Normally for Memorial Day I go on a crazy 1,000 mile road
trip but I’ve now run out of National Park sites in that radius and there was too
many things to do in town so I decided to stay home. However, I had to do something to
assuage my road trip guilt so I decided to head down to the Sonyea State
Forest, solely based on looking at a map and determining it was fairly close and
I had never been there before. I had always driven past the Sonyea exit on the highway
but this time I exited and found my way down a gnarly dirt road. The
forest is DEC land which means its just preserved, there’s no development of
anything.
As I was traveling down the dirt road I was getting nervous because
some of the potholes were pretty massive but I navigated around and eventually
came to a stop sign leading into the woods. The road kept going buy my nerves
were shot so I decided that was as good a place as any to disembark. The trail
follows along the top of a ridge in the forest and then goes steeply downhill
where you then hike at the bottom of the ridge along Keshequa Creek.
After
hiking through the woods I saw a trail cutting off towards the creek and as I emerged
I saw a towering cliff now stood above the little creek and it was so unexpected
that I stopped in my tracks. I had no idea the beauty this little state forest
was holding. After exploring a bit I went back to the main trail and took a
couple more spurs off to the creek where there was waterfalls, swimming holes
and more rocks and cliffs. The geology of the area was really fascinating and
not at all what I had envisioned. I had my foster dog Rita with me so we only
went about 3.5 miles round trip but I would definitely go back again to explore
more of stunning Sonyea State Forest.
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