We went a little out of our way to hop on a Rails Trail in Pennsylvania—and it’s been well worth it! Beautiful scenery and no traffic have highlighted this stone dust trail through the “Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania.” This trail follows the Pine Valley Creek, which is in a huge forested gorge in the north-central part of the state. We followed the trail about 40 miles yesterday, and plan to do about another 15 today (if the rain ever lets up enough for us to leave). We saw a lot of wildlife on the trail. We rode up on five deer that barely ran from us as we approached. We saw an eagle and several other birds in the river. Bethany also saw a black bear cub in a tree (and no, it wasn’t really scary after all).

Dave riding down the tree-lined trail

Small waterfall right off the trail

The rain has been wearing us down this week. It started raining some on Sunday, and has picked up each day since then. We have been fortunate enough to find pavilions we could camp underneath so all of our stuff doesn’t end up soaked. We woke up this morning in the Cummings Township Community Park to a torrential downpour—definitely the hardest rain of the week. Reports on the radio are warning of roads being closed because of flooding. We are hoping for enough of a break in the rain to get in a few miles… but the weather reports are less than promising. Many of you were concerned about us during Irene, but we decided this morning that this has been harder on us than Irene because it’s been raining for so LONG. It has really slowed us down, and hasn’t done much to cheer us up either!

When we get to camp under a pavilion, our stuff tends to expand more than usual! We take over!

We did have our first official crash on the Rails Trail, marking one of the low points of yesterday. We went across a slick wooden bridge a too quickly. Dave lost control in the front, and Bethany crashed in from behind. We did not sustain any serious injuries though, just some bruises.

The trail had several cool railroad bridges that we crossed (slowly, after we crashed on the first one)

Though a few days behind schedule, we hope to arrive in DC either this weekend or early next week to spend a couple of days with friends and see the city.

Into another state!