Sometimes short trips can be bigger fun than long ones. I certainly found that out recently.
We'd been putting off traveling because, for some strange reason, both my honey and I are busiest in the summer than any other time of year. Don't know why, just the nature of the beast.
So we settled on October for our latest adventures. We wanted to try to drive across northern Pa. on Route 6, which used to take people across the northeastern states to Chicago.
Yeah, I know. What the hell is up in northern Pa. worth seeing you may think. It is a harbor for hunters and mountain men, but it is also beautiful. It rivaled anything I've seen in Shenandoah National Park, one of the most visited parks in the national park system, and it has very few suburban hell towns in its vicinity. Actually none.
It truly is remote and beautiful. We just didn't bank on the weather being so drastically different from good ol' Ptown.
It didn't feel like fall but winter.
The leaves had yet to turn much. We got there a little early in the season for that.
Towns north of here are rather sad. Small, with 50 percent of the houses boarded up or falling into disrepair. No industry or much business to be seen. Most towns only boasted a small general store and a bar or gas station. Though there are also plenty of beautiful big houses obviously occupied by the retired.
It's a strange land, on the very of the past and the future. Sleepy, and beautiful.
Our first stop was actually in a lovely old town that was a county seat, Towanda, and its downtown much worse off than downtown Pottstown, though it had no "bad" section as I could see. Just beautiful old Victorians heralding back to the lumber days. (The whole are was once known for its lumber, oil and coal barons, but the only remnants of that are trucks barreling by stacked with tree trunks and stacks of wood and trees in everyone's yards as they still heat their homes in winter with wood furnaces.)
The downtown looked like it could've really been beautiful. It had a few old rail stations on the tracks, one of them a bar and artisan's gift shop where I bought awesome wild berry jam that we opened today and made me wish I'd chosen a larger jar.
We stopped at the Red Rose Diner, a real old-fashioned diner that reminded me of Fegely's diner that was recently put inside the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles.
It was tiny and had the original menus and wooden bar and bar stools. A little old lady ran the place and cooked our meals. They just serve sandwhiches, short-order stuff, but it was cute with it's two-person wooden booths to the original tiny bathroom in the back and books about diners.
I learned there that dining cars started from dining carts which a print man started cause he saw a good business in feeding hungry newspaper workers, who couldn't get a meal as most towns' main streets closed up shop about 8 p.m.
That was back in the 1800s. The novel idea eventually turned into dining cars which mimicked rail cars.
Apparently ladies weren't always welcomed in the diners, since the Red Rose made an exception with its sign above the door that clearly stated it was different: "Ladies Invited"
I had a tuna melt, my boyfriend had a ham sandwhich and we got our drinks in original Coke glasses, not the larger imitation ones you see nowadays.
I highly recommend it and a trip along the Susquehannah River Trail, which runs along the waterfront.
Our goal on day one was to make Wellsboro, near the Pa. Grand Canyon, which is more like the Shenandoah Valley. It does have some amazing red rock cliff faces, but they are hidden by the trees most of the year.
We overnighted in a campground near the Pa. Grand Canyon (also known as Pine Creek Gorge, which lies at its heart) called Canyon Country Campground. We were the only campers, and soon found out why. I was just glad I bivouaced the tent. The rain really came down.
I felt bad for a little outside cat that was hanging around our campsite, and for whom we left out our leftover baked beans. (Though I don't really advise doing that in bear country. Something I forgot since it didn't seem like a campground that had that problem. There were a lot of houses and farms around.)
We survived the freezing night, enjoyed our free coffee from the absolutely lovely camp site (though the ground is ROCKY) to stop in at Animalland on our way out.
Animalland, like so many little zoos, is basically run by a couple who enjoy owning exotic animals, though this one seems mostly to house sheep from all over the world. They had a cute bunny and some interesting birds from Russia with amazing fire colored plummage.
I recommend buying corn before you go in and bring quarters cause those sheep are hungry critters. One of them grabbed the whole bag out of my boyfriend's hand and ate it bag and all. I was horrified. I hope the poor thing doesn't have problems because of it, but he was a greedy sucker.
The highlights of the park are the pygmy goats that seemed to have escaped their cage and were wandering around and started following us everywhere. There were three babies and a mama. I'm guessing she was tired at being near the end of the park and not getting corn.
They would jump at our knees to get at the little corn I had left in my pockets.
They also had cats there. A Siberian tiger, a lynx, a mountain lion (you could run into those just hiking in the area), a jaguar who was gorgeous, and of course some of the many wild kitties who just wander around eating the rats and other critters that try to nest in the cages to get at the corn.
They also had siberian fox and some bears, who looked really depressed.
I feel bad seeing animals in cages. They are meant to roam and despite how well they are taken care of, that isn't the life for them.
My boyfriend asked the owner (who sells you tickets at the door) what it was like dealing with the big cats.
The fellow said they were actually very friendly, for wild animals, and that the Siberian tiger would often try to play with him as he cleaned her cage, pushing him into the pool in her cage.
Apparently all the animals he had were bred in captivity. You can hear the sheep in the morning as you wake up at Canyon Country campground. At first I thought they were monkeys because they have such odd calls.
Next stop was the Grand Canyon itself. We could've hiked down along a waterfall from our campground to the creek at the bottom, which has a lovely, wide, gravel trail for biking and hiking following its length. But the freezing cold, winds, and intermittent rain made us reconsider and we drove to a parking spot at a nice lookout point on the Western side.
The road we took is the one that heads into Colton Point State Park. There are lookouts along the road and a 1.5 mile trail around the parking and group camping area that has lovely views. But we couldn't see the waterfall from there. You can probably see it from Leonard Harrison State Park on the eastern side of the canyon, which also has short, easy trails if you don't have much time to spend there but want to get some of the park in.
We decided to check out the view from the tower on the eastern side which, it turns out, used to be in Valley Forge Park near where I live. It was the strangest thing. It's old, but looks like it was from a carnival ride. It has obvious repairs in the steps, which can make you reconsider its safety. It's owned by Animalland's folks and you can buy tickets there, or you can pay by credit card through a rather unusual machine that controls the gate into the tower.
It was a cold, long walk up and at the top it has quite a view that really does rival the Blue Mountains in color and contrast. We couldn't really see far thanks to the precipitation.
Cost is only $3 a person.
Our lunch stop was a bar called the Smoking Barrel at the foot of Colton State Park's access road. It's a strange place. Has a gun on its sign and you'd think it was tough, especially since its attached to an old house that is missing siding and obviously falling apart. But when you walk inside, you are presented with a gorgeous obviously redone bar that is huge. They also had a new modern kitchen that turns out some pretty awesome food.
Strangely enough we were presented with it by a very pregnant bar tender who was not backwoods in the least.
I get the impression there are two types of people in the area: old school residents who remember the area's gradual decline and young folk who purposefully move out there because they either love hunting, skiing, hiking or mother nature.
But they aren't crunchy hippies.
I wouldn't even want to suggest such a thing to their faces. They certainly aren't 'soft' people. Not living out where they all must have to use snowmobiles to get around in winter.
We next headed west toward the Kinzua Bridge State Park. My boyfriend wanted to see it. It's a former railroad bridge built in the 1800s to accomodate the lumber, coal and brick industries that occupied the area. It was considered an engineering marvel that spanned a valley between two major lumber towns at the time. In the valley was another railroad track that served a brick making factory, many remnants of which are left, including old brick roads that have been uprooted over the decades by plant life.
The bridge was knocked over by a tornado in 2003. Before that, it had tourist trains cross it and pedestrians were allowed to walk over it. Everyone that we met had a story about going out on the trains or walking across the bridge in hairy, scary weather.
Only one man had inside information on what really happened.
We settled the night in a motel, not certain if we wanted to freeze to death in a tent as the clouds were lowering and spitting at us as it got darker and darker. We stayed at a hotel in Lantz Corners and walked to the nearby bar which, it turns out, was owned by the hotel owner.
Our bartender, a young guy formerly from Pittsburgh was the only person in there, besides us.
I warn you, if you stop there (it's the only hotel for miles), they stop serving food super early on weeknights. We got there about 8:30 and they were already shutting down the kitchen, but they luckily have a bar menu.
We got to talking with the fellow, and he told us that originally they didn't want to admit that it was a tornado that knocked the bridge down. They said it was high winds. But that wouldn't make sense with a steel bridge.
They had shut it down to pedestrians and trains a while back and where trying to reinforce it at the time of the collapse.
We asked how to get out to it, and he told us a secret way the locals used to get down into the valley using the Red Brick Road. (Turns out this was the old brick factory road).
He also told us how he survived a tornado destroying his house at the age of 9. It was one of the few tornadoes that ever hit Pittsburgh and they survived it only because lightning had hit the house before the tornado did, causing them to all run downstairs.
He was a pretty cool bartender.
The next day we stopped at an awesome coffee shop that looks completely out of place in Mount Jewitt. Called Kaffe Sol, it is a send up to the area's strong Swedish heritage and is run by a former queen of the annual Swedish festival in the area. She was absolutely charming. They had the best coffee and amazing home made baked goods.
The owner introduced us to the area's specialty: Swedish Rye Bread, which they sell by the loaf and the slice there. It doesn't taste like rye bread. It actually has very little rye in it. It's slightly sweet and very hearty. Toasted with butter it's almost like French toast. Wonderful.
I wish I had bought a loaf to take with me because I've never heard of it before and didn't see it anywhere else on our travels in the area.
The owner is also a wealth of information on local lore and sights to see that you might not notice. And you can get books and novelty kitsch highlighting the local swedish culture.
One of the things I noticed was the hex signs that are completely different from the Pa. Dutch ones you find in the Reading and Lancaster areas. They had their own tole style out there.
Apparently in the harsh winters, the settlers would turn to toy making and one of their most iconic images is the red swedish horse, of which you can buy little ones in the coffee shop.
Sitting right on Route 6 next to the Mount Jewitt Mural (which you only see driving east, not west), it offers breakfast, lunch and dinner and has its own Facebook page.
We set off, determined to find a way into the valley to look at the wreck of the bridge. You can view it from above on a lookout terrace they've built in the park but the trails that formerly led down into the valley are blocked off in the park because people were stealing bits of the bridge and selling it on eBay. The only way to get there is the way we took and I don't recommend it since you'll be trespassing, and possibly shot.
We didn't know what we were getting into, but we found the road we were told about and parked our car in a sleepy, barely there neighborhood and decided to hike in. The road had a "no trespassing" sign posted in the beginning and a ramshackle house sat along the side with two big dogs in the yard.
It looked like hill billy heaven and I feared I might get dragged off into the woods by some half breed. But we saw no one and walked slowly down along the former road into the woods. Surprisingly, as we walked, we saw old posts from former factory roads and we eventually came into a clearing with several options to take. There was a former brick road (you could only tell because of the bricks lying randomly about in the path) going one way, and another going in another direction .. and no sign of the bridge from where we stood. There was a little, rather well-kept bridge over a creek and obviously people came through there on four-wheelers, but it was dead quiet and creepy.
We tried one path, only to find it blocked by a tree. We could've gone around, but the underbrush was high and very soggy. It was almost marshland out there.
So we went back to the clearing and tried the other road, which was really broken up, only to have huge puddles block our path.
We decided against going any further since we weren't sure where we were and didn't want to get lost. So we hiked back to the car, but as we approached the hillbilly house, we heard guys in the yard, and I started to slow down.
I didn't want to get shot in the middle of nowhere.
But my boyfriend walked right up and the fellows said the dogs were friendly and they got to talking.
One of the old fellows asked "So you want to see the bridge?" Then offered to ride us out there in his jeep, which looked like it was in serious disrepair. B
ut it started up right away, despite being from the 60s. It had no windshield and no back seat. I sat on a box in the back and had to hold on for dear life and make sure my skull didn't collide with the winch on the roll over bar. We would've been dead if we had rolled, there were no seat belts in this old thing.
But before we left, our guide had to get his trusty Derringer because he ran into a mountain lion in the valley the other day. No joke. My boyfriend got a picture, but I'm not posting it out of respect for the fellow, who could've just shot us with it but was awfully hospital in everything he did.
We headed off into the wild of the valley, trundling along. And glad we did because hiking would've taken hours, and been quite dangerous. These roads are not for cars. Luckily this was a real Jeep. We were climbing at 90 degree angles over humps in the road and fallen trees. Literally trees, not branches.
Several times I had to hang on for dear life or fall out the back, and I must say, I understand why someone could get hooked on this. But I'm still against four-wheeling for the damage it does to the environment for a few seconds of thrill.
As we drove we could see old railroad equipment rotting in the valley, rusty and overgrown from centuries of neglect. Fascinating.
When we got to the bridge, it was more amazing than I could imagine, the twisted steel looked like it had been taffy.
Our guide said he remembered when it fell. Could hear it from his house. He said he knew the fellows restoring it had taken the steel pins out of the concrete bases before the tornado came through and that was the real reason it fell. Claimed the park service was covering its tracks by saying the pins weren't strong enough to hold the bridge up anymore.
Perhaps he is right, but we couldn't exactly walk around the structure since everything was overgrown and there was water everywhere in the valley.
An amazing sight, but such a shame it came down.
As we stood there getting pictures. The caretakers of the land, which isn't owned by the park service where we were, came riding up in a rather fancy four-wheeler. Our guide got to talking with them.
On our way back, he told us how the caretakers were looking after the land for an Ohio resident who had purchased it. The claim was they were going to turn it into a wildlife preserve, but he believed the real reason was prospecting for natural gas.
We'd seen roads being built into pristine woodlands everywhere and our guide said that streams had already been polluted by the fracking process and many companies weren't getting the proper permits from the town. So the town was screwed when the pollution occurred.
On top of that, he said, the companies that were coming in from out of state were bringing in people, not employing those who lived in the area. He said it was bad enough that they lost their only factory to shut downs and now to have outside companies burden the town and disrespect the people living there in that way was awful. He was hoping to run for town council and fight them.
I hope he wins.
We asked him about the tourist train that used to run through Mount Jewitt that our coffee shop hostess had lamented about.
He shook his head and said, "We're losing everything."
It was so sad. And it's such a shame the state is more interested in making money off the land regardless of the negative affect it has on the people there whom it should be more interested in. They may be poor and there may be only a few of them, but they should be given more consideration than some rotten outside company that takes the profits and runs. These towns are getting nothing and the damage that will be left behind is irreversable, and something these little, poor towns will be able to do nothing about.
It's godawful.
A little bit sorrower and wiser, we headed toward Keene, and had lunch at an old saloon turned into a restaurant. Keene could be nicer, too, if only there were money. It also had a train depot, formerly owned and used by the tourist train that used to run over the Kinzua bridge, but which now hosts a viable local arts shop that unfortunately wasn't open.
There isn't much more there, besides some sorry looking stores. Shame, at one time all the buildings must have been grand. There was some truly interesting stone work there, and the former saloon had the original bar, with ornate carvings and a huge mirror. Fabulous to look at. And the food was pretty good too.
I regret not getting dessert. My boyfriend said we would stop for ice cream, but couldn't stand the muzak piped in over the stereo system. We never found an ice cream stand.
We started heading south, aiming for the Elk highway through a spectacular section of state forest that may soon be subject to drilling thanks to our idiotic state government. We passed through towns that were still doing pretty well and looked pretty big and headed into old growth forest along the Susquehannah. The views were beautiful and the towns, as little as they were, obviously catered to travelers.
We enjoyed the views and hit a state park near Hyner view. It was stunning, sleeping beneath huge pine trees. We set up our tent along a babbling brook and stayed up most of the night around the fire.
We got up late and headed for Hyner View, which is supposed to be a big spot for hang gliding, but the freezing cold wind was blowing the wrong way, and the only people there were other tourists. But the view, stunning.
You must be careful, though, walking around where the hang gliders take off. One wrong step and you'll have a too close view of the valley as it comes up to meet you.
We headed home, making one last stop at the Piper Cub museum in Lock Haven. Housed in the old Piper airplane factory next to the airport, it was a rather small, unimpressive local museum, but they do have some rather funny, unique things there, including a Piper that flew around the world.
We ate dinner at the Texas Restaurant, which has been in business since the 1900s and is definitely visited by the college crowd at nearby Lock Haven University. It looks unimpressive from the outside, but inside is classic 50s diner with unusual circular counters in the back that really make use of the space.
It is known for its Texas style hot dogs, but serves up a mean burger and gyros. There is definitely a Greek air to the menu.
It was then on to home, and back to work, and wishing we had more time.
