Visiting the Eternal Flame Falls in Person

I usually don't put up lifestyle posts, but this one is actually relevant to Steemit in some way so here it goes.

About a month ago, @ruth-girl made an excellent post on the Eternal Flame Falls. It's a continuous jet of flame coming out of a cave underneath a waterfall fueled by natural gas. Her description of it was part of her series of Bizarre Natural Phenomena posts that are a fantastic read if you have several hours. Most of these phenomena are far away from where I live, but this one was just a quick 40 minute drive from my house. I love nature and I'd been meaning to hike to the Eternal flame. I finally got a chance last weekend so I thought I'd add to her original post by describing my personal experience of visiting the Eternal flame falls.

My wife and I drove out to the trailhead on Sunday at about 10:00 in the morning. We parked in a large dirt parking lot . It was pretty empty this early in the morning, but was expected to fill up by mid-afternoon. At the beginning of the trail was a map:

From the map, we could tell this hike was relatively short, a little bit over half a mile or 1 kilometer. The trail actually brings us right above the eternal flame falls before slowly descending to the creek beyond the falls and then having us walk upstream to the base of the falls.

The trail was pretty easy to follow with clear flame markers every 50 meters or so.

Upstate New York parks are beautiful in the Summer and this place was no exception.

The first half of the trail was cleared of debris and fairly easy to navigate. However, the descent down to the creek required some decent shoes or at least hiking sandals.

Once at the creek, we had to walk along it and through it at points to navigate upstream. Nothing strenuous, but you almost can't avoid getting your feet wet.

In a few places, fallen trees had dammed up the creek. However, it was never too difficult to walk around them.

We got to the flame soon after passing the above trees. It wasn't exactly jaw dropping, but it was still pretty cool .

The walk back was pretty much just the walk forward so scroll up if you want to experience it. All in all a very fun experience and a nice quick hike for anyone. I leave you now with clumsily shot .gif so you too can experience your own eternal flame.