Catharine Valley Trail

Hi Blog! Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there. Hope you had a great day. We decided today would be the perfect day for a long bike ride. Once we saw the long (four mile) steep hill (7% grade) that ran from our campground down into Watson Glen, we knew riding our bikes into town would be out of the questions because we would never make it back up that hill.  We did a little Google searching and found the Catharine Valley Trail, a 12 miles multi-use rail trail running from Watkins Glen to Horseheads. The CVT follows the abandoned rail corridor of the Chemung Branch of the New York and Erie Railroad and the old Chemung Canal towpath. Here is Dave at the trailhead located behind the Watkins Glen Central High School.  There is plenty of parking and easy trail access.

No sooner did we start on our ride alongside the old barge canal, than we ran into a local resident.  We couldn't resist.  (Get it?  The tortoise and the hare!)

Here is some more local wildlife enjoying this beautiful sunny day.

Mr. and Mrs. Duck also seem to be enjoying the sun.

The barge canal leads from the bottom of the lake at Watkins Glen down to Montour Falls. A large marina and RV park is located on the far side of the canal.

The wide slow moving canal makes it great for kayaking.

Here is a picture postcard view of the 150 foot She-qua-ga Falls, located in the village of Montour Falls.

As we worked our way through town, we came across St. John's Episcopal Church next door to the Cook Mansion.

Here is the Montour House.

Just on the other side of Montour Falls, we found ourselves back on the abandoned railroad right of way.  At various points along the trail, markers were set up by the Friends of the Catharine Valley Trail.  Here we dialed the number on the marker and learned all about Ed Hoffman, the man responsible for the creation of the trail.

The Route 14 Bridge was completed late in 2005.  It allows the trail to cross over NY State Highway 14, which runs south from Watkins Glen.

The last two miles of the trail are still under construction.  We made it 10 miles before stopping at the Post Office in Millport, just above the section still to be constructed.   This would be our turnaround point.  No one objected - lunch tasted pretty good by this point:

As we digested lunch, we took a little stroll down to the creek.  Here is a local boy doing what boys do along side of creeks - trying to catch tadpoles.

We're back on the road again. It's all downhill from here back to Watkins Glen.

Being good neighbors, we stopped to do a little trail maintenance.  Unfortunately, even Superman couldn't have moved this branch, as it was still connected to a much, much larger tree.

We took a little side loop trail down from the railroad grade to the old Chemung Canal Towpath.

The ride back, since it was all downhill, went by rather quickly.  Before we knew it, we were putting the bikes back on the truck and driving back to camp.  Tomorrow, we tackle the Grand Canyon of the East.