Over the weekend, Ellie, a group of our friends, and I headed down south of Buffalo to Allegany State Park. Allegany is right on the New York-Pennsylvania border, nestled in to the hills of Cattaraugus County. Despite a prediction of heavy snowfall, we braved the elements and had an awesome weekend.
We drove down on Friday night, over the treacherous snow-covered backroads of Genesee and Wyoming Counties, all the way down to Salamanca. Our cabins were in the McIntosh Trail, on the Red Roof side of the park. If you ever go to Allegany, make sure you know which side of the park you are on, because it's a bit of a hike between the two! The cabins themselves are nice enough, with electricity, a fridge, and a stove. Not much else you could ask for, really. The new bathrooms were great too, with hot showers and an awesome dish-washing room. This was glamping at its finest. Next time we go, I feel like we could pack half as many things in our car because of how well-stocked this campground is. The one thing I would recommend though is to pick up dry, unfrozen wood for the camp fire, because even the stuff from the camp store was a bit frozen solid.
Saturday was filled with cross-country skiing (more on that tomorrow!), sledding, beer drinking, and fire tending. There isn't really cell service down in the park, so it is a great place if you need to disconnect from technology. As the day progressed, the predicted snow storm did set in, which meant Ellie and I took full advantage of sledding down the camp road. We were able to do a 0.3-mile run with a vertical drop of ~100 feet, full of twists and turns in the road, and fellow cabins drunkenly cheering us on. It was pretty great.
The best part though was just hanging out with nothing to do. I think everyone really had a good time, despite the cold. We were blessed with fresh snow to make sledding and skiing a possibility, and we were able to drive home without getting stranded. We couldn't have asked for a better weekend.
Ahahaha the last picture is so perfect.