Roadtrip, Day 21...Back to Fosterville

Day 21

Saturday June 7, 2025 

     Today was all about ticking off a couple of boxes.  There have been places I've traveled where I knew I had to go back.  Either there was something I had to pass up for time, or it's something deeply ingrained in my brain.  Today, I was hitting two of them.  

     A few years ago, I passed through La Porte en route to a wedding.  This was the trip where I blew a radiator hose, fried a GPS as well as a phone.  So, my priorities were a bit different.

     Where I had planned to stay was just a few miles from a curious sounding place called Worlds End State Park.  That was the first goal of the day.  Since I know had a fifty minutes drive, I was up and out with sunrise, such as it was.   From the Comfort Inn parking lot.

     You know it's early when all the traffic lights are still blinking red and yellow.  The weird thing is, I met almost no traffic the whole way.  Much of it was like this.

     It was still quiet when I finally came to the park.

      The park office wasn't open yet, but there were trail guides and maps ready to go out front.  There was also a handy printout with easy to follow instructions for driving and finding trailhead parking.

     The first trail of the day was always going to be the Canyon Vista Trail.  It may only be four miles, but it's a long climb up.

     To the park staff's credit, it was super easy to follow the blue blazes.  There were plenty of them.  

     Multiple trail reviews suggested going clockwise to get the steepest climb out of the way.

 

     It has rained the afternoon prior, as well as overnight.  As you could guess, it made for muddy conditions.  Every time a breeze picked up, water would fall off the high leaves, hitting the lower ones.  It sounded like rain.  Oddly enough, very little fell on me.

     The view from the first overlook.

     The clouds were slowly flowing through the valley.  

   

     A section they call the Rock Garden...

     The second overlook...

     From here, the trail starts headed back down.  It also gets a little more interesting.

      There's a point you have to climb down a short three foot wall.  On a dry day it would be a breeze.  

     Then there was the downed tree.  It didn't fall across the path, it just took a big chunk out of it.

      Yeah, I lost my footing trying to get around it.  Nothing too serious.  I reported it to the staff and showed them about where it was on the map.  

      The view from the third overlook...

     The original plan was to also do another mile and a half loop.  At this point, I just wasn't feeling it.

     On my previous drive through this part of Pennsylvania, I stopped into the town of Forksville for one reason, they had a covered bridge.  I was returning for a very different reason. 

     This general store and sandwich shop.

     From time to time, something triggers our memories, in the very best way.  My last stop here did that for me.  And it was all over a sandwich.  

     When I was a kid, there was an Italian deli down the street from my house.  There was a certain smell that hit you the moment you walked in the door.  I've never encountered that amazing smell until I came here.  

      It's been remodeled since then and doesn't have the same feel.  The sandwich, good, but not how I remembered it.  

      After the sun finally came out, I was looking for a place to walk.  The Google suggested Susquehanna State Park up ahead.  Nice park, but no real trails.

    However, you can take a paddleboat ride.

    The park in bloom...

     I was overnighting in the curiously named town of Jersey Shore.

     Original named Waynesburg, the stories of how it became Jersey Shore for varying.

     But, they all begin with Reuben and Jeremiah Manning.  They moved here from New Jersey.  Depending on your source, the nickname was an either inside joke between them,  or a diss from a neighboring town.  

     Either way, the name stuck. In 1826, the townspeople voted and made it official.

      The southern terminus of the sixty-three mile Pine Creek Rail Trail is a park in Jersey Shore.  

     I walked about a mile before turning back.  It just felt good to be walking on level, dry ground.

     One of the locals told me all the good stuff's further up the trail. The first bridge is five miles up.  

      My home for the night was a place called the Gamble Farm Inn.  By far the nicest place I stayed.

    This is the second place I stayed with numerical codes and a keypad.  This is the first time it was the last four digits of my cell phone number.