Poking around PA
 

I got through my finals so I thought I'd take a couple days to myself to look around. I went to Pine Creek Gorge with Petes step Dad. We spotted a bald eagle floating around the gorge and eventually alighting on a dead branch in classic baldy fashion. Being a biologist, he spent some time talking to the ravens as well.

From there we went for a drive to check out the work of the glaciers and argue about global warming. If this pic works you should be able to see what look like fingers pointing North East in Tioga and Bradford counties. This part of the world once had 1/2 mile of ice over it. The finger like ridges rise something like 900 feet in a mile from the valley floor. On top of the ridges there are streams and swamps that were created by glacial runoff. Today there are lots of rhodedidrom (sp?)swamps and scrubby forests. The area was once a major coal producer so you still have some spoiled streams, a lot of hunting cabins, and the remains of some depressed communities. Agriculture and commuter workers seem to be the way of life now. The views over the farmland valleys are fantastic and naturally I didn't bring a camera.

It's alway fascinating to fly across PA looking down on the glacial ridges. PA looks like the carpet runner in the hallway, on a rainy Saturday when the kids play indoors. I swear, if you yanked on the western border of PA, it would stretch to Chicago. :D

Nice word picture! Make sure you straighten that out before Aunt Frieda gets here.

These particular ridges were featured in a coffee table book on fractals that I've seen.

I've always wanted to go to the Grand Canyon of PA. I've always dreaded the long drive from suburban Phila with 3 kids.

I think I see the "fingers". Can you give me better coordinates? Are they the green strips that cross US 15? If that's them, do they drain to the northeast?

You've got it. Route 6 runs right between the fingers. The water does generally run NE there. Open google earth and put Wellsboro, PA in as your target.

Spexx, if you head up to Wellsboro, there are a couple of events that you might want to check out. The Mountain Laurel festival takes place up there, as does the Susquahannock Trail Pro Rally (awesome race, used to go every year), and, of course, the Rattlesnake Roundup.

Some years, these things all happen on the same weekend, although the Mountain Laurel festival people would usually arrive when the Pro Rally folks were leaving the Penn-Wells Hotel. Grubby race fans who have been awake for two days don't mix well with older people in freshly starched bermuda shorts. The Rattlesnake guys would usually go harvest snakes and then catch some of the race. Since they tended to carry their bags o' fresh-caught rattlers with them (to be used later at the festivities in town) they always got great parking and the best view at the spectator points.

I also remember seeing signs for a Lumber Museum that I never made it to ...

Probably just as well; you would have been board.


Or maybe you wood knot, who knows?

owie