Spruce Pond is off Herlihy Road in Tully, and it's the quieter version of what this part of Onondaga County delivers when you get off the main roads. Five stars for a spot that earns that score by being exactly what it is without any apparatus around it: a small, clear pond in the hills east of Tully, accessible on a walk that connects through the Labrador Hollow area.
Tinker Falls is about a mile away, which puts Spruce Pond in the natural orbit of a Labrador Hollow day. The sequence — Spruce Pond, then the Tinker Falls trail, then out to the Nest Tavern on Route 11 for a late afternoon beer — is the kind of CNY Saturday afternoon that you can put together without planning and still have it feel like something you'd planned for weeks. The light on Spruce Pond in the evening, with the tree line reflected in water that isn't moving, is a photography location that not everyone knows about and I'm not rushing to overexpose it.
The hills east of Tully are underrated in the regional landscape for people who grew up in the valley. Worth getting off 81 for.
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The Day's Trail
October 16, 2022
