I've never been to Franklin Gulf before. It's an undeveloped park at the southwestern edge of Erie County New York. There are caches in the park. Since I haven't found them or been to the park, it seemed like a perfect place to go. Brushing aside the fact that it had been raining and was still really grey, I started off on my journey. A half hour later, I had a dnf. No problem,I'll head deeper in the woods and hike the trail along the ravine. As I was headed out, I noticed bear scat. There's not too many bears in Erie County so this was a little concerning. About this time, I also noticed I was on the wrong side of a tall ravine. I went back to a point where I could drop down to the water and cross. The stream was great looking. There was almost no light from the overcast day so only one photo starts to give justice to the area. I walked the creek to a spot where I could get out of the ravine and reach the top.
I found another trail and ignored the now persistent drops of rain to continue my journey. On the way out, I found a couple of recent snags about 4 inches around which had been snapped off about 4 feet off the ground. Then when I was less than 500 feet from the cache I saw this still living pine tree. It is or was about 40 feet tall. Its trunk had been ripped apart with large pieces of the trunk about 25 feet away. I've seen lightning strikes do things like this, but there was no evidence of lightning. Then it dawned on me, the BEAR. It made sense, the two snags had a few woodpecker holes. It must have thought there was some meal in this tree. I decided that no cache was worth meeting a bear that hungry. I was about halfway back to the car when the rain really started. I was 0 for the park with caches, but had an interesting, wet adventure in a new place.
On the way home, the fog across Irvine Flats was pretty impressive.
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