York Co Heritage Rail Trail

Today Phil Ruth and I tackled the Heritage Rail Trail County Park in York County.  We started in York City at the Pershing Avenue parking lot.  The temp was high 50s, expected to drop two degrees through the day.

We started in York City, which is 400 ft above sea level, and my thought was we could make it to New Freedom, which is 818 ft above sea level.  Keep reading to see if we made it, but it was true that going out was basically uphill, and returning was downhill.

General Marquis de Lafayette wanted to ride my Bike even before we embarked from York City.  Phil patiently indulged the delay. In fact I think he suggested the photo opportunity.

We saw lots of canoe shaped inside tracks over bridges.  My theory was they are additional support for the tracks.  Does anyone know?  If they are additional support, that doesn't explain why the ends needed to be turned in and welded together.

Phil found a major error in this interpretive sign.  The sign used a date for iron bridges that was many years before iron was being used for bridges.  We decided that, in the future, we must bring a sharpie, so Phil can correct any interpretative signs.

We saw Union and confederate reenactors.  They said a train was coming up the tracks and there would be a skirmish.

We side tracked to this old Bridge.  Phil knows a whole lot about PA bridges.  Please consult him for further details, although it was fascinating at the time.

We saw this tree, which is possibly an Osage Orange tree.  Trees with big fruit like this are an echo from the past.  They need large animals that used to roam this place up to 10,000 years ago, to propagate their seeds.  It's an amazing thing.  Read it here: 

 http://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/trees-that-miss-the-mammoths/

If a train is coming, remember to put pennies on the tracks.

The train was traveling in reverse, which I guess they do half the time!

We stopped at Glen Rock, where we decided to eat lunch and turn around.

We read from our Africa journals.

We tried to find our description of the ocean water fishing trip from Malindi.  My description was short, bu Phil had an elaborate description of the unfurling of the sails, and then our subsequent sea-sickness.  This photo below might be from Lamu or Mombasa, but it was within a few days of our fishing adventure.

We recommend this little place in Glen Rock.  I think it was Mignano Bothers.  https://www.facebook.com/MignanoBrothers/

They served us bread and olive oil to dip it in, but Phil noted that this concept is American, not an Italian heritage.  Italians would not waste their valuable Oil this way.

Black Walnuts

We saw woodpeckers, foxes, and turkeys.

I lost Paul's Cat Eye computer before this trip started.  I hope it's on the floor of my garage somewhere.