OUR 4 MILE HIKE TO THE BEAR CAVES THAT DID NOT GO AS PLANNED – ALLEGANY STATE PARK

As exciting as the caption sounds our 4-mile hike that we took this last weekend did have it's good, great, scary, cry out for help moments! To give you all a little background, we took a day trip to the beautiful and huge Allegany state park located in the western NY region in the Cattaraugus county. Our itinerary to explore the Allegany state park was very simple and planned to keep in mind that we were traveling with a toddler. We were to hike our favorite bear cave trail in the morning and spend our afternoon swimming and relaxing by the beach again located in the Allegany state park. Keeping this simple itinerary on, we drove to the park at noon and spend a few initial moments driving around and feeling completely smitten by the greenery in the Allegany State park everywhere and finally driving down to the bear cave trail to start our hike. We started to hike the trail with a lot of excitement and getting beautiful pictures clicked as we moved on and as smitten as we were by all the woods, greenery around us, Mishika was completely smitten too.

Our hike was really tough, not in a way that ‘it is impossible to do' but with an eighteen-month-old toddler, it was quite tiring. As the entire path was so steep and filled with uncut woods, weeds, and tall wild grasses everywhere it wasn't a good idea to let Mishika walk by herself. Making our way through the woods and trying hard to keep a track of the hiking trail stickers on the trees, we made it to the huge bear caves – a really cool place to explore, click the picture and just sit and relax. Well, call it my ‘mom brain' or my sleepless nights, although I have been to this Allegany State park many times before I was under the impression that the hike I was on had a waterfall at the end. Maybe I was confused by some other trail that I must have done in the past. So, we stopped at the bear caves, took pictures, and started climbing further up. 20 mins into our climb, and the path getting more and more woody, it made us wonder if we were on the right track. We were in the middle of nowhere. We could only see woods in each direction as far as our naked eyes could spot, and we were even missing the trail stickers on the trees. Although completely lost, we were not in a panic state. The sun was shining bright, there was a lot of light and the adventure we were on felt exciting.

Deciding to explore further, we started to further climb up. After climbing non-stop for 15-20 minutes, we realized we were nowhere close to the top of the trail. As we were sure we were lost now and still wanted to hit the beach we decided to fall back. Now we were almost 2 hours into this hike, and as we were falling back we somehow got off the beaten path again. Well, to be honest the idea of standing in dense woods, does get your blood pumping but it’s also very scary. As it had started to get a little dark, and carrying Mishika all this while, I had gotten completely exhausted. Although Mayank and I were taking turns holding her as it was getting late, Mishika had started to get restless and did not want to leave me. There were moments in this entire hike when I was climbing up/down holding Mishika in my arms, I could only feel the sound of my heartbeat.

On our walk down, there were paths when it was completely steep, and we would form a bridge and transfer Mishika. After almost 3+ hours into this hike which should not have taken us 1 hour, to begin with, we were completely lost in the woods and could hear no human soul besides us. Now it was almost 6 PM and the woods were getting dark, and I was worried as we were on a bear cave trail. Worst of it all we could encounter bears on our way as we were so off track. All this while, the only thing that kept running through my mind was ‘what happens if we meet a bear? how am I going to protect Mishika?'… with all these words running through my mind, we finally decided to take the sure shot way to get down. As we had parked our car next to a waterfall, our best bet was to just follow the water trail. We could not go wrong with that. It would only take us down and closer to our car .

The water was freezing cold and we started to follow it. Walking around the water was not very easy as the muddy walls on both sides were very steep but walking on the water also sounded completely crazy as there were fallen woods, rocks and narrow paths many times. But with the forest getting completely dark, and there was also a huge possibility that we might run off our phone batteries our best bet to reach our car in time was to walk over the water trail.

We walked with our shoes completely soaked in the cold water, crossing over woods holding Mishika in our arms and encountering many slippery rocks, it was one crazy experience of our life. After following the water trail for almost an hour, with no assurance of whether we were close to our destination I could finally hear some children play in the corner. Their laughs and shouts were like music to our ears. We knew we were safe and very close to our car.

Finally, around 7 PM we reached the road, starved, drenched and exhausted but so happy to be back. We took a few more moments trying to figure out where we had parked but we were on the road 🙂 no more woods, water trails, rocks, we were walking on paved concrete roads. This was one of my biggest adventure that I took on with Mishika and something that I would never want to do again with her ‘at least till the time she is not old enough to hike by herself’ 😊. In all this, Mishika was extremely patient, laughed around and was not fussy at all. She enjoyed her experience and it made me realize that I am for sure raising a very fearless and adventure taking little lady :). Sharing some amazing moments from our 4 hours spent in the dense Alleghany forest.

Outfit Details:

Paperbag soft shorts, Crochet tie-back top

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