2022-05-18: Ross Ruland Road

Cairo NY Roads: 74/112 mi

Back to roadwalking for the summer. While my ambitions have become more summit-focused over the semester away, roadwalking has the great benefit of being closer to home, allowing for shorter travel times and hikes. With the current gas prices, this also means it's a lot cheaper than hiking distant peaks. So, with the town of Cairo just under two-thirds of the way walked, I pointed my attention to a loop in the southern portion of the town along the border with Catskill, covering a flat, rural, heavily forested area and partially extending into the hamlet and CDP of South Cairo.

Roads walked: NY-32, Joel M Austin Road, Ross Ruland Road, Ross Ruland Road Extension, Silver Spur Road

I parked at an old garden store along Route 32 that didn't quite look abandoned; apparently it was for sale. Oddly enough there was another car in the dirt parking lot, but they left as I was getting my stuff together. I headed up a segment of Silver Spur Road that I had walked back in January.

Red-tipped maple leaves stand out against the bright blue afternoon sky.

This shot of Blackhead over the road was the only mountain I saw on the whole walk.

No trespassing signs cover an abandoned house at the intersection of Silver Spur and Joel Austin.

The long stretch of Joel M Austen road extends south from the intersection with Silver Spur. Houses are sparse along this road, and the land is pretty much entirely forested on both sides. To the west (my left) is a steep ridge looming fifty feet above the road for its entire length, which cast shade across the road (the part I wasn't walking on). It was covered in little mossy waterfalls that would actually have been flowing if this spring weren't so abnormally dry.

A cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), a bird easy to spot in winter but not commonly seen in spring.

Careful inspection of the top of the ridge revealed an old abandoned house hidden among the trees.

The largest of the dry waterfall paths running down the ridge.

Spring wildflowers (in this case, a species or cultivar of Spiraea) filled the ditches and roadside.

An old damaged building along the way was in the process of being repaired.

This black cat stopped dead in its tracks and stared directly at me as I took its picture. As soon as I lowered the camera, it ran away with an almost comical overreaction.

Before continuing onto Ross Ruland Road, I backtracked and walked a tiny portion of Route 32 between the intersection and the town line. This brought me to the border of Catskill, Cairo's southeast border and a far cry from the roads I started walking near Durham two years ago.

Signage at the Catskill town line.

I could barely see a bit of a hill over the rise on Route 32.

I headed down Ross Ruland Road, which runs west-east from NY-32 to NY-23, but as another rural forested road there wasn't too much to photograph at first. I turned off to Ross Ruland Road Extension, a side road that again runs to the Catskill border. Oddly enough, I had been on this road before, walking part of it while visiting a family acquaintance nearby last summer. Just as the county line is the processing center for one of the most popular garbage companies in the area, which had just suffered a fire a few months ago, and the burned-out building was still standing.

A bee sips nectar from a wild geranium (Geranium maculatum). These sizeable purple flowers were ubiquitous - and hard to miss - along the sides of the roads.

A view of the burnt-out building at the garbage plant, with large sections of pain melted off.

Even below the melted paint were signs that the building's sheet metal walls melted and deformed in many areas.

A mirror reflects a garbage truck and the deep forest in which the plant is buried.

I turned around at the burnt building and returned to Ross Ruland Road. I passed a house with a dog that was determined to warn its people about me, but never noticed me until I was most of the way past the lawn, which startled me the first time. Ross Ruland meets Route 23 near the local state trooper barracks, and the spot is meaningful to me as the place I first got pulled over (for a broken mirror). I turned around and headed back up the road, ascending two hundred feet in elevation on the approach to Route 32.

Bright maple forests in spring. Being around familiar trees is always one of the blessings of coming home for the summer.

The intersection between Ross Ruland and Route 23.

Of the half-dozen cars that sat outside this old barn, this one out front was by far the most eye-catching.

By the time I returned to Route 32, I was six miles into a 7.5-mile walk and just about ready to be back to the car. As a major highway, Route 32 is fairly straight, incredibly flat, and designed for cars to safely drive 60 MPH - that is, it's incredibly boring to walk. Still, lined with old buildings, signs, and structures long forgotten by time, it isn't without character. Traffic was almost nonexistent on a Wednesday afternoon and the return to the car wasn't totally uneventful. Soon, I was on my way home after a long and successful first roadwalking of the summer.

An old sign just over the town line declares Cairo as the "Crossroads of the Catskills".

This falling-apart sign always cracks me up when I drive by it - reading it as "Sad man Mel" - and I looked forward to walking this road and getting a picture. The former hotel is now home to cheap apartments.

Route 32 in Cairo is lined in almost exclusively abandoned buildings. This old shack has letters on the side, but too many are missing to figure out what they used to spell out.

Heat is visible on the road in this shot down one of the highway's long straightaways.

Returning to the garden center where I had parked my car.