Month: June 2015

A little unwelcome drama on packing day:  we can’t locate our passports!  Several weeks ago we checked that they hadn’t expired, then refiled them in a “safe” place, knowing that we would need them to travel through Canada on our way west.  They still haven’t turned up after many hours of searching, unpacking, and repacking.  We now plan to reunite with our good friends Bob & Paula (from north of Toronto) in the Finger Lakes region instead of at their home.  We’ll also postpone visiting Manitoba until another trip.

To top it all off, now we have lost two sets of keys, the ring of various camper keys and the car key with a bike lock key attached to it.  At least we had spares, so we can have them duplicated.  Are these events a sign of senility creeping over us?

So today we’re off.  A day later than planned, but it’s rainy anyway.  Yesterday wouldn’t have been a good biking or hiking day in our first destination:  Connecticut.  Good-bye to our cats Bigelow and Dottie, who should be in good hands with the nice lady from Sweden staying in our house for the summer.

“Misty, moisty was the morn, chilly was the weather; there I met an old man, dressed all in leather…”  So began a familiar song from my boyhood.  In Watertown, Connecticut, we hiked a portion of the Mattatuck Trail that passed through Leatherman Cave, named for the local legend who in the 1800s walked a regular circuit of about 360 miles between the Hudson and Connecticut rivers every 34 days or so, subsisting on handouts from the local families he passed on the way and sleeping in caves.  The trail climbed through tall mountain laurel thickets, ran along the edge of a high rocky cliff, and descended to and through the fairly substantial cave formed by rock slabs below the cliff.

Earlier in the day, we biked along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail from Farmington to Simsbury and back, a scenic paved bike path mostly on a former rail bed (formerly the tow path for the canal between New Haven, Conn., and Northampton, Mass.).  It’s part of the East Coast Greenway, a bike route from Calais, Maine, to Key West, Florida. The weather was pleasant, and we had occasional glimpses of the river and “Avon” (Talcott) Mountain with its tower that was so familiar to me, growing up in the Farmington valley.

In western Pennsylvania we stopped to see Kinzua Bridge.  It was the tallest railroad trestle in the world when it was built in 1882 to ship coal, lumber, and oil across the deep valley of Kinzua Creek, a tributary of the Allegheny River.  In 2003, nearly half of the span was destroyed by a tornado.  Now you can walk out to the end and peer down a long way to the twisted remains of 11 steel towers that were toppled in that storm.

In the afternoon we hiked through a majestic area of old growth forest in Hearts Content National Recreational Area, in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest.  All along the trail were towering pines and hemlocks 2 to 2.5 feet in diameter, with a few beech, oak, and ash nearly as big.  Just before supper, a short walk from our campsite into the Hickory Creek Wilderness was rewarded with a black bear sighting.

The campground at Hearts Content is very nice, and has to be the most quiet and peaceful place accessible by car that we have ever camped in.  There we feasted on pad Thai made with marinated chicken and lots of fresh veggies.

We biked eight miles down the Sandy Creek valley in northwestern Pennsylvania on this paved bike trail on a former rail bed.  The shade, solitude, many bridges across the creek, and 967-foot-long tunnel made it a delightful ride.

Upon reaching the wide Allegheny River, the trail crosses it on a high bridge then follows the right bank downstream for another four miles, where we turned around.

Friendly cyclists and a trail volunteer we stopped to chat with gave us some good tips for future biking destinations in Pennsylvania.  Ice cream tasted very good after a good bike ride on a warm summer day.

We stayed four nights in Letchworth State Park in western New York, with its stunning views of the nearly 600-feet-deep gorge carved by the Genesee River through sandstone and shale.  There are three major waterfalls in the 17-mile-long park, many scenic overlooks and hiking trails, and a nice little museum.  One trail crosses the park’s only footbridge across the river.

Bob and Paula arrived from North of Toronto to join us at Letchworth for two nights—we’ve been friends since 1969 and Bob was best man at our wedding.  Taking advantage of electric service at this campground, we used the portable pizza oven from “Old Fogeys Outing Club” buddies Dick & Sonia to bake potato strips with one dinner and pizza and some-mores the next night.

In the 1800s the Genesee Valley Canal, perched above the cliffs on the eastern side of the gorge, provided transportation of goods between the Allegheny River and the Erie Canal.  Begun in 1837 and completed in 1861, the GV Canal was later replaced by a railroad and now there are only traces remaining.  We hiked along part of the Finger Lakes Trail on the old railroad bed (former canal tow path) a few miles east from the edge of the Genesee River gorge, then drove a few miles east of Letchworth Park to see a group of seven of the old GV Canal locks, each 12 feet high and lined with blocks of the local bluestone.