Rocketbunny in the Blue Ridge Mountains - Days 03 & 04

Days 04 & 05
Tuesday - Wednesday, August 11-12, 2009
near Williamsport, PA
0 miles

After a relaxing Tuesday morning, a group of us decided to spend the afternoon hiking in Ricketts Glen State Park. Scott's mom drove us to the top of the canyon, promising to pick us up at the bottom in a few hours. The ~3 mile long hiking trail follows Kitchen Creek down a series of waterfalls.



















That morning, we'd found construction equipment starting to grade the dirt access road to the house. Scott's mother had struggled to avoid the loosened mud on one side of the road. Coming back through a light rain storm that afternoon, the equipment was gone, but so was that lovely hard packed dry dirt road. I tried not to think about getting the ST out of there.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing on the porch and walking around the property. As the sun set, we walked down to the nearby lake with fireflys flickering around us.

It rained that night. Hard.

On the following day, Scott took me out on the lake in a two-person kayak. We paddled along the dam, visited the beaver house, and plucked blueberries off bushes overhanging the water.

I kept hearing horror stories about the state of the road. Just before dinner, we drove out to survey the conditions. The road was mud. Most of it was relatively smooth, but there were a few places where the rain wasn't draining well and several ruts were torn in by passing traffic. An alternate route through the fields was dry, but it was essentially a deeply rutted jeep trail with at least one steep hill. I was more worried about getting stuck in the woods than falling in the mud.