatically as getting into the rig required some serious leg-lifting. Adding the folding step helped. Gerry

 

[operose]

Operose, in those shots, the forest does not look recently logged. Is this then how the 'woods' look in your general area? My comment was made on the assumption that once 'back East' the forest took on a very different look. Though I have been through Rochester,Albany and Syracuse, perhaps my memory is still fixed in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. It just seemed that should I need to leave the pavement for a restroom break, I better not venture to far into the woods as I often found it to be very, very dense and lots of foliage at eye level obstructing the ability to orient myself.



Your Toyota looks to be a very capable offpavement rig. I like, but kind-of chuckled at your door mod. I did something similar to a VW beatle I used to explore the outback. The welded door help strengthen the pan after I cut off the roof. Thought it looked cool, kind of Jeep like. Little did I anticipate the problems that it would present to the Wife and my less flexible peers. My list of riding buddies dropped off dramatically as getting into the rig required some serious leg-lifting. Adding the folding step helped. Gerry

I believe the logging was done winter/spring of 2010/11 and my pics were from august 2011. Most of the woods around here have been logged, and many look like this. There are however giant stands of evergreen trees that look nothign like this and can only be crawled through. This is not a representative forest exactly, because it has been logged so heavily every 5 years or so. It is a "well managed" forest, as opposed to a natural forest.



As for the door, it still opens... The truck is too tall to not have functional doors, although I have crawled through it often when buried to the sills in mud or snow

It generally comes off for the winter and replaced with the stock door though



Very cool VW, by the way. Dad got us one when we were kids that was just a floor pan and a plumbing pipe "roll cage" - it cost him a jug of whiskey in a trade

 

[evan]

Looks like great place to ride! thanks for the pics.

 

[jontow]

We're north of the adirondack mountains, which I'll note is a bit of a different environment than in/south of them. We have less big hills and more normal sized hills

Really depends on the area, though, some of it can be a bit jungle-like with eyebrow height foliage; most of it here is not. Most is knee/waist height at most, and then the trees get fairly tall. Most of this area was logged off at one point or another, and so the trees all grew back at the same time: they're stretching to soak up the same light as the rest of them.



Ultimately, this area is populated almost solely because of the logging that occurred so long ago. We have a lot of family that has been involved in logging; I don't begrudge them for that. I just get sick of NYS and its residents complaining that ATVs tear up the trails, while the state is busy signing a contract for a skidder to drive right through all of it with a big cut-and-stack head on it.

 

[Bagger]

Nice report/pics! Thanks!



Bag

 

[Ssokzon]

Amen to the comment about people restricting/complaining about off road vehicles... Here in PA in the Allegheny National Forest the DCNR has gated many of the old logging/oil roads and closed them to motorized traffic. Meanwhile the loggers and oil and natural gas drillers continue to literally bulldoze new roads all over the place in order to harvest the trees and minerals. The government owns the surface but private owners own the minerals beneath the ground and have the right to access them. So ATVs and jeeps and all the rest are forbidden except on a few designated trails while the companies decimate the woods with heavy machinery. No- I don't begrudge the latter because we need the resources, nor do I think the damage will be long term because nature has a remarkable way of healing. Many of the original roads and wells from 100 years ago cannot even be seen anymore. But let's limit the hypocrisy...I like to hike too and believe that the woods can accommodate Everyone if managed properly!