Ghost Town and Panhandle Trails

We got out to the Ghost Town Trail this weekend, for the first 50-mile ride of the summer.  It was so friggin' humid that my glasses fogged up every time we stopped!  The GT is now finished from Black Lick to Ebensburg.  The trail is wide and in good condition, and unlike most, has fixed, though non-flush, toilets.  We rode from Black Lick (the downhill end) to Vintondale and back yesterday, including the Rexis spur.

Some of the interesting features of this trail inlcude an abandoned road bridge (that makes you feel like you're in some end-of-the-world movie) and two iron furnaces from the late 1800's.  There's a nice display in Vintondale that explains how the furnaces operated.  You can still see the carbon and oxidation on the stone where the flames must have leapt through the cracks.  These must have been some site to see in operation!

New flowers on this trip included spotted wintergreen, northern bush honeysuckle, and spreading dogbane. 

Last weekend, we stayed close to home because of the iffy weather forecast, and hit the Panhandle Trail for the first time this year. It took the Panhandle some time to get momentum in the early days, but when we got to the Walkers Mill parking area last Sunday morning, it was completely full, with the overflow area in use.  Photo-wise, I was focussing on getting new, higher resolution pix of flowers already in my database, but found some new ones anyhow:  silky dogwood, motherwort, and heartleaf four o'clock.  There was plenty of yellow goatsbeard, but it closes up at noon, and I never seem to get out early enough to catch it.

Ghost Town Trail

Abandoned bridge

Rexis spur

North Branch Blacklick Creek



Common St. Johnswort



Panhandle Trail

Four O-Clock

Ninebark

C&O Canal Towpath

My husband and I finally got down for a rid on the C&O Canal Towpath last weekend.  We stayed overnight in Berkeley Springs, WV, and rode the canal from near Hancock through the Paw Paw Tunnel. 

It was a fantastic ride.  The towpath isn't quite as smooth as a rail-trail, but the difference wouldn't really be noticible on a casual ride.  As we rode 46 miles that day, we were a bit roughed up by the end of things.  But the weather was perfect, we found many things to explore, and I got photos of four flowers I'd never found before.

There is some great history to explore along the path in the form of old locks and aqeuducts.  We had lunch at my favorite lock, Lock 63 1/3.  A survey error somehow resulted in a spare lock in the original design, and when the removed the extra lock in final construction, they didn't want to skip a number or renumber the later locks.  Hence, they would up with Locks 63 1/2 and 64 2/3.  Anyhow, it's a particularly pretty area, with the downstream end of the lock looking out over a quiet wetland that has taken hold where the canal used to be.

You can't ride the towpath without wondering about the labor that must have been involved in its construction.  Build largely in the 1930's, it predates TNT and steam shovels, but there are places where they had to have cut 50 feet or more into bedrock.  Construction also predates hard hats, steel-toed shoes, safety plans, decent medical care, insurance, labor unions, and workmen's comp.

Below Lock 63 1/3

Inside a lock

Butterfly



Larger Blue Flag



Dovesfoot Cranesbill



Wild Garlic

Trailshot

My favorite!

May showers bring...

...lots of flowers!  The weather cooperated long enough for us to get a ride on the Butler-Freeport Trail last weekend.  The Butler-Freeport is a great trail for seeing unusal wildflowers, especially at the Freeport end.  Even with an abundance of invasive Japanese knotweed, there was a great variety of flowers, and several that I'd never seen before.  New finds included:



Bugle	Honewort
Wood betony	Red campion


One down side to the ride - the middle section of the trail is torn up by installation of a sewer line.  The trail is still quite passable on a hybrid bike, but rougher than ususal and muddy in places.

A couple of new flowers along the YRT

Purple Milkwort

It's been a hot summer with irregular rainfall, and consequently it's not the best of years for wildflowers. But we did have a good ride along the Youghiogheny River Trail last Saturday and found a few hardy buds.

South of Ohiopyle, we found purple milkwort and button bush, both new additions for MyWildflowers.com.  They were both located in a low spot in a wet meadow.

Button Bush

We also saw Indian tobacco (not sure of the origin of that name!) and a lot of sunflowers.

Other than that, the past few weeks have perhaps been better for seeing critters than flowers.  Last month we saw a couple of young racoons along the Mon River Trail.  They scampered up a tree to get away from us.  Then we spotted a porcupine along the Sandy Creek Trail.  It also climbed a tree, though what a porcupine does can hardly be described as scampering.

Raccoon on the Mon River Trail

Porcupine on the Sandy Creek Trail

Springtime on the Allegheny River Trail

We made the first ride of the year on the Allegheny River Trail last weekend.  This trail runs from Emlenton to Franklin, Pennsylvania.  It’s part of an impressive network that also includes the Samuel Justus Trail and the intersecting Sandy Creek Trail, making for a total of 42½ miles of paved trail.  The Allegheny River and Samuel Justus Trails are also two of the flattest around.

We got on at Emlenton, which affords the opportunity of dining at the Emlenton Truck Stop when exiting I-80. 

This route also lets you pass through the Kennerdell and Rockland tunnels, each more than ½-mile long.  They’re not lit, so a flashlight and a backup(!) are an absolute necessity.  Even with a light, the darkness can be disorienting.  On hot, muggy days, the tunnels can also get quite foggy, though this wasn’t a problem last weekend.
It was a 40-mile ride, and I got a new flower, lyre-leaved sage, for my collection.  We also saw fire pink and mayapples in bloom.

First Outing on West Penn Trail

First of all, the weather forecast had spent all week predicting rain for Saturday.  Until Saturday actually came, and it looked like it would probably be clear until evening.  So we packed up the bikes and the rain suits and headed out first thing in the morning.

We were originally going to try the Armstrong Trail.  But ten minutes into our trip, we found that access to Route 28 was blocked off in downtown Pittsburgh, and there was no telling how long we were going to sit in traffic.  We decided to pick another direction to go in.

My husband remembered hearing something about a trail through Saltsburg that we’d never tried, and I was able to google-up some directions on my PDA.  So we were off on an adventure.

We parked along the street in Saltsburg, scrounged up a map, and headed east on the trail.  It was a nice, wide, well surfaced trail, following close to the Conemaugh River. 

Three to four miles in, there was a sign marking the Dick Mayer Section of the trail, which branched off to the left.  We continued on, though the trail surface quickly deteriorated.  In about a mile, the trail was blocked off, and a sign told us to contact the property owner if we wanted to continue.  We reviewed the map, and it turns out we should have turned onto Dick's section.

The Dick Mayer Section is apparently a work-around for a section of former rail line that the trail builders couldn’t get access to.  This part, then, consisted of about three miles of “non-rail” trail.  It was narrow and steeper that what we’re used to (I admit to walking the bike up a few sections, and even down some places), but went through some great upland woods.  Perhaps the coolest thing was a short tunnel, shared by the trail and a creek shared, that opens immediately onto a wooden bridge.  This spot is definitely going onto my list of the ten best lunch rocks.

After descending a near-cliff in switchbacks at the end of the section, we were back on dead-flat rail trail.  This section had four major bridges with amazing views.

It was a great ride.  Probably because of the forecast, there was hardly anyone out, and it was completely quiet.  I don’t think we saw even ten other bikes the whole day.  It was a lot of work, though – a 30-mile ride that felt more like 50.

The Dick Mayer Section isn’t for the casual rider, but it’s worth the effort.  Once caution is to watch for the signs.  There are several intersecting access roads and trails, and you could get lost back in them thar woods.

I did find one new flower for my photo collection, a field pansy.  We also saw striped violets and golden ragwort, among other things.

Invasive Plants

While everything outside is dead, we may as well address the depressing topic of invasive plants.  In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, I’ll explain what invasive plants are.  An invasive plant is a species that heavily overtakes an area, crowding out other plant species.  Usually they are non-native plants, some experts include aggressive natives in the definition also.

So why is this a problem?  Well, for one, the invading plant, by crowding everything else out, basically eliminates biodiversity in the area.  This results in an environment that is not resilient to normal climate fluctuations and blight, and is usually a poor wildlife habitat.   They can also threaten the survival of native species, and can be expensive to control.

How did they get here?   Most were imported because they were pretty or edible, and then got out of control. Kudzu, the king of the invasives, was introduced as an ornamental plant.  Crown vetch was THE choice for planting along highways for soil stabilization for many years. Garlic mustard was introduced for food and medicinal purposes.  There aren’t many laws prohibiting the sale of invasive plants, so you can still buy many of them at your local landscape store.  These include things like Japanese honeysuckle, Japanese spirea, exotic bamboos, and Norway maple.

As an individual, one thing that you can do is to avoid planting these commercially available invasive species in your own garden.  The National Park Service publication, Plant Invaders of Mid-Atlantic Natural Areas, provides good information on native plants that make good substitutes for invasive species.

Other good sources of information on invasive plants include:

• USDA’s National Invasive Species Information Center
• National Park Service’s Weeds Gone Wild webpage
• Invasive.org’s Invasive and Exotic Plants webpage