No Tress Passing LbNA #38748
Map
Nearby Boxes
Add Note
Add Location| Owner: | Adoptable |
|---|---|
| Plant date: | Apr 5, 2008 |
| Location: | |
| City: | Ithaca |
| County: | Tompkins |
| State: | New York |
| Boxes: | 1 |
| Planted by: | Jayanjas  |
|---|---|
| Found by: | riverkat |
| Last found: | Jul 26, 2013 |
| Status: | FFFF |
| Last edited: | Apr 5, 2008 |
You could get to the No Tress Passing letterbox by car to the Finger Lakes Land Trust Ellis Hollow Nature Preserve parking lot just west of the Dominion Gas-line pump station on Ellis Hollow Creek Rd, but we like to bike there and would rather you park at the East Hill Plaza at the corner of Judd Falls (aka Mitchell St) and Pine Tree Rd in east Ithaca, NY. There you can shop at the P&C or Collegetown Bagels for some picnic stuff, and get your bikes out for a beautiful bike ride up (east) Ellis Hollow Road. The easy hill up from there on Ellis Hollow Rd. soon passes The Foundation of Light at the corner of Turkey Hill Rd, where you might like to stop briefly to walk the mystic labyrinth or sight the sun off their small spiritual stonehenge. Then keep going eastward till you get to Genung, where you'll turn left downhill. Pass the Ellis Hollow Community Center, unless the Ellis Hollow Fair's in session, when you'll need to get some bbq chicken and a pie. Coast down to Ellis Hollow Creek Rd and turn right. Soon you'll see the Finger Lakes Land Trust's Ellis Hollow Nature Preserve parking lot on the left (north) side of the road just before the Dominion Gas-line transmission pump station (If the Internet is behaving, you can see a map of this Preserve at http://www.dryden.ny.us/Dryden%20Trails/Ellis_hollow.htm).
Lock your bike to the fence there, or your car if you're lazy or in a hurry or don't like bikes, and head on uphill (north) on the Nature Trail. You'll soon come to a kiosk with a log-in book, a map, a little poster, and inventory of the wildlife in these 110 acres of Finger Lakes Land Trust hillside. Cucumber Magnolias, on the South Bank of Mount Pleasant, yeah! At the kiosk, or online if you prefer, you'll see there are three loop trails, marked by yellow, blue, and red blazes.
Since we're nature lovers, we want you to go whole-hog and hike the big red trail, clockwise: this means take first the yellow trail to your left (west) of the kiosk, then the blue to your left (north), then the red to your left (north) before the blue comes back south again. The red trail goes up and down and up and down etc., crossing a lot of little creeks and gorges and ridges. You should especially love the mature hemlock and hardwood forest up a steep gorge rim!
When you are almost back down to the yellow trail for the second time (don't turn right on yellow at the first chance), you'll see a most peculiar batch of five (5!) double-blazes as the trail wiggles around a soggy old unblazed trail just before it descends to a less steep slope. This is where we planted the No Tress Passing letterbox!
Woods hikers know a "double blaze" means the trail takes a turn. On this part of the FLLT red trail (not to be confused with the Finger Lakes Trail, please!), the First Double Blaze is on a skinny tree; the Second Double Blaze is on the uphill side of a big tree that also has a Single Blaze on its downhill side; the Third Double Blaze is on a double-trunked tree with a single blaze on its uphill side, double blaze on its downhill side; the Fourth Double Blaze also has a double trunk, with double blaze on uphill side, single blaze on downhill side; the Fifth Double Blaze has the double blaze on downhill side, single blaze on uphill side. We have never hiked anywhere with so many double blazes so close together! If it has rained recently (and it usually has in these parts), you'll see why the trail is so twisty here, trying to avoid mud and running water in the trail. If you like newts and salamanders, and know how to find them, your chances are very good for finding some here (please put the flat rocks back down). Oh, yeah, the No Tress Passing letterbox is hidden in the big tree with the Second Double Blaze: hollow at its base; please put all flat rocks back and kick the leaves around the way letterboxers do. Be sure to wedge rocks around the box, as maybe a varmint ate its first stamp after Ace and before Scout and BibliochickEH were there.
(We planted the letterbox on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, April 5th, 2008, and Scout had not been there yet. See if you can find this spot before Scout! Well, OK, it's too late for that: Scout found the box already--but the stamp was missing when she got there! On 8/6/08 I planted a new replacement stamp in the box and replaced the ziplock bags that had also disappeared; logbook had got a bit damp, but I tidied it up and all is set to go again now.) Remember, the "second" of five double blazes here counts as second only if you're traveling clockwise on red, or heading southeast at this dizzy batch of blazes. It's shorter to get here from the other way around, going widdershins, but that direction may be unlucky, so be careful!
When you continue on down the last bit of the southeast red trail, turning from southeast to southwest, you'll see why we call this the No Tress Passing letterbox. Dominion has posted its pump station property with all these pretty little misspelled signs: "No Tresspassing" -- which we figure probably means you're not supposed to go past plaits or braids made from hair of the head. Or if you've got some nice long hair, you're not supposed to pass it around. Surely there's a secret meaning! A utilities company couldn't be just plain wrong, could it? There are quite a lot of Boundary Signs in this Preserve; the Finger Lakes Land Trust yellow markers are much more polite, and, "Thank You," also properly spelled.
If you've come here by bicycle, congratulations! A different fun way to bike back to the East Hill Plaza in Ithaca will take you back to the west end of Ellis Hollow Creek Rd (past Genung) to Turkey Hill, then right (north) a little way up Turkey Hill to Stevens Rd, and left on Stevens past all the silly pheasants to Game Farm Rd, then left (south) on Game Farm down into the Cascadilla Valley to a right westward (just before the narrow bridge) onto the East Ithaca Recreation Trail along the north bank of Cascadilla Creek. There are a couple of letterboxes in this neighborhood, by the way: both right off the trail and a bit north in a Nut Tree Grove. Keep on past all the joggers and dog walkers and over Judd Falls on the nifty old RR Bridge and the left steep up through Cornell horse paddocks to Maple Ave. Right on Maple will get you down to more Rec Trail by the Queen of Tarts cafe in an antique Coal Office (before the tricky stop light! don't zoom past!), another lovely little spot to snack and drink before continuing left south on the East Ithaca Rec Way to Mitchell St where you turn left just a bit uphill and east and you'll soon be back to East Hill Plaza to your car or a meal or grocery shopping or banking or chicken wings or a ritzy meal of Local Meat or whatever you need on your way home. If you've got time and like a little biking and hiking both, we really insist you travel this route!
Lock your bike to the fence there, or your car if you're lazy or in a hurry or don't like bikes, and head on uphill (north) on the Nature Trail. You'll soon come to a kiosk with a log-in book, a map, a little poster, and inventory of the wildlife in these 110 acres of Finger Lakes Land Trust hillside. Cucumber Magnolias, on the South Bank of Mount Pleasant, yeah! At the kiosk, or online if you prefer, you'll see there are three loop trails, marked by yellow, blue, and red blazes.
Since we're nature lovers, we want you to go whole-hog and hike the big red trail, clockwise: this means take first the yellow trail to your left (west) of the kiosk, then the blue to your left (north), then the red to your left (north) before the blue comes back south again. The red trail goes up and down and up and down etc., crossing a lot of little creeks and gorges and ridges. You should especially love the mature hemlock and hardwood forest up a steep gorge rim!
When you are almost back down to the yellow trail for the second time (don't turn right on yellow at the first chance), you'll see a most peculiar batch of five (5!) double-blazes as the trail wiggles around a soggy old unblazed trail just before it descends to a less steep slope. This is where we planted the No Tress Passing letterbox!
Woods hikers know a "double blaze" means the trail takes a turn. On this part of the FLLT red trail (not to be confused with the Finger Lakes Trail, please!), the First Double Blaze is on a skinny tree; the Second Double Blaze is on the uphill side of a big tree that also has a Single Blaze on its downhill side; the Third Double Blaze is on a double-trunked tree with a single blaze on its uphill side, double blaze on its downhill side; the Fourth Double Blaze also has a double trunk, with double blaze on uphill side, single blaze on downhill side; the Fifth Double Blaze has the double blaze on downhill side, single blaze on uphill side. We have never hiked anywhere with so many double blazes so close together! If it has rained recently (and it usually has in these parts), you'll see why the trail is so twisty here, trying to avoid mud and running water in the trail. If you like newts and salamanders, and know how to find them, your chances are very good for finding some here (please put the flat rocks back down). Oh, yeah, the No Tress Passing letterbox is hidden in the big tree with the Second Double Blaze: hollow at its base; please put all flat rocks back and kick the leaves around the way letterboxers do. Be sure to wedge rocks around the box, as maybe a varmint ate its first stamp after Ace and before Scout and BibliochickEH were there.
(We planted the letterbox on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, April 5th, 2008, and Scout had not been there yet. See if you can find this spot before Scout! Well, OK, it's too late for that: Scout found the box already--but the stamp was missing when she got there! On 8/6/08 I planted a new replacement stamp in the box and replaced the ziplock bags that had also disappeared; logbook had got a bit damp, but I tidied it up and all is set to go again now.) Remember, the "second" of five double blazes here counts as second only if you're traveling clockwise on red, or heading southeast at this dizzy batch of blazes. It's shorter to get here from the other way around, going widdershins, but that direction may be unlucky, so be careful!
When you continue on down the last bit of the southeast red trail, turning from southeast to southwest, you'll see why we call this the No Tress Passing letterbox. Dominion has posted its pump station property with all these pretty little misspelled signs: "No Tresspassing" -- which we figure probably means you're not supposed to go past plaits or braids made from hair of the head. Or if you've got some nice long hair, you're not supposed to pass it around. Surely there's a secret meaning! A utilities company couldn't be just plain wrong, could it? There are quite a lot of Boundary Signs in this Preserve; the Finger Lakes Land Trust yellow markers are much more polite, and, "Thank You," also properly spelled.
If you've come here by bicycle, congratulations! A different fun way to bike back to the East Hill Plaza in Ithaca will take you back to the west end of Ellis Hollow Creek Rd (past Genung) to Turkey Hill, then right (north) a little way up Turkey Hill to Stevens Rd, and left on Stevens past all the silly pheasants to Game Farm Rd, then left (south) on Game Farm down into the Cascadilla Valley to a right westward (just before the narrow bridge) onto the East Ithaca Recreation Trail along the north bank of Cascadilla Creek. There are a couple of letterboxes in this neighborhood, by the way: both right off the trail and a bit north in a Nut Tree Grove. Keep on past all the joggers and dog walkers and over Judd Falls on the nifty old RR Bridge and the left steep up through Cornell horse paddocks to Maple Ave. Right on Maple will get you down to more Rec Trail by the Queen of Tarts cafe in an antique Coal Office (before the tricky stop light! don't zoom past!), another lovely little spot to snack and drink before continuing left south on the East Ithaca Rec Way to Mitchell St where you turn left just a bit uphill and east and you'll soon be back to East Hill Plaza to your car or a meal or grocery shopping or banking or chicken wings or a ritzy meal of Local Meat or whatever you need on your way home. If you've got time and like a little biking and hiking both, we really insist you travel this route!