We just LOVED this little trip. Very relaxing until the big adventure at the end, but that was unexpectedly exciting :) It only took 2.5 hours (each way) and a little more than half a tank of gas to get there and back! We will DEFINITELY try to get back one more time before summer ends. The closest town to the campground is Livingston Manor, and the closest town to Trout Lake is Roscoe. I HIGHLY recommend both to everyone!
Covered Bridge Campground
We started the trip at a FABULOUS campground that we have been to twice, once right before we got married <3 It’s totally nestled in the forest along a river, and we chose one of the campsites that you can park your car and walk to in less than 10 minutes. LOVED it.
They have a bunch of wheel barrows where you can load up your gear and push it to the river. I can only imagine the mud-bath that resulted after the biblical downpour so we got sooo lucky we were there before the flood.
There is a dishwashing booth in the middle of the forest - so weird! Keeps the river clean :)
Almost there, right past this lovely swamp. Believe it or not we had no bug problems!
What a great site! Right on the river, and they even had plastic chairs to sit :)
Our river view.
We did absolutely nothing. Just laid our burdens down by the riverside :) We really needed this.
Late dusk, my absolute favorite light on earth. This whole area is like my paintings come to life.
trout lake and mud pond
The trailhead for the next leg of the trip was about a 30 minute drive from the campground through gorgeous green mountains and just past the adorable tiny town of Roscoe. It is only about a 1.5 mile trail to the lake with a few Forest Service campsites and 2 lean-tos. We got the best spot! Slightly elevated and with a great view of the lake. There were a couple of people there on the first day, but by the end we were totally alone. Soooo peaceful.
It even had a big stack of rocks we could use for a table!
Water collector.
Aaron got me the BEST stocking stuffer for Christmas… a tarp that rolls up to the size of your fist. Sounds so simple, but it changes everything for me. Now I can just sit anywhere I like without worrying about getting dirty and bringing the dirt into the tent and sleeping bag. I LOVE IT! I can just lay on the ground while Aaron plays guitar and look at the clouds and trees. So simple, but soooo satisfying.
This place is a bird lover’s PARADISE! This video doesn’t do it justice, there were a million different songs.
Views of the woods behind our camp:
The end-of-day fire.
The next day we took the 1.5 mile trail from the tip of the lake to Mud Pond. It was SUPER hot and humid, but gorgeous. There were ruins near the pond, but we searched for what they were and can’t find anything.
Cute little froggies and snakes afoot.
On our last day we hung out at the waterfall at the beginning of the trail. LOVED it. We had it to ourselves.
When we got back to camp in the late afternoon, thunder was clapping in the distance. It isn’t too clear in this pic, but there was a downpour over the lake leaving our camp was bathed in sunshine :) Such a strange feeling! But eventually it spread to the whole area. It poured, then stopped, then started again leaving gorgeous misty clouds over the hills.
By around 6PM, it wasn’t fucking around anymore. A BIBLICAL torrent showered upon us so fierce we had to seek shelter in the lean-to about a 5 minute walk from our camp. For about 15 minutes it POURED while we made our dinner in the shelter. The kind of rain that if you were caught in while driving you would have to pull over until it passed. And then it shrunk into a regular heavy pour.
We were SO grateful to have that lean-to. It even had an outhouse (with toilet paper!) behind it.
And just before dusk, blue skies popped through the clouds! I really thought it was over. There was another lean-to about 10 minutes from there, so I thought I’d take advantage of the perfect dusk light to walk over to take some pics. Aaron and I NEVER stray from each other when we’re backcountry, and I got a HUGE shiver up my spine as I walked alone in the woods. I practically ran back for fear something was lurking. Nothing was, but we were totally alone. The other lean-to had a tree crashed over the top of it which was pretty neat.
Sadly, that was about the last break Miss Mother Nature gave us. The driving rain came back with a vengeance. We finished up dinner and then decided all we could do was go back to the tent and try to get some sleep. HA! The sound of biblical rain is amplified inside a tent, and I was getting SUPER nervous about flash flooding or even just pools of water getting higher and higher around our tent. There was lightning, too, so I was scared a tree would get struck and smash us inside our tent :( It was not fun :(
Then, around midnight, it got even worse. The only “breaks” in the super heavy downpours were plain old heavy downpours. They super heavy ones lasted about 15 minutes, followed by heavies for 20 minutes and just played on a loop until dawn broke. I was laying in the tent watching the lightning through the roof when all of a sudden a bright white light about the size of a golf ball appeared about 10 feet above the tent. And then another one, and another (about 5 in all) in a PERFECT circle around the tent. After the third one lit up I realized I wasn’t looking lightning in the sky, I was looking at lights hovering above us. I carefully sat up and looked through the vent and - HOLY SHIT! There were dozens of orbs of bright white light floating all around us and up in the trees. There was a VERY bright light at the end of the lake that I now assume was a whole cluster of them. I honest to god thought it was some kind of aliens. I truly believed for a second that we were going to be abducted. I shrunk away from the window and started to have a panic attack with uncontrollable shaking (and, OK I’ll admit, I cried like a baby.) “Do you see those Aaron? WTF are they?” “Yes, and I don’t know. Perhaps some kind of electrical phenomenon.” says he, calmly. I got up to peek again and there were even more, and even closer to our tent. I straight up PUKED outside the tent. I was TERRIFIED. I can’t think of any time I have ever been so scared. There were HUNDREDS of them and it lasted for hours. I tried to take a video through the tent window but it just turned out black with the sound of driving rain. I did not sleep a wink, obviously. But we also couldn’t have broken down the tent and packed up in the pitch black downpour, surrounded by alien orbs and walk 1.5 miles back to the car. So we had to stay put. I peeked out every 15 minutes or so, and they were all still there :( The minute dawn poked through I was OUT. Even though it was still raining, we packed our shit up and high-tailed it to the car.
Turns out it was Ball Lightning. A natural, but rare, phenomenon that I have never heard of. Had I known that at the time, I would have delighted in watching it. But I let my imagination get the best of me and puked because I thought I was going to be abducted by aliens : / I tried my best to take a photo of our tent and draw what it looked like below. I would say no more than a dozen surrounded us at a time but there were hundreds up in the trees and further down the lake. What an amazing and terrifying experience :(