Now for the Mountain Tops

As we headed out of Shenandoah, we hiked to what is apparently one of the few 360 degree views in the park.  So sayeth our guidebook, in any case.  

Bearfence  Mountain is home to a relatively short loop, if you want it to be, but part of it is a pretty decent rock scramble.  That being said, as promised, the views were more than worth the effort.

Here's Justin, mid-scramble.  This one wasn't terribly tough as far as it went, but one spot did have some precarious balancing that - I'll be honest - made me wig out.  But I made it!

Back at the trailhead, we found a small flock of Cedar Waxwings in a dead snag.  Here's a couple shots I got.  

And one Waxwing, vamoosing.  

There's one more thing I want to show you from this weekend.  We were out at the right time for Mountain Laurel to be in bloom.  While this is Pennsylvania's state flower, it's just as pretty in Virginia.  These were blooming behind the museum in Rapidan Camp.  

And with this, we'll leave Shenandoah behind, even though there's a few more adventures that didn't translate to photographs well :)

Shenandoah in June

I'm getting a little out of order here, but bear with me.  Exactly one week after we returned from Ireland, we made a quick weekend trip down to Shenandoah National Park.  We hit some fantastic weather - warm but not crazy hot, sunny with dramatic fogs and clouds.

This park more or less demands the use of the pano function on the old iPhone camera.  Anytime you get a view, it's usually miles of mountain blue and valley green and one frame doesn't catch nearly enough of it to give the proper scale.

These are a couple of the overlooks we encountered as we drove south.  We intended to camp but left the campground itself to chance.  Matthews Arm looked big and open and not overly inviting, so we decided to head further south, to Lewis Mountain Campground, which is the smallest in the park.

After we snagged a spot, we decided to hike down to Rapidan Camp.  Before this hike, we did not know that Herbert Hoover had a camp in Shenandoah.  Camp actually does not give you a sense of the size and complexity of the thing.  But this was a great spot to visit.

Actually, the biggest excitement happened just a few hundred yards along the trail.  We're zipping a long, and a bear pops up right next to the trail.  I screamed, it screamed.  It ran away, but not very far, and then followed us for about 100 feet.  Kept us hopping!

Rapidan Camp is at the bottom of this particular trail.  Not many of the buildings are left (there were a lot!), but a few cabins still stand, and so do the chimneys of a few others.  

There's a small waterfall along this trail.  We caught it as the sun was filtering through the trees above it.

And it turns out that we would have interesting wildlife encounters on the way down to the Camp and on the way back.  Near the top of the trail, we met a pair of white-tailed deer traveling downwards.  

We caught sight of them and stopped in our tracks, and watched them approach within about 50 feet of us before veering off to the left and looping around us.  

Irish Details - the Fourth Day

This day, we finally hiked along a waymarked trail, the Ulster Way.  This was a 10-mile day, and I was doing it on pretty beat-up feet.  But we made it, and in good time!

This walk started out at Ballintoy village and ended at the Giant's Causeway.  There were a few neat stops along the way, including St. Gobbans, which is thought to be the smallest church in Ireland.  Although it sounds like no one's ever checked to be sure!

Yep, it's small!  Right after this, the trail passed around a headland through a hole in the rock face.  This was a really neat stretch of trail, although a little crazy, too.  Back before the church, it looks like a high tide would have made the way impassable.

After this, we walked for quite a way through sheep fields.  It amazed me then and it still amazes me now to think of sheep grazing a few yards away from the ocean.  In fact, I'm guessing they're responsible for these complex spiral paths ...

Soon, we came upon what little is left of Dunseverick Castle.  I believe this isn't even part of the castle proper, but more of an outbuilding or a kitchen.  The castle itself has fallen into the sea, an unfortunate side effect of building that close to the shore.

Soon after Dunseverick, we seemed to walk up and up, around headland after headland, each one a little higher than the last.  Eventually we passed an area called Half Moon Bay, if I recall correctly.

We started somewhere out there in the middle distance, along the flat part of the coast, so you can see how far we've come.  (We were barely half way at this point!)

After a few more miles of lonely rugged coastline, we began to meet more and more people.  This is how we knew we were getting close to the Giant's Causeway.

This is one of the most well-known attractions in Ireland, an area of the coast with hexagonal granite columns stretching out into the sea, in legend the home of the giant Finn MacCool.

I have to say, it's lovely.  But, it was a little underwhelming after three days of exploring just as rugged and just as lovely coastlines.

  

I did enjoy the rock formation known as the Camel - it's fairly realistic, as far as these kinds of things go!

We ended the day with a really nice tea in our room at the B&B, quite a good restorative.

The pictures were never particularly successful, but this B&B had plenty of bird feeders in their backyard and our room was positioned to see them.  I had a great time watching, and even caught a few life birds that I saw nowhere else on this trip, including the European Goldfinch, and a Common Redpoll.  I'll try to do a separate post for those!

River Walking, Part Two

After we did the Enola Low Grade Line, we decided to do another part of the trail the next day.  Monday evening, actually.  I had heard that a pair of Bald Eagles were nesting close to the trail.  And yeah, they were CLOSE!

I think the sun had actually set at this point, so the photo is a little wonky.  But you get the gist.  

This walk is along the Northwest Lancaster County River Trail.  What's interesting about this trail is that it's not complete.  Different sections of it have come on line over the last decade, and even more will be completed soon.  By the end of this year, we should be able to walk down the street to the River, then go over 10 miles north.  Soon to be even further.  The very long term goal is to connect the trail south to the Enola Low Grade line, of last post's fame.  

Anyway, the rail trail has finally connected up to Shocks Mill Bridge.  This is a rail bridge and is difficult to see from any road.  So the trail really has opened this view up to the public.  The central portion looks different because it was damaged in an ice jam and had to be rebuilt.

We also found the other Eagle, out on a bar in the River.  Very far away, but you can't really mistake one for anything else, at least not in these parts :)

The last thing that was really neat was getting to check out an art project I'd heard about.  Turns out an artist, in conjunction with a local elementary school, has designed a tile mosaic for the long retaining wall at Donegal River Park.  

It's not complete yet, you can see where tiles still need to be placed.  But it's so neat!  The design seems to be the River, connecting various scenes from the countryside.  This is the big arches of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, close to home and lovely.  I'm not sure if the sun is a play on the Rising Sun Hotel building here in town, or whether that's a happy coincidence :)

River Walking, Part One

When we're going for distance in hiking, we tend to stick to flat trails.  Fortunately, there are two big rail trails in our area.  We did a portion of the York County Heritage Rail Trail in April, and now we explored some on the Lancaster side.  

The Enola Low Grade line and the Turkey Hill trail start in the same parking lot.  Neither one of these trails existed as such when we moved to the area, so things have come a lot way!

The Turkey Hill trail is interesting.  It takes you up the river bluffs to the edge of Lancaster County's large landfill facility.  There's a nice overlook out over the Susquehanna River.  What you can't see in this shot is that there are two large wind turbines immediately off to the right.  The islands out into the distance mark the Conojohela Flats, an important area for migratory birds.  

While we were on the Turkey Hill trail, we could hear a bird singing intermittently.  I didn't know what it was, but thought it had a warbler-ish sound to it.  What's really neat is that, once we finished the trail and decided to walk part of the Low Grade Line, we found the bird again.  And I was right, it was a Prairie Warbler!  This is the first of these I have ever seen.  And it came in handy because I was able to recognize one singing the next weekend, during the PAMC.  I would have missed it otherwise!

The part of the Low Grade Line is just beautiful.  The trail follows an old rail bed situated on a bench above the River.  The views from this section are much wider and open than on other parts of the rail trail.  We noticed that a large number of Mennonites were out this lovely Sunday afternoon, and this lady with her bright blue dress caught my eye especially.

This is Mann's Run, as it gets ready to enter the Susquehanna.  And below is a restored rail car, painted to represent a particular scheme that actually was used on these rail lines at one point.  Neat stuff!

We definitely want to come back again, and walk the whole stretch from the parking area to Safe Harbor Dam and back!

The Day Before and the Week Before

The day before we did the big hike on the Rail Trail, I was working on a Saturday.  Fortunately, the "job" was helping out with study sessions for the County's Envirothon.  Technically it's work, but it was a lot of fun, too.  I was reviewing how streams and rivers work with enthusiastic 3rd and 4th graders.

These sessions take place in Nixon County Park, which has a large Nature Center.  Here are some shots from this last Saturday.

Frogs were abundant, multiple types.  This was the only one I found who wasn't actively working at making new baby frogs :)  Like these:

Some other early signs of spring were showing.  I believe these are blooms of the small shrub called Witch Hazel.  I forgot to break a stem and check the smell - Witch Hazel smells like the stuff you can buy in drug stores.

Now what I didn't tell you is that two Saturdays ago, Justin and I worked the afternoon study sessions together and walked around nearby Lake Williams beforehand.  This gave us something over 5 miles of hiking through pretty gentle terrain.  Lake Williams and Lake Redman are local water reservoirs and are each the center of a County Park.

Here's the tail end of Lake Williams.  The dam for Lake Redman is just across the road.  It was on this hike that I saw my first true wildflowers of this year, some lovely Coltsfoot.  I was fortunate to catch a bee at just the right moment.

There were a lot of Double-Crested Cormorants in the area.  I assume some were migrating through and some are here to stay.  I think I counted well over 30.  One of the funny things about Double-Crested Cormorants is that a lot of times you have to catch them at just the right angle to see their crests.  But not so with this guy, he (or she) is really rocking the hairdo.

Excuse the awkward view through trees, I thought the hair was worth it :)

Dusting Off the Winter

I find it a little hard to believe myself, but from last Sunday to this past Sunday, I have hiked/walked right around 28-29 miles.  We have been making a point of getting out and about to pull ourselves back into some semblance of shape for an upcoming vacation which is going to involve a TON of walking.

The first big foray we did was about 9.5 miles on the York County Heritage Rail Trail.  We wanted somewhere relatively flat with a lot of mileage we could just churn out.  Last Sunday we started at the Hanover Junction trailhead and walked to the town of Glen Rock and back.  Not a lot of wildflowers were out, but there were several big patches of Bloodroot in bloom.

This is the town of Glen Rock.  Bluegrass music fans might recognize this as the town where Del McCoury grew up.  The Rail Trail actually continues south of Glen Rock into Maryland, but this was far enough for us in one day.

The Rail Trail, at least this part of it, runs along the south branch of the Codorus Creek, and the landscape is a mix of farms and forest.  

Most rail trails follow the right-of-way of an old rail line. That is, the rail line has literally become a trail.  This one in  York is a little different, because the tracks are still in place.  They were disused for quite a while.  But now, Steam Into History, a steam-powered locomotive that pulls excursion trains, uses the tracks.  So those on the trail sometimes come face to face with those on the rail!

Here's a short video I took of Steam Into History's gorgeous locomotive when it first arrived in the area back in the summer of 2013.  One of those things I just happened to luck into.

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Skippack Creek

A long time ago, I bought this book.  I have the one for Central Pennsylvania, too. For a while, we made a point of doing as many as we could, but had kind of gotten off track lately.

So this last weekend, desperate for some outdoor activity, we revisited the book and came up with a nice hike through Evansburg State Park in Montgomery County.  No, we didn't pick it based on its name, and yes, this wonderful hike is basically in suburban Philly!

We did a 4.7 mile loop hike which took us up one side of Skippack Creek, across it, and then down the other side.  There are a lot of old farmsteads in and near the park.  It was interesting to imagine the days when travel by creek probably would have been far simpler than travel any other way.

I didn't get a good photo of this part, but at one point, we were walking through the brushy flood plain close to the creek, with a farm field on one side, and then a hemlock-covered cliff rising across the stream.  It reminded me very much of the family farm.  Down to the details of how the stream flows!  

Elsewhere, there weren't a lot of signs of spring, except for a very muddy trail.  But I did find a few cheerier signs of warm weather. 

These daffodils were a day or two from popping open, and also were another sign of human habitation at some point (daffodils naturalize but aren't really wildflowers).  I also found a twig from a tree that had fallen to the forest floor.  The blooms were very small, but surprisingly colorful.

I felt like a poor woodsman this trip, because I don't know what kind of tree the blooming twig belongs to, and I don't know the name of the small trees that these long-lasting whitish leaves from last fall were hanging on to, either!