Every year while vacationing in western New York, we spend one day traveling inland to visit Zoar valley.  Zoar valley is a very unique area with high cliffs, picturesque views, and old growth forests where two major streams, the Main Branch and South Branch of the Cattaraugus creek, join and continue on their way to Lake Erie.  While the land is owned by the state, it is not a State Park and is very undeveloped with no facilities and even fewer trail markers.

I've been lazy about posting for a few months, but I'm trying to get all of my photos since August posted.  This series of photos is from my family's vacation to western NY.  We spent a little over a week swimming, paddling, and hiking in and around Lake Erie.

Since I nearly broke one of my toes while out hiking over the July 4th weekend , I didn't hike for a couple of weeks to allow it to heal.  It's still a little sore, but it is getting better for the most part so I did a couple long hikes last week.  These pictures are from those hikes.

I took the Friday off before July 4th and spent the entire day hiking in the woods around Little Sewickley Creek.   It was an awesome day, until I nearly broke my toe, but even then I still had a great time even if the last mile or so to my car was painful.  The woods are alive right now and are so green with all the plants and trees full of life.

Even though June was a very, very wet month, I was able to get some great shots of fungi, wildflowers, and even a nice 8 point buck.

I'm still trying to work through the backlog of photos I've taken so far this summer, so these are actually from the hikes I did in May.

At the end of May, my brother and I paddled the eastern end of Lake Arthur up at Moraine State park.  That part of the lake has three fingers that are essentially aligned to the south, east, and north.  The northern finger is where the lake's main feeder stream, Muddy Creek, enters the body of water and is an especially enjoyable paddle since you start by paddling the lake, then work your way through heavy lily pads, until finally ending up in a swamp where the stream channel is just past the thickest of the lily pads.

May was far nicer than June this year and unfortunately I'm just now getting around to posting all the great photos I took on those hikes.  This post has both flora and fauna; including Wild Geranium (a personal favorite), Umbrella Magnolia (a new one to me), and a not so inconspicuous Eastern Chipmunk (dumb ass).

A group of us spent 4 days at a cabin up on Lake Arthur at Moraine State Park.  As we do every year, we spent most of the time fishing and canoeing, plus I took a lot of photographs.

I've been really lazy about posting, so this is a collection of photos from backn in April including some of my favorite spring flowers.

Since it was such a cold winter, this year's spring weather has been welcome more so than in the past.  And Spring is fast becoming my favorite time of the year since this is when the plants and animals shake off the winter's grasp and get ready for warmer months ahead, just like we do. 

I never seem to post much during the winter so this is a collection of pictures from my hikes this past winter.   It was an especially cold few months, and while I do like being outside during all the seasons, I am happy that winter is finally over.

I haven't posted in a while even though I had a couple of posts in the works so this post is from mid-December... It was an especially grey day one weekend back in early December and a light mist was even coming down but we didn't let that stop us from hiking for a few hours.  The woods are really bare right now, but I was still able to get some good pictures.

We hiked outside of the Little Sewickley Creek watershed this weekend down off of Turkeyfoot road, which is in the Big Sewickley Creek drainage.  It's a nice area, although not as expansive as the park land along Little Sewickley Creek.

The woods are pretty bare right now; the leaves are down, the woods have opened back up, and life in general is shutting down in preparation for the upcoming Winter.  But I was still able to take some interesting photographs.

Since the wildflowers are done for the year, we headed into the woods hoping to find some Turkeytails & other colorful mushrooms.  So as we hiked, we scanned nearly every rotten log we passed for what fungi might be growing on them.  Plus the hollow we were in doesn't get a lot of direct sun, so we weren't disappointed by what we found.

It was another beautiful sunny day on Sunday and a perfect day to wander around the woods for a few hours.  I hiked up near the park again, winding my way up the hill to Spruce Run trail and then back down to the creek to follow it back to my car.  It's becoming one of my favorite hikes and it really is a great way to see several different habitats from old growth forest of the uplands to the open meadows of the floodplain.

It was an absolutely beautiful day on Sunday; the sky was a deep blue and the fallen leaves were so dry that they crunched under our feet as we hiked.  We started down by the creek, which is choked full of fallen leaves now, and then headed up on the hill tops before returning back to the creek bottom near the backwater I often write about.  As the weather channel forecast said that morning, there was “abundant sunshine” all day long and it was a fantastic fall day to be in the woods.

Fall is definitely taking hold now.  Most of the trees have lost their leaves or are losing them fast but others are still holding on; Beech trees still have some green leaves, the Aspens are yellowing, and many of the Oaks have yet to lose their leaves at all.   So it won't be long before Winter is here and all the trees are bare.

Autumn is take a hold even though we've had some warmer temperatures lately.  The trees are really starting to show some color and the woods smell like dead leaves.  It won't be long before colder days and nights become the norm and summer is a distant memory.