NY Caming Trip Recap, Day 3
Checkout time for Four Mile Creek was 11 AM, so we had a leisurely breakfast and then began breaking camp.
It was a bit chilly that morning (last night's wind had ushered in much colder temperatures) and so the girls moved their chairs into the sun to enjoy their Pop Tarts and hot cocoa. See the empty campsites across the road from us? Very peaceful indeed.
I can't emphasize enough how helpful the girls were breaking camp, especially the older two. We really couldn't have done all of this setting up and tearing down without them. We were a pretty well-oiled machine, I think!
Because of our leisurely pace, it did take us until 11 on the dot to break everything down, pack it up, and reload the car. We had actually decided that, because the restrooms were so nice at Four Mile Creek and we weren't sure what showering conditions would be like at the other parks, we would check out and then sneak back in to use the restrooms for showers for the entire family. Because we had only ever seen one other person in the restroom there, I was pretty sure we would have the showers to ourselves, and I turned out to be right!
The big girls and I passed around soaps and shampoos until we were all clean, and I helped J. When we were all finished, dressed, and feeling fresh, we pulled some lunch out of the cooler (more breakfast sandwiches!) and were on our way! Destination: Letchworth State Park...
...but not before we made a much needed stop.
Oh Tim, I love you sooooo much. We got some Timbits for the girls-- let me just say that munchkins have absolutely nothing on the mighty Timbit. If only we had a Tim's a little closer to home... I miss it already. Le sigh.
We also did another quick grocery/gas stop on the way... I had meals on hand for two days at a time, since that's about all our cooler would hold. So I rounded out our menu for the next few days.
The drive between these two state parks was a lot of what I remember growing up in upstate New York-- rolling hills, glacial landforms, acres and acres of farmland, silos, old farmhouses, and green green green. The scenery was so enjoyable and the 90-minute drive just flew by.
Because check-in time at the campground wasn't until 5 PM, we entered near the south end of the park (Letchworth is HUGE... about 60 miles of park!) so that we could do some sight-seeing in the hour or two we had to kill before check-in. We stopped at Trailside Lodge to use the bathroom, and hooray! The bathrooms were open. I refilled our water bottles as M and the girls ran up and down the HUGE hill that is, apparently, used for sledding and tubing in the winter.
After refreshing ourselves, we drove across the street to the parking lot at Inspiration Point... it was, well, inspirational!!
These pictures don't even really do justice to the size and awesomeness of this gorge. Go see it in person if you can!! We were able to view the Upper and Middle Falls from this vantage point, and after seeing them the girls were curious about seeing the Lower Falls as well. So after a bit of walking around the paths at Inspiration Point we returned to the car and consulted our park map for the best viewing spot from which to see the final set of falls.
{I'll take this moment to mention that we had absolutely zero cell phone signal the entire two days we were at Letchworth, and having read about this in reviews of the park, I had downloaded a pdf park map ahead of time. It was really helpful to have that, so just a little tip for you there if you ever visit yourself.}
Using our park map, we were able to find the Lower Falls trail, and a parking lot near what we thought would be a good viewpoint. We parked, found the trail, and set off walking. It was a bit of a longer walk than we expected so some of the girls didn't quite make it the whole way. In the end it was just me, L and C that ended up seeing the Lower Falls from a viewpoint on the trail. The actual trail down into the gorge was closed for repairs (I'm pretty sure that's the one I hiked as a child!); we might have gotten a better view from down inside the gorge but they were still spectacular!
By the time we saw the falls and walked back to the car it was check-in time at the campsite! We drove what ended up being about 10 miles to the campsite entrance, got ourselves checked in, and began the process of setting up camp. Luckily we had, and continued to have, beautiful weather that day, so there was no hurry or concern about rain.
The well-oiled machine of M, N, and L set up the tents quite quickly (C helped, too!) while I was getting dinner things together. I'm pretty sure that they even had the air beds blown up and all the sleeping bags and pillows ready before we even sat down to dinner. They were that quick!
We had a sandwich dinner with chips and fresh strawberries:
After we were well fed we got the fire going and kept up with our nightly s'mores tradition, and this time we broke out the glow sticks!
They got pretty creative with the glow stick sculptures!
It was around 9:45 PM by the time we had done our s'mores, done our final walk to the bathroom (not quite as far this time, but still a bit of a walk) and gotten everyone in pjs with teeth brushed. The girls settled in to bed just before 10 while M and I enjoyed a few minutes of alone time before the dying fire.
And that was when we had our first raccoon sighting!
A Mama and a baby raccoon emerged from the brush right behind our sleeping tent, and came towards M and me as we stood in front of the fire pit. When we saw them and moved towards them, they did retreat but came right around the other side of the tent, trying to make their way through our campsite and out towards the road that went around our camping loop. We walked up to them again as they came around the other side of the tent, but this time they made it obvious that they didn't really care and weren't that afraid of us. It was only when we got really close and made some noise that they retreated back into the brush behind our tent.
We had read reviews about bold raccoons in this park, and there had been information posted at the ranger station when we checked in and all over the bathroom doors imploring people not to feed animals and to lock up ALL food at night. Our food was already locked up at that point, but it became clear as the night progressed that our tent was probably right in the middle of the raccoon superhighway by which ALLL the raccoons (and some other animals, too!) entered the camping loops and just had an all-you-can-eat buffet every single night. There must have been enough people not following the "lock up your food" rules to make it VERY worth their while to heavily, heavily scavenge this area.
Anway, M and I did our own bathroom trips after that, put out the fire, and got ourselves ready for bed, but... you can guess how difficult it was to sleep after seeing how very bold the animals were, and reading on all the signage about how raccoons here had learned to open zipper doors on tents. I did managed to doze off sometime after midnight I think, but sometime in the 1-2 AM time frame I heard something hiss and then flail around just outside the thin layer of tent fabric very close to my head, and then it growled in my ear and continued growling all the way back into the undergrowth behind our tent. M, having heard it too, explained to me that it was probably one of the raccoons tripping over the wires that held the rain fly on top of our tent. After that we were both awake for quite a while, and I remember just starting to get sleepy and dozey again when a raccoon, out of dead silence, barked right in my ear. Like, right outside the tent, inches from my face. I jumped about a mile. Somehow, none of the girls seemed to wake up for any of this, but M and I had a whispered conversation about how neither of us felt we would sleep again that night. Even after I had pretty much convinced myself that the raccoons probably wouldn't try to get in the tent because we didn't have any food, my Mama Bear instinct just wouldn't let me relax enough to sleep, knowing that the girls were all sleeping and vulnerable. Plus I started having to go to the bathroom pretty bad, but do you think I was going to open that tent door? No way.
As the first light started to dawn just after 4 AM I think that M and I did manage to get back to sleep for a short bit, but I knew that I had to be up and getting breakfast no later than 7 AM because the bigger girls and I had a rafting trip scheduled for that day. We had to be ready, fed, and with our gear and sunscreen on, and leave the campsite no later than 9:15. So, when my eyes opened around 6:30 I forced them to stay open. I actually remember feeling really happy that we had made it through the night, that the sun was shining again, the nocturnal animals were no more, and it was rafting day! As I left the tent to get the coffee going, it was with high spirits, despite the many dramatic events of the previous night!
To be continued...
{move on to part 4 here!}
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