March 16, 2016 by Jaclyn

A Storytelling Birthday Party

Well, here we go… it seems like only yesterday we were welcoming our baby boy to the world, and this past weekend I threw another first birthday party. This year has gone by so quickly, and we really wanted to do something special for our little guy, and to celebrate the fact that we made it through. Our first year as a family of four brought a lot of growing pains and also a lot of joy.

I started thinking about Nugget’s birthday party a couple of months ago. March is a tricky time for a birthday in upstate New York, because the weather is so iffy. Last year, when Nugget was born, we still had quite a lot of snow on the ground – when we came home from the hospital, I remember being greeted by a family of three foot tall snow rabbits just off the driveway. This year, it was sixty degrees and sunny – who’d have thunk? Still, I knew that if I planned a party at a park, it would be cold and probably freezing rain, because that’s how my luck runs.

I also wanted to do something a little different. We’ve been blessed with wonderful friends here and as a result, we’ve been to a fair few kids’ birthday parties in a number of different locations around town. We’ve celebrated at friends’ houses, at the YMCA, at a local nature preserve, and at a working farm. I knew that our townhouse was too small to host a group, so we’d have to go somewhere, but at the same time I didn’t want to copy any of our friends’ ideas. A bit of googling and I found the perfect place – Monkey See, Monkey Do – a children’s bookstore in Clarence, one of the Buffalo suburbs. We’d actually been to Monkey See, Monkey Do once before – on Christmas Eve morning, when they hosted a Polar Express story hour. It’s a gorgeous children’s bookstore, housed in a building that dates from the mid-nineteenth century (and still has its original walls and ceiling beams) and the book selection is beautifully curated. They host events and parties regularly, and they have two birthday packages available. I called them up, verified that our date was available, and immediately started talking details with the party coordinator. And a nature/garden-themed party was born.

The bookstore handled the cupcakes and I provided the rest of the food. The party was after lunch, so we went with an assortment of snacks. My favorite (Pinterest-found!) snack was the s’mores lollipops. They looked so cool and couldn’t have been easier. Just marshmallows impaled with a lolly stick, dipped in melted chocolate (done over a double boiler with a little cream) and rolled in graham cracker crumbs. Looked ten times harder than they were, and they were delicious.

I can’t say enough good things about the bookstore. The party package included a craft or two (they planned two) and a storyteller, plus the cupcakes and tea and coffee, and all of the paper products. The wonderful party planner had arranged a table with garden tools for the kids to decorate. (I’d told her that even though it was party for a one-year-old, she should gear the activities to three and four-year-olds, since Peanut and her friends made up the entire guest list.)

And after the kids had finished beading their spades (!!!) she had foam flowers to decorate, and then they got to put stickers on flowerpots and plant beans. I mean, really. How perfect is that activity for an early spring birthday?

(Obviously Nugget’s participation was limited, but Peanut and her friends had a ball.)

Don’t worry about the little guy, though. We had an activity for him, too. I brought his campfire from home, which is one of the favorite toys in our house. At $60 I thought it was a bit steep for a baby toy, but I can’t argue with the hours of entertainment that both Peanut and Nugget have gotten out of this thing.

After the crafts and cupcakes, Miss Kim – the owner of the store – read the kids a story. They had a selection of several books, all related to the gardening theme, on the table, and we chose Compost Stew. Kim read the book to the whole group; she’s a fabulous storyteller. (She was also the storyteller at the Polar Express story hour. Man, I wish my job involved reading stories to kids in a beautiful bookstore! #lifegoals)

After the story, we wrapped up the party. Nugget took Compost Stew home as the store’s birthday gift to him, and we picked up a few more books, too – Jumping Off Library Shelves for Peanut, and Bee-Bim Bop!, A Bear’s Year, and Forest Has a Song for our family library. Peanut’s friends each got to take a book home, too (and I felt a little guilty about having a party in a bookstore when one of Peanut’s pals suckered her mom into buying Princess Hamster – oops).

We headed back to our place with Nana and Grandad and did the rest of our gift-opening there. Nana and Grandad had Hilton Head souvenirs for both kids, and a mess of presents for Nugget for his birthday (including two that light up and make noise – poor form, grandparents). We mostly gave Nugget puzzles and books, because that’s how we roll. He got a few new board books from the BabyLit gang, a London opposites primer, and two gorgeous books about water and rocks, as well as his special gift from us – a beautiful Folio Society edition of Stuart Little. And because Nugget has to be Nugget, he also got some vehicles – wooden London taxi, police car and double-decker bus, and a new helicopter. Nana and Grandad also brought cars (and this cool rug to zoom them around on!), books, clothes and a couple of stuffed animals. So Nugget did quite well. I think he was psyched about his haul.

We spent the rest of Saturday afternoon and evening relaxing, but on Sunday morning the grandparents came back around and we all headed out to get some fresh air at Glen Park in Williamsville. I used to come to this park all the time when my Stroller Strides class met to work out there, but haven’t been in months (Stroller Strides ended last fall and hasn’t met since). I love Glen Park, but I did break out in cold sweats thinking about all the times I’ve sprinted up and down the switchback-laden path up that waterfall.

We weren’t at the park for hill repeats, though. We were there because it’s SPRING, and SPRING means DUCKS! Peanut was overjoyed that her feathered friends were back for the season.

I love ducks – they’re so adorable. This crowd wasn’t shy at all. There’s a sign instructing park visitors not to feed the wildlife, but I don’t think most people abide by it. These ducks have definitely gotten used to being fed by humans – they came right up to us wanting bread. (We didn’t have any, and didn’t feed them.) Peanut had a blast climbing up the rocks, running around on the grass, and checking out the new arrivals to the duck pond. And Nugget had a blast watching his sister play.

One more time – happy birthday, little boy! You’re my heart’s joy and I hope you had a wonderful weekend. We loved celebrating you, and we’re so glad you’re here.

March 9, 2016 by Jaclyn

Twelve Months Hiking Project: Final 2015 Recap

Well, we did it! Twelve months of hiking in a different place each month! We managed to get ourselves outside and on the trails not only when the weather was nice or it was easy to get out the door, but also during the frigid cold of last winter in Buffalo, and even when we had a newborn baby. I’m really proud that we made a commitment and stuck to it, as a family, all year long (even if it was a fun commitment to explore our local hiking trails and get out hiking on vacations). It was a wonderful year, full of big breaths of fresh air, warm sunshine on our faces, and lots of joy as we explored together as a family. And in case you missed any of our recaps, I’ve gathered links to each of them here.

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January: Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve (Cheektowaga, New York)

February: Knox Farm State Park (East Aurora, New York)

March: Como Lake Park (Lancaster, New York)

April: Times Beach Nature Preserve (Buffalo, New York)

May: Darien Lakes State Park (Darien Center, New York)

June: Sprague Brook Park (Glenwood, New York)

July: Great Falls National Park (Great Falls, Virginia)

August: Eternal Flame Trail, Chestnut Ridge Park (Orchard Park, New York)

September: Niagara Falls State Park (Niagara Falls, New York) – with Rebecca!

October: Letchworth State Park (Castile, New York)

November: Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park (Estes Park, Colorado)

December: Tifft Nature Preserve (Buffalo, New York)

Happy trails, indeed! We put feet on so many beautiful trails last year. Here’s to another year of fabulous hiking in 2016!

February 17, 2016 by Jaclyn

Reinstein Woods: Fall 2015

Here we go – our final seasonal hike at Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve! (Slowly, slowly, I’m catching up to 2016 – of course, by the time I do catch finish recapping 2015 fun, I’ll have so many new things to tell you all about that I’ll never get there. Well, I’m doing my best.) Anyway, as longtime readers may remember, for the past two years we have been enjoying a family tradition of hiking in the same park at least once in each season, so we could see how our favorite places changed throughout the year. In 2014 we did our seasonal hikes at Tifft Nature Preserve, and for 2015 we moved on over to Reinstein Woods! It’s a lovely little pocket of wilderness not far from our old house, so it was nice and convenient.

We visited Reinstein on a lovely crisp day in November, the weekend before we headed out to Colorado for an extended Thanksgiving visit to my brother Dan and sister-in-law Danielle. It was a perfect way to stretch our legs before a week of almost daily hiking.

I love the little ponds at Reinstein. The water was sparkling – the park put on its prettiest face for our final seasonal walk there (although not our final walk ever – we’ll be back for sure).

Peanut, as you can see, was dressed in her most rugged attire. What – don’t you hike in a pink tutu and glitter Mary Janes?

We strolled down the wooded path and out into this lovely clearing. The wind was blowing the tall grasses so it looked like the field was dancing. So beautiful!

I love hiking with my cuddle bug! Nugget was cozy in the Ergo, snuggled up to me. I’m so proud that we have made a point of getting him out and into nature since he was a brand new baby. Both of my kids are growing up on the hiking trails, and I love it.

Until next time, Reinstein Woods! You’re a small park, but you sure are a pretty one.

A few people have wanted to know if we are planning to do another round of seasonal hiking in 2016, and I think that we are. Steve and I have talked about not being sure that it really fits with what 2016 is looking like for us – not that we won’t be hiking, because we absolutely will, but just that to set a goal to hike in one place multiple times over the course of an entire year is a lot of structure for where we are in our lives right now. But we both agreed that we like this project, so I’m going to go ahead and say that we’re going to try to do a 2016 seasonal hiking project this year, and our goal park is – Sprague Brook! I have loved Sprague Brook every time we have been there, and we both agreed it would be a fun one to hike seasonally. Watch for a winter hike post coming soon!

Have you ever done a seasonal hiking project?

February 5, 2016 by Jaclyn

Twelve Months Hiking Project: Tifft Nature Preserve (December 2015)

We squeezed in our last and final hike of 2015 on Boxing Day at Tifft Nature Preserve! It felt good to get outside into the fresh air, move our feet, and just decompress, breathe and be together after all the holiday craziness and oh-no-we-forgot and can-you-believe-she, etc. I actually felt that hiking on Boxing Day was the most Christmassy part of our Christmas. We cut through the insanity and the sugar and just focused on each other. It was so nice.

As you can see, Peanut was promoted to full big-kid hiker on this outing! No backpack – she’s all grown up. We’ll probably still use it for longer or more technically challenging hikes, but it was good to know that we were able to let her hike on her own and still get a good walk in. Following directions isn’t her strong suit right now (hey, she’s three) but she did surprisingly well. I was proud of her.

Nugget was bundled up in his snowsuit and hanging out in his customary spot – the Ergo.

Knowing that we had a small hiker on foot, we decided to cut to the chase, hit our favorite spots and then get going. Better to keep it short and sweet than to drag out a hike past Peanut’s tolerance and end up negotiating a tantrum on the trail.

Obviously, the boardwalk is the most essential spot to visit! I love wetlands and this spot reminds me of some boardwalk hiking that we used to do in a few favorite spots in Virginia.

Such a serene spot! I love Tifft.

We got a special treat on our walk back toward the car – sightings of a few friends! Some deer:

And a whole flock of black-capped chickadees!

(I wish I’d gotten a better picture. I will really miss having Nugget in the Ergo when the time comes to transition him to the backpack, but one consolation will be that I’ll be able to use my big camera and my zoom lens again on our walks! Expect lots of bird pictures when that day comes.)

We had such a fun time walking in Tifft on Boxing Day. We’ve spent so much time there and it’s grown to be one of my favorite Buffalo spots. (Funny coincidence – a few weeks ago we attended a birthday party at Tifft and Nugget wore the same little foxy pajamas he’s got on in these pictures! I guess that’s his Tifft uniform.)

Full circle! Part of me can’t believe that we actually found a way to hit the trails at least once in every month, in a different spot, all year long. It was definitely a commitment. But having made that goal really helped when we occasionally got to the last weekend in a month – we knew we had to get out there, and we were never sorry that we did. As for whether I’m going to repeat the goal this year and try to hike in twelve different spots, the answer is – nope. Sadly, I think we’ve pretty much exhausted most of the reasonable family-friendly hikes in our area. There might be a few places we haven’t been yet, but not enough to support another year of trying to hike in a different place every month. Of course that doesn’t mean we’re quitting hiking – on the contrary! It’s our favorite way to relax and be active together as a family, so you can expect lots more hiking talk and pictures of our outdoor adventures to come, just not in quite such a structured way. And as for our project to hike in one park in all four seasons, I think we are going to try to do that again, and we’re thinking of Sprague Brook Park. So stay tuned!

Here’s to adventure! Happy trails, my friends.

December 11, 2015 by Jaclyn

Twelve Months Hiking Project: Letchworth State Park (October 2015)

Twelve months of hiking continues! I’m way behind on recaps – but not to worry, I did the hike in October; it’s just that I’m not writing it up until now. I saved Letchworth for October because I expected the foliage would be spectacular. And while we missed peak, it was still pretty fabulous.

Anyway, let’s look at pretty pictures of waterfalls.

When we visited Letchworth with our friends Zan and Paul, back in August of 2014, we walked up the gorge and checked out one waterfall. I wanted to see a different part of the park this time, so we targeted the other two major waterfalls.

It was a bit dreary and chilly out, but no matter – we bundled up and started our hike with the central waterfall.

(Note Nugget’s pretty purple jacket. I had actually forgotten his little sweatshirt that he was going to wear, but Peanut had an extra fleece, so he’s wearing that. It fit disturbingly well considering she is three years old and he was seven months at the time.)

We headed up a pretty path strewn with leaves, admiring the colors that still remained on the trees…

And up to one of the more breathtaking sights in Western New York.

I love waterfalls.

Back along the gorge, checking out more scenery and pretty fall colors.

We had such a nice (albeit a bit chilly) walk in Letchworth. I wish we hadn’t missed the peak leaf season – but even so, it was lovely.

(Oh, yeah – Letchworth was recently voted America’s favorite state park! I’m still partial to the Adirondack Park, myself, but Letchworth is pretty great. Congrats to them!)

Anyone else get any good leaf peeping in before the season ended?

November 13, 2015 by Jaclyn

Twelve Months Hiking Project: Niagara Falls State Park (September 2015)

Looks like I’ve gotten pretty far behind in recapping our monthly hikes – here it is November, and I haven’t even told you about September’s hike yet! But not to worry – we’re still doing the hikes (I have a great one for October, which I’ll share next week) – I just have to find a free day to post about them.

We waited until the end of the month for our September explorations, because we had a special guest in town – my best friend, Rebecca! Rebecca’s major program at our college was celebrating its centennial and was hosting a big conference, and she wanted to attend and do some networking, but the flights from Virginia (where she lives) to Ithaca were prohibitively expensive. But I suggested she look at flight options in and out of Buffalo, because it’s a bigger airport and might have better deals and more options, and then she could use us as a crash pad on her way to and from Ithaca. I was right about the ticket prices – Rebecca scored a reasonably priced fare, and I scored a couple of evenings and an entire day with my best friend! She spent all of Sunday with us after the conference and flew home on the following Monday morning. I wanted to show her the best that Buffalo has to offer, and I knew a hike had to be part of it, because Rebecca is just as avid a hiker as Steve and I are. When she specifically requested to see Niagara Falls, I planned an outing for us to Niagara Falls State Park.

So, I’m sorry to say, the view was kind of a disappointment. We went to the main viewing platform right by the Top of the Falls restaurant, and the entire span was blocked by chain-link fence and construction vehicles. We could barely see anything. Rebecca climbed on top of a partition and said she got a good view, but I couldn’t climb because I was wearing this guy…

Something super strange – I texted my friend Zan, who was also hosting visitors from Virginia that weekend – her sister Elissa, brother-in-law, and nephew – and told her to skip the Falls because the view was a bummer. They decided to risk it and go the next day anyway, and Zan reported back that the view was just fine. Maybe the construction was only on the day we were there? I don’t know, but I’m glad that Zan and her family had a better experience than we did!

Not that we had a bad experience. Rebecca insisted that she saw what she wanted and that the Falls were plenty majestic, so I’m really glad that she wasn’t disappointed.

After viewing the Falls – what we could see, anyway – we headed into the park along a nice paved trail. Upriver from the Falls, there were plenty of cool rapids.

Reminded me a little bit of Great Falls when you walk upriver into Riverbend Park, although the waters here were wider and more dramatic. It was pretty cool to see.

There was also a pretty view of the City of Niagara Falls.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, no, it wasn’t just Rebecca, me, and Nugget on the hike. Steve and Peanut were with us as well. We attempted a family picture, but as usual, half of the family refused to look at the camera. Oh, well! We never quite get it, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. Someday I’ll catch them both cooperating at the same time.

Bye, Niagara Falls! I’m sure we’ll be seeing you again.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, we refueled with Yotam Ottolenghi’s autumn souffle after the hike.

Winning.

Have you ever been to Niagara Falls?

October 28, 2015 by Jaclyn

The Fall List 2015

Fall! My favorite season! I love pretty much everything about fall. Although I can’t get enough summer heat – it’s true – I also love the cooler days, the bright blue skies and flaming colored leaves, the crisp evenings, the excuse to sip cocoa and watch the stars with a warm blanket wrapped around my shoulders and Steve next to me… I love that fall includes my birthday, Halloween and Thanksgiving, and that it’s the long lead-in to the Christmas season. I love apples, pumpkin spice lattes, warm socks, and the return of hockey season. (I do not love the cold rains, or the return of football season. But even in the fall, one cannot have everything.) And even though fall is half over now, I’m still going to muster up a to-do list. Indulge me?

Take the kids apple and pumpkin picking.
Visit my brother and sister-in-law in Colorado.
Drink hot cider from Main Street Coffee Roastery.
Host family and friends for Nugget’s baptism.
Read some Sarah Vowell.
Bake pear-almond bread.
Have a zoo playdate with friends.
Take Peanut trick-or-treating (for real!) for the first time EVER.
Re-read Anne of the Island or Emily of New Moon (or both!).
Finish our our year of hiking in a different place every month and take our last seasonal walk through Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve.

Not a bad list, right? I think it’s totally achievable, and if I get even half of these things done it’ll be a happy fall season indeed. What’s on your fall to-do list?

September 25, 2015 by Jaclyn

Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve: Summer 2015

Summer might be over, but I still have lots to tell you about our adventures, because we really lived it up this year! Of course, we couldn’t let the season escape us without a visit to Reinstein Woods for our seasonal hike. (See our previous hikes: winter and spring.) Last year, when we did our seasonal hikes at Tifft Nature Preserve, we actually squeezed our summer hike into mid-September, but since it wasn’t the equinox just yet I called it good. This year we did a little better, getting out for our summer visit to Reinstein on Labor Day.

And what a day for it! The sun was shining, the sky was a deep blue, and the woods were a riot of gorgeous white flowers.

Our first stop was the lily pond, which proved to be aptly named. I think there were more lily pads than pond.

Steve and Peanut immediately spotted a family of turtles sunning themselves on a log. So cute!

Lily pad closeup:

Next we continued on into the nature preserve and made for our regular loop around one of the larger ponds. This one was also a riot of lily pads.

Gorgeous! Reinstein Woods is a small nature preserve, but it feels much bigger than it is and it manages to pack a lot of beauty into a relatively small parcel of land.

I made the wrong shoe choice. It was summer, it was warm, and I thought it would be fun to wear my FiveFingers… which it would have been had the trail not been entirely made of large pieces of gravel. For some reason I completely forgot that most of the trails were rocky. I mainly stuck to the grass.

We attempted a family portrait – total fail. Neither kid is looking at the camera, and we could be anywhere. Well, we will keep trying.

Two out of four. Not bad.

On our way out of the nature preserve, as has become our little tradition when walking at Reinstein, we let Peanut loose in the nature play area for awhile. She had a ball running around, picking sticks up off the ground and waving them around (some things never change!) and holding court in the little shelter.

Oh, and riding on turtles. As one does.

Nugget, as usual, cuddled up against me and watched his sister run and play. Next year he’ll be wobbling after her as fast as his little legs can take him, but for now he’s still my snuggle bug.

Eventually he let us know he was over the whole experience and was ready to head home and have his lunch. And thus began the delicate negotiation (cajoling, threats) to get Peanut out of the play area. She does love it there…

That’s my little Dirt Barbie! Heh. Such fun to visit Reinstein again for a third season. We have one more season to go, and then we’ll have to decide on a spot for seasonal hikes in 2016 – unbelievable!

Who else has been hitting the trails recently?

September 23, 2015 by Jaclyn

Finn McCool’s 4 Mile Odyssey

(Source: Finn McCool.)

So, continuing my documented poor decision-making when it comes to running, last month (man, am I ever behind) I checked another box off my list of dumb things I’ve been wanting to do – I ran my first obstacle race. Yeah! And what would have been a fun, albeit slightly silly, escapade was probably downright stupid when you throw in the whole postpartum, exhausted, toddler sleep regression thing. I was not exactly at my best when I walked up to the start line – night after night of four hours of sleep really takes it out of you. Nugget had a particularly rough night the night before the race – I was up with him for hours, crashed with him on the couch around 3:00 a.m., and actually fell asleep nursing at 4:30 – yawwwwwwwwn. But I had plans to meet up with friends at the start line (I’d only registered for the race after confirming that I could run with a group, because I knew I would need help with some of those obstacles) so off I went. And I was excited – nervous, but excited.

(Source: Finn McCool.)

I met up with my group – two friends from (our dear departed) Stroller Strides, plus one husband. (Having a guy in our group was key – he gave all three of us lots of boosts and help with the obstacles. Thanks again, dude!)

We crowded into the starting corral and immediately decided to skip the first obstacle. The map doesn’t show it, but there was some sort of bounce house rope climb thingy about fifteen feet after the start line – what?! None of us felt like stopping and waiting in line four seconds after the start, so we ran around it and headed for the first obstacle of our course – a slip ‘n slide! I was so excited about the (three!) slip ‘n slides on the course. I haven’t done one of those since I was a kid. I ran and bellyflopped and laughed my butt off.

We headed through a couple more obstacles and eventually skidded to a stop at the end of a long line of runners waiting for the “lily pad” creek-crossing obstacle. The creek-crossing was, to describe it poorly, a line of foam mats floating on top of Cazenovia Creek. We were expected to run across them and jump from mat to mat. So not happening! Every single runner was falling into the creek. This got me excited, since it was hot and sunny and a swim sounded GOOD. I made it over the first two mats before face-planting on the third, and falling off on my attempt to leap to the fourth. I actually went over my head in the creek, which felt awesome. What was not awesome was running on waterlogged shoes for the rest of the race, but that was inevitable.

From the creek-crossing we headed through a network of trails, stopping occasionally for obstacles like a cargo net, tires and more slip ‘n slides. I skipped several obstacles – I gave most of them the old college try, but some were just not happening in my current postpartum weakling state. (Next year I’ll do more strength training going into this event.)

Eventually our group split up. Our married couple teammates headed on ahead, while the other mom and I ran together and talked. It was good to have a friend on the course, pushing me to keep going. My buddy is a smoking fast runner and she kept up a stream of motivation – I was so grateful to her. Eventually, though, I told her to go on ahead. The strain of running with waterlogged shoes and clothes was getting to be too much for me, and I hated the thought that I was holding her back. I told her I’d see her at the finish, and off she went, while I dug deep and did my best to finish strong.

The final obstacle was a gigantic mud pit, over which ropes were strung to keep the runners on their bellies. I plopped down on my hands and knees and squelched through the mud, ducking under the ropes. Finally, after getting basically covered in mud, I popped up and squished the final few feet to the finish line. I looked like I’d been bathing in mud, which I guess I kind of had?

Worst. Spa. Ever.

I headed to the “hose shower” – which was basically standing around in a bunch of mist and really didn’t get me very clean at all – then collected my super cool pint glass and my FINNisher’s medal and squished my way back to my car.

So, this race was a BLAST. It was hard and it took me for-ev-er (don’t ask for my time, because I don’t know it! – definitely over an hour, though) but it was such a good time. I drove home (listening to my favorite Another Mother Runner podcast, natch) with the biggest smile on my face, and told Steve that he has to do this event with me next year. I mean, how many chances do you get, as an adult, to slide on your belly down a slip-n-slide, run over foam mats floating on a creek, scale a cargo net, and roll around in mud like a piglet? It’s basically a must-do. And yeah, it was outside my comfort zone (way outside) but I’m SO glad I did it!

Now to see if my running shoes are salvageable…

Have you ever run an obstacle race or mud run? Did you manage to stay clean? Ha!

September 9, 2015 by Jaclyn

Twelve Months Hiking Project: The Eternal Flame (August 2015)

I’m really falling behind on recapping our summer adventures – working on catching up, I swear! – but this one is a good one. I’ve spent lots of time looking into various hiking activities around Western New York, and one thing that I’ve heard over and over is that if there’s one hike that is the “quintessential” Buffalo hike – one hike that you simply must do in WNY – it’s the Eternal Flame Trail at Chestnut Ridge Park. I’ve been itching to do this trek, but the more I looked into it, the more I became convinced that we couldn’t make it work with the kids. The hike is short but technical, and it involves climbing down a ravine and walking through a creek. (Just the previous month, a kid fell into the ravine and died there – so it’s no joke, and I didn’t feel it was safe for the babies.) If the kids were older, I’d love to have taken them, but I was not thrilled with the idea of all that technical walking while the littles are still in carriers. So we’ve put it off.

The stars finally aligned for us to take the hike in mid-August. We arranged for grandparent babysitters and made plans with our friends Zan and Paul for an adults-only hiking expedition. Eternal Flame Falls, here we come!

The hike itself, as I mentioned, is quite short – less than a mile to the falls, a little bit over a mile round-trip. After some initial confusion about where the trailhead was located (there are a couple of options, and we found ourselves at different parking lots – oops!) we rendezvoused with Zan and Paul and set off into the woods.

The tree cover began almost immediately and most of the hike was done under a lovely shady canopy.

My favorite hiking buddy! Can’t believe we’ve been official legal hiking buddies for ten years! (We’ve been hiking together since the very beginning of our relationship – our third date was a hike to Butternut Falls outside of Ithaca.)

Other favorite hiking buddies: hi, Dumanskys!

So, as you can see, once we got down into the ravine we found ourselves hiking along a beautiful creek.

Boots on the ground! I felt very “earth mama” in my shorts and high hiking boots – I usually wear my shoe-style hiking boots for summer hikes, but I knew we’d be stepping in water and mud, so I went with my waterproof boots.

Decision time! We got to a point where the trail looked a little iffy, and Zan decided to take off her shoes and socks and wade through the creek. (Lots of people were doing this.) Steve and Paul braved the trail and climbed over what looked like a rather slippery shale slide (Steve said it wasn’t that bad). After waffling for a minute, I decided to join Zan in the creek, rather than risk falling on the slide.

And the boots came off! Although they’re waterproof and I had no problem sloshing through the shallow parts, some of the creek was above ankle depth, so I went barefoot for that part. Also, it was a hot day and the cool creek water felt AMAZING.

Zan laughed at me for taking so many pictures of my feet. But they were just so happy! One more…

Okay, enough foot pictures. We sloshed our way through the creek, and before I knew it we were approaching the grand destination – Eternal Flame Falls.

The Eternal Flame is located in a small grotto inside the waterfall. Natural gas seepage allows for a flame to be lit, and the grotto protects the flame from the falling water. The result is a really unique, stunning piece of natural scenery.

The falls: see the flame? No? How about now?

It was a truly amazing sight.

We all took turns checking out the flame. (The trail was crowded so we couldn’t linger as long as I would have liked.)

One last look before heading back …

Just stunning.

I could have stayed all day, but we had to let the other hikers have a look… and get home to the kids. I will definitely be bringing them on this hike when they’re older and can negotiate the terrain on their own two feet.

On our way back, we spotted this other waterfall! So much beauty on this hike, really.

We headed back up the ravine – a relatively steep climb, but it was short.

And before I knew it, the hike was over! It ended way too soon – I had such a wonderful time. Beautiful scenery, fresh air, cool water, and fabulous friends. What more could you ask for?

Thanks again for the hike, Zan and Paul! We love hiking with you guys – and it was fun to do a grownups-only outing for once! Looking forward to leaf-peeping at Letchworth with you guys in just a few short weeks.

Is there a “must-do” hike in your area, too? Have you tried it?

covered in flour

the adventures of a wandering reader…

Buffalo