Chapter 2, Cathedral Rock Fire Tower

I was hiking up to the Cathedral Rock fire tower with my four youngest dogs in the Cranberry Lake Wild Forest on a perfectly lovely, sunny day:

Clover, who loves to run ahead, was the first to see the fire tower. "Look what I found, everybody!:"

And they all broke into a run to go see it. Just look at Fergus' foot pads as he sprints ahead:

I tied the dogs to the base of the fire tower to prevent them from following me up the stairs. I climbed to the top and was rewarded with this stunning view of the Cranberry Lake Wild Forest:

Cathedral Rock was not an original fire tower location. The old fire tower on Tooley Pond Mountain was disassembled, relocated to Cathedral Rock and rebuilt by the students at the Wanakena Ranger School. I'll post more about the Ranger School soon:

This was not real mountainous terrain and Cathedral Rock would not have been high enough for a working fire tower, but it sure made a wonderful, short hike in a beautiful location:

I snapped a photo in each direction and was surprised that I couldn't see nearby Cranberry Lake:

I could, however, see Route 3. This was wild and largely unsettled territory, though, and I noticed very little traffic on the highway:

I started back down the steps and could see my four dogs waiting anxiously for me down below:

I got the pooches' picture before untying them:

And then we began hiking back down the trail, passing many flowers in bloom such as this St. Johnswort:

The trail had been not too long and not too steep. Even tubby old Seamus was not tired. But I'll post more tomorrow: