[Journal entry for June 28, 2012] I returned to the Blue Lake trailhead in Sterling Forest State Park, off of Long Meadow Road in Eagle Valley NY, the same place where I parked yesterday. Today I will attempt to find the trail to Cedar Swamp. Yesterday I wound up making a wrong turn and hiking south to Big Beech Mountain. Like yesterday, the day is clear and cool, but as I have arrived mid-afternoon, I have less time to hike. Today I know how to connect with the Lake-to-Lake Trail (blazed in white), avoiding the left fork near the lake which heads south. Though said to be blazed in white, in fact the blazes are very few and hard to spot. I visit several wetlands along the trail, full of frogs and beaver signs and Great Blue Herons. One is impounded by a small beaver dam. It is stong enough to bear my weight, so I walk along it to a point where I have a nice view, unobstructed by trees, of the beaver pond. A hill at the opposite end of the lake has a prominent rocky overlook. I must visit it sometimes. I connect with the Cedar Pond Trail (said to be blazed in green, though I saw no blazes). It follows a woods road up over a hill, and then parallels the east shore of Little Cedar Pond. A side trail takes me to the rocky lake shore. I have a nice view across the blue water to a stand of Cedar trees on the opposite shore. I continue along the woods road, passing stands of Cedars growing by the water's edge. Some sections of the woods road are rather muddy, and I tred carefully from stone to stone, to avoid getting dirty. The map shows the trail connecting with the Cedar Swamp trail (said to be blazed in orange), but though I did walk almost a mile westward on an unblazed woods road that was more or less in the right location, I was uncertain that it was it. It peetered out before reaching the Stirling Ridge Trail (to which it is supposed to connect), though I was encountering some Cedar trees towards the end, which matched with my expectation, as the map shows the road going through the swamp. I reversed course, and took a woods road east, back towards the highway. The woods road was unblazed, but I guessed right, for eventually it joined the Fire Tower Trail (blazed in red; I did indeed encounter one blaze). It took me back to Long Meadow Road, about mile north of Blue Lake. I walked the road back. It follows the west bank of a lively stream. I walked down to it at one point but did not have time to linger, for I was running late, but it looks like a pretty area to investigate on a subsequent hike. About two hours and fifteen minutes.