the Way of the Turtle

A WALK BY THE LAKE
Irondequoit Lakeside Trail
Durand Eastman Park
Monday, March 24, 2008

Durand Eastman Park site
info about the Irondequoit Lakeside Trail
Irondequoit Lakeside Trail map (PDF)

After Ann got home from work we decided to go out for a walk somewhere, since it had turned into a sunny afternoon. We hadn't been to Durand Eastman Park in a long time, so we decided to head up there to walk on some of the trails around the lakes.

We had a couple of surprises when we got there. The first was the relatively new Irondequoit Lakeside Trail, a paved path which runs along Durand beach and back down to Seabreeze. The other was that it was a lot windier and a lot chillier along the lake!

We took the Lakeside trail along the shore of the lake and down to a boardwalk/bridge across a swamp, then up into the woods a little ways. Then we headed back to the car to pick up some extra cold weather gear and crossed the road to go up into the park.

After a brief visit to the "castle" overlooking the road (really just a fancy cobblestone wall) we headed down the trail along the shore of Durand Lake to get a closer look at some animals we'd seen out on the ice... turns out it was a pair of swans snoozing. Seemed like an cold place for that to me, but maybe it makes sense if you're a swan. While I was took pictures of them, they looked around, stretched, tucked back in to sleep... one even finally got up and moved closer to the other before we left. Pretty cool.

After that we headed up the hill overlooking Eastman Lake, only to find that we were only going to get a view of the lake if we hiked into the woods, and it was getting cold and late for that. So instead we walked back down the road and then headed home, with a stop at the store to pick up something for me to cook for dinner.

We'll definitely have to get back to Durand to actually walk the trails sometime!

JMH