Leaving New York on September 12th, we headed to
Leonard Harrison State Park, home of the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. As I am planning to hike to Grand Canyon in
Arizona next October, I figured hiking the Grand Canyon of PA was a good way to
start my quest to get in better physical condition. The state park campsites were very nice –
level, shaded, with 50 amp power, $22.50/night with our senior discount. Once we set up camp, we could walk to the
visitor center and to the trail heads.
Once we set up, I walked up to the
overlook and hiked the .6 Overlook Trail – a nice walk through the woods to
Otter View, a vista of the canyon looking south. The next morning, Don left to play golf – on his
quest to play in all fifty states.
(Although we have visited PA several times, he never played golf
here.) I decided to hike the Turkey Path
Trail to the bottom of the canyon, one mile down and one mile back up. A nine hundred (900) elevation change! Although a fairly short hike, I carried my
Camelback pack filled with water, lunch, jacket, and even threw in a book to
add a little weight, total about 12 pounds.
I also took both trek poles, trying to get used to using two. I usually hike with one but I know I will
want two for Arizona. It was a beautiful
hike, with a couple nice little waterfalls, a couple observation decks, and
several sections with steep steps and handrails. I took my time going down, making frequent
stops to take photos and just to listen to the forest. A beautiful hike.
At the bottom, I hiked about a mile
upstream along Pine Creek Gorge. It is a
very level and paved multi-use trail, stretching 62 miles through the Allegany
Mountains. I ate lunch along the creek
before heading back up the trail.
Although I can hike all day on level ground, I am very slow going
uphill. I really need to improve my lung
capacity and my leg strength. It took me
61 minutes to make the climb, which I didn’t think was too bad considering I
had gotten very lazy over the summer. I
definitely need to walk more before next October. But all-in-all, I really enjoyed the
hike.
The next day we headed south. It was a beautiful drive, winding along clear
streams through the mountains of central PA.
We had a small problem with the coach, losing power rapidly on uphill
portions of the road. I contacted
Caterpillar service and they directed me to a Cat dealer in Duncansville, PA –
which was our destination anyway. So
four hours later and $235 poorer after replacing the fuel filters, we settled
in to another campground. (The fuel
filters were only $35; $200 for diagnostics!
We already know that owning an older motorhome is not cheap.)
The next morning we visited the
Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site. This site preserves a very small portion of
American history, before the advent of large steam locomotives. In order to compete with the Erie Canal in NY
and the C&O Canal in Maryland, in 1831, Pennsylvania built a canal from
Philadelphia to Pittsburg. However,
there was no way do dig their way through a Allegheny Mountains. Instead, they devised a portage system to
load the canal boats on rail cars and pull them up over the mountains and down
the other side – 276 miles of canal and 82 miles of railroad track! This
reduced the travel time from Philadelphia to Pittsburg from 23 days to 4
days. It was a very interesting
display of a period of time that we had never heard of.
Now on to Ohio!
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