Pennsylvania Grand Canyon

After spending a week in Guelph, Ontario with brother Beren, Arlene, Calder and Oriana, while Bob returned to Corvallis to help coordinate the transportation at North Pacific Yearly Meeting, we headed off in Snoopy for Tunkhannock, PA, the old family homestead. I had a delightful time with Beren, Arlene and family, though Beren was recovering from a broken hip which he got while riding his bike home in a driving rain storm. We went to the Mennonite market in St. Joseph, near Guelph. It is a huge indoor and outdoor market with produce, meat, cheese, crafts and many other things. We also took in the Guelph Saturday farmer's market which also boasts fresh produce and crafts of various varieties, quilt stores, a visit to Elora, wonderful food and family and chores. I helped Arlene and Beren weed, mulch and get their yard back in shape. The weather didn't cooperate as it was humid, hot and very rainy. Beren and Arlene had applied for special Nexus passes that let you get into the US without waiting in long lines. So, we separated at the NY border and they headed directly to Pennsylvania and we, as is our fashion, avoided the interstates and headed due south of Buffalo on country roads to Highway 6 in Pennsylvania. Highway 6 goes all the way from the East Coast to Long Beach, CA and was the first transcontinental highway, built in 1927. We stopped at the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon because it had a back-country campground in the state park. Unfortunately, though it was not advertised as closed to pets, it was. However, we took a walk any way. The Pennsylvania Grand Canyon is 800' deep at this point and gets 1,400' deep. The road on the left used to be a railway that has been turned into a multi-purpose trail. The river used to flow north, but during the last glacial age the terminal moraine was a little north of here and when the lake behind it melted, the direction of the river was reversed.

In addition to hiking around the point and looking at the views, we took a half-mile detour to this lovely, lace-like falls. As you can see, Darwin was hot and on his own volition sat down in the water at the base of the falls. From here we went to a commercial campground and arrived in Tunkhannock on Saturday about mid-day, in the first wave of Robinsons arriving for the 2008 Barn Raising.