Recreate closer to home, save gas, have fun

With the price of gas and diesel fuel spiraling out of control, taking even a moderately long driving trip to enjoy the outdoors is becoming more and more of a burden on family budgets. With gas pushing $4 and diesel five, and no end in sight, just about everyone is thinking twice before loading up the family chariot and happily heading off to their get-away destination. This becomes even a bigger burden if the normal work week mandates burning a tankful or two of gas to and from places of employment.

As the old saying goes: When you get lemons, make lemonade. Everyone is being forced to make changes in their driving habits, and that also applies to “recreational trips,” be they one day or perhaps several. Unfortunately, these recreational trips often become the first casualty in this age of soaring fuel prices. Couple what it now costs us to drive our vehicles with the accompanying rise in prices for all goods – that, too, being generated by higher fuel/transportation costs – and lifestyles as we once knew them are changing almost daily.

Since people are working harder and longer today to make ends meet, and government seems intent on taking progressively bigger bites of the money we earn, recreational time is even more important than it ever was since even temporarily escaping the pressures and burdens of everyday life and survival helps us keep our sanity. In the half-a-loaf-is-better-than-no-loaf mindset, scaling back the length of the trips we use to enjoy some outdoor recreation is about our only realistic solution. On the positive side, this even allows us to discover or re-discover opportunities much closer to home.

In recent decades we've heard and read much about the recreational and tourism opportunities that exists right here in Chenango County. That said, I suspect many county residents have never or seldom investigated these, probably because they are almost under our collective noses. It often takes a visitor or non-resident to enlighten and remind us of just how many things we have available, and all within easy driving (and sometimes, walking) distance.

How many of you have walked a portion or more of the famed Finger Lakes Trail (www.fingerlakes.net/trailsystem), a major section of over 70 miles of which runs right through our county? How about a primitive camping trip to one of our many state forests' ponds, such as Hunts, Balsam or Jackson ponds, or Bowman Lake State Park with nearly 200 designated camp sites? Or a visit to Rexford Falls in Sherburne? How about a canoe, kayak or cartop boat trip down a section of the Chenango River? How about spending a day exploring DEC's Rogers Environmental Education Center with all its various exhibits, trails and lands? While often thought of as primarily a cross-country ski area, the miles of trails within the 1200-acre Whaupaunaucau State Forest offer easy hiking and scenic woodland beauty.