Wehle State Park

Robert G. Wehle State Park is an incredible new state park to the region that is 15 miles and 20 minutes from our house.  It's covered with marked trails, named after the prized shorthair pointers that Mr. Wehle bred.  Dancing Gypsy is my current favorite.


The trail system at Wehle.

It's really great because you can customize your hike based on the amount of time you have, the views you want and wet or dry conditions.

We only recently discovered this amazing place.  We hardly see anyone out on the trails.  But we also haven't reached the busy season.  I'm sure that will change things.  Even though we just discovered it, it seems that all of our friends have known about it for some time.  I might have to learn some interogation techniques to find out what other cool things they're keeping from us!

The trails are really easy.  There's hardly any elevation changes.  They're great for trail running and for dogs (which is probably why they were designed).  There are some cabins that can be rented.  There are grill in the main compound for making food. 

The western part of the park is primarily cliffs that drop (somewhat dramatically - there are signs to keep the kids and pets clear of the edge) to Lake Ontario.




There are a few places to get down to the water.



Candie, Ryan, Riley & Cooper


There are couple of pieces of gear that I've enjoyed getting to know out on these easy trails: The Garmin Forerunner 305 and the Mophie Outdoors Juicepack with Neotreks topo maps.

The Forerunner is a GPS device that keeps track of your speed, distance, elevation gains and losses, etc.  It's really for running or cycling, but it also works for hiking.  It's pretty cool if you want to try to keep a certain pace or you want to run for a certain distance.  Of course, all of this data can be uploaded to your computer where you can see it and compare it to previous workouts.  It comes with a heartrate monitor you can strap to your chest.  This is handy if you want to keep your pulse at a certain rate.

The Mophie Juicepack is an iPhone case and external battery pack.  Without it, my iPhone would be out of power in a little over a day and a half.  With it, my iPhone has enough power for 3 to 4 days.  It also comes with a year long subscription to the Neotreks app.  This turns your iPhone into a fully functional, topo GPS.  By fully functional, I mean you can use it with absolutely no cell phone coverage at all.  The maps are in great detail and include just about every trail you can find.  You can tell it to bring up a bunch of helpful things (trailheads, water sources, parking, lean-tos, boat launches - and about 40 more).  It's really accurate and if you are out in the woods with the Juicepack, you could easily get a week to 10 days with the GPS if you only look at it from time to time (and power down the phone in between).  In fact, if you're so inclined, check out the free maps that Neotreks offers online.  They are amazing.  If you've found yourself playing with Google Earth for any period of time, you'll be in heaven.  One bit of warning - I use an older version of Internet Explorer on my old office computer (which has Windows XP).  You can't use the maps with the old versions of Explorer.  I downloaded Google Chrome (for free), and the maps from Neotreks work just fine with that browser.

There's a bunch of wildlife at Wehle.  Deer abound (litterally - get it?).  We always see garter snakes and frogs.  Most of the time a little red fox is hanging out around the entrance as you drive into the park.  I'm not sure if he's paid to be there.



This guy posed perfectly.

 Thanks for reading through this blog.  If you've read the earlier posts, you might want to check them out again.  I've done a little editing to make them an easier read.  I've also included more detail in a few spots.



View from the cliffs.