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My First Road Trip in 2014 Was Adventurous But not Productive

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My First Road Trip in 2014 Was Adventurous But not Productive

My First Road Trip in 2014 Was Adventurous But not Productive
On February 15 2014 a weekend road trip was planned to the Catskill Region.

This was not a very good start to my year for a road trip! But, as I mentioned in my prior post, I would share my road trips for the 2014 season.

To start off the morning we left late. So right off, I had to cut off some of the first few stops, as we had our destination planned to where we had to be by end of day. So we jumped on the thruway and headed on our way.

So the very next unforeseen issue was the gps did not want to cooperate and follow the route entered into it. I so dislike when that happens. But, as always I had all my paperwork and maps with me. This brought us even farther out of the way, and farther behind time.

So we get off the thruway (after I noticed we had missed the prior exits) and start heading south. We had no knowledge that we were driving right into a snowstorm and un-plowed roads. There were trucks and cars off the road. I was getting very nervous, and in my mind saying to turn around and go home.

So next, after barely making up and over some hills we decided that we had enough and was going to head home, only to come upon a truck off the road, and we had to stop and wait till the road was cleared to let us go by. What gave us some humor in this situation was we were driving a car, kept it on the road, but sitting there watching the one truck trying to get the other truck out of the ditch, and that truck got stuck too.

After the vehicles had moved out of the way, we continued on only to find a van off the road and a young girl sitting there. So we pulled over to see if we could be of help. We ended up leaving her van there stuck, and took her to her families home where they could help her. We headed for home!!

Needless to say, all that traveling and time and never seen a thing! We did try to find a couple of locations on the front end of the trip, but could not locate them or it is possible with the snow, they were not visible or frozen or anything is possible.

Flat Creek in Montgomery County, is on private property, but I have still yet to find it.

Buttermilk Falls, may also be known as Yatesville Falls in Montgomery County, we went around the entire park and there was no signs of anyone hiking into the falls and the snow was to deep to attempt without snowshoes.

We found Panther Creek Trailhead in Schoharie County, but again, it looked as though no one attempting the hike in. This particular location has gotten the best of me. I have tried on different occasions to get back to the location and seemed to just keep going around it. Burnt-Rossman Hill State Forest is quite a large area down there. It is now almost a year later and I have obtained more detailed information on this.

It was at this point we gave up the trip and headed  home.

Our next roadtrip of the season made up for this one! Stay tuned…….

12-31-2014 End of Year Update

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12-31-2014 End of Year Update

12-31-2014 End of Year Update
As some of you may already know, this website was created as a personal goal of mine.

I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of Adirondack Magazine “The Adirondacker” by John Haywood.

I am grateful for new connections with these people also:

Russell Dunn, here is a link to the many books he has to offer “Books by Russell Dunn”

Dean Goss, “World Waterfall Database” and “Waterfalls of the Northeastern United States”

Edward Smathers, “Dig the Falls”

I will be forever grateful to David Schryver of Northern New York Waterfalls. In December of 2012, Mr. Schryver had helped me to set up and create my first website. I had absolute no knowledge in all the bottom underlying technical stuff that goes into building a website from scratch.

In June of 2014, due unanswered technical issues, I had to start over, and created this website. I have learned so much in doing this project. I still have much to learn in design and layout to make it much easier for the readers. I am personally proud of my accomplishment so far.

So this brings me to say, that I really need to get back to my main purpose of waterfalls. I started out going to well known waterfalls back about 1986 or so, give or take. I really got into them more so after the year 2000. I had made a personal goal to see at least 30 waterfalls a year. Over the past maybe 4 to 5 years I have more then doubled that goal amount. I guess you could call this my bucket list. My goal is to see as many waterfalls as I can before my time is up. In the meantime I am in hopes that either one of my children or my grandchildren will continue this on with their families. The purpose of this website is to share with others, my road trips, that I have taken with family and friends. You will see a lot of them in my photos.

Years ago, I did not have the resources available, that we have today. I had paper maps, books, and word of mouth. The world of internet is full of available resources. I spend a lot of time planning my road trips, whether they be for one day or a whole weekend or a whole week. I call them road trips based on the fact that I can’t seem to find myself just relaxing and sitting around a bonfires, when there is so much exploring to do.

I have much data on here that needs fixing, or updated, or new information I have found out after visiting or publishing a waterfall information and location. I have several I need to go back to. This year I spent time revisiting some old ones, and those will be updated as well. I will be creating a special page for waterfalls that I had gone to look for and could not find. Maybe someone will recognize it and give me new leads.

For the year of 2014, I have visited over 100 waterfall locations. Some were revisits, some I could not find and the majority are new. I still have yet to get all of them published on the website. This was my most busiest year ever……

14 Day trips approximately 60 waterfall locations

5 Weekend Trips approximately 83 waterfall locations

1 Vacation approximately 7 waterfall locations

Over the next several weeks, my plan is to recap my road trips for 2014. I would also like to try and load a snap shot of the tracks for each road trip. I think it would help in folks seeing where I traveled to narrow down the locations of the waterfalls I could not find. I will also be working on getting the other state waterfalls posted on here.

Through all of this, my goal is to keep this fun for me. I enjoy the adventures, I enjoy sharing the excitement. I will be honest, not sure I enjoy all the technical research on the history of the waterfall. I would like to keep this website simple. I will continue to post where the resources I use come from and lead you to them for further reading. Here, I will continue posting the waterfall name, any other names I am aware of, location, and any landmarks I see, as well as the closet intersection. I also preferred to give location based on where you park your vehicle. If other resources give height, distance etc I will capture those and post it.

Good luck in 2015.. plan your adventures, and most of all have fun!!