A Spur of the Moment Vacation

 It was Wednesday night and I was debating about taking a ride to Hollidaysburg the next day. There was a talk being held at the Blair County Genealogical Society (BCGS) about, of all things, iron furnaces! The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go. The only problem was that Hollidaysburg, the county seat of Blair County, was about two hours away, which would mean a long drive in the dark to get home. I don’t mind leaving on a trip in the dark, but returning home is another thing completely.

    I talked with Ann Marie and we decided to get a room for the night and turn the trip into a small vacation. A few minutes later and there was a room waiting for us for the next day.

    Thursday morning had me loading the car as the sun neared the horizon. Everything was orange, the sky, the clouds and the trees. I debated digging the camera out of its bag but instead just stood for a minute or two and enjoyed the view, then got in the car and started my trip.

    I arrived early at Ann Marie’s but she was ready and waiting. As is always the case, our first stop was for coffee followed by some breakfast. After some eggs, bacon and toast and a very unsuccessful attempt at solving the crossword puzzle on the placemat, we continued with the journey.

    The trees looked great in the early morning light; fall was definitely well on its way. Bits of fog still clung in the valleys and the treetops making the views spectacular no matter which way we turned. A couple stops were made for geocaches and possible train sightings but even with these, we were in Hollidaysburg by ten. We stopped first at the local library. They were holding their annual book sale and we always try to support the libraries we visit. We both came away with a couple books.

    After that, we drove out of town to the cliffs overlooking the city. Known as Chimney Rocks, they provide a nice view of the town and the surrounding countryside. A small, steep hike is required to get to the top of the ledges. We found another geocache while we were there but even more importantly, we visited an iron furnace which was built into the hillside below the cliffs.

    I couldn’t find much about this furnace other than a couple brief mentions of it on-line. I did find some old currency that was being sold on E-Bay which references it and I also found a mention of it in a book dated 1859. This book says that the furnace was near the train station, the furnace we visited was about a mile away and up the hillside. This furnace is interesting in the fact that it has a concave front, only one opening and is nowhere near any water. Is it the same furnace? I don’t know!

    Later that evening, at the BCGS we met Byron Smail who was giving the talk. His book is called “The Iron Furnaces of the Cove! Williamsburg, Martinsburg, Roaring Springs, McKee”. The book covers the various furnaces that had been built in the “Cove”.

    I had never heard of the Cove before. I always thought of a cove as a small harbor or indentation in a body of water. Looking the word up in the dictionary I found out that it also means; “A deep recess or small valley in the side of a mountain or a level area sheltered by hills or mountains”.

    It was a nearly standing room only crowd. What a nice group of people. Byron gave an excellent talk, showing pictures of the furnaces and places he was talking about. He explained how these furnaces worked and the differences between charcoal and coke fueled furnaces. He had some examples of slag and iron “rock” to show also. The man knows what he was talking about! I picked up a few books from the society’s bookshop while we were there. Ann Marie and I were glad we came. We were also glad that we didn’t have to drive back in the dark!

    We woke up to rain but that didn’t stop me from finding another geocache about a ¼ mile from the motel. I then got coffee for the two of us and returned back to the room where I promptly spilled all of AMB’s coffee on the table. My mutterings and curses were probably what woke her up!

    We drove into Altoona passing the Allegheny Iron Furnace, (built in 1836) about a mile and a half from where we stayed. Then we cruised some of the alleys and back roads of Altoona looking for trains and the Boyer Candy Company. They make Clark Bars and Mallow Cups there. I was hoping to get a tour but that was no longer being offered. We made do by visiting the retail store and stocking up on some candy.

    Leaving Altoona, we stopped at the small town of Gallitzin. The public library sits right beside the portals of the tunnels leading from The Horseshoe Curve. No trains passed by while we were there. In the library I saw a book set up on a display stand, written by a friend and fellow astronomer Ken Kobis. Cool!

    The next stop was in Johnstown where we stopped at another library. The Cambria County Library has a bookstore in it and while AMB browsed the shelves, I went up to the third floor to visit the Pennsylvania Room. I looked at a couple of old books about iron furnaces while I was there. On our way out of town we stopped at a small restaurant and had an excellent chicken meal for lunch. We are often surprised at the good experiences we have when we “try” a place that we just happened upon.

    We were back at our homes by mid-afternoon, both of us pleased at how well the trip went. We got some great fall leaf viewing, learnt some new facts about iron furnaces along with seeing a couple, visited a few libraries, picked up some more books, got a few more geocaches and had a whole lot of fun doing it. Not bad for a spur of the moment decision.

Comin' Round the Curve

 

As is so often the case with pre-planned days, this one started with rain.  Thankfully it wasn’t much more than a light sprinkle. We sure weren’t going to let it stop us from enjoying our trip!

We had been planning this “photo-expedition/geocache search” for a couple weeks. Our final destination would be the Horseshoe Curve near Altoona.  We were planning on going up the hill on the backside of the curve to take some pictures of trains. On our way over, we would make a few stops to try our luck at finding some geocaches.

Frank and I have taken countless photo trips, starting sometime in the 80’s and continuing on through the present day. Frank is a fine photographer and we always enjoy discussing photography and our various other hobbies. Whether our photos turn out good or bad, the day sunny or rainy, we always seem to have a good time.

We left Franks house around 6:30 in the morning. The windshield wipers were only used intermittently, the day was looking good.

Our first stop was at a BBQ joint. It wasn’t to get some food, it was to find a cache. We had been here previously but hadn’t realized that there was a cache hidden there. Since the place was closed, the food option was off the table. We settled on finding the cache instead. It was an easy find, inside a box that contained a rubber pig that oinked when the lid was opened.

On top of a mountain about 5 miles away we made our next stop. This cache was hidden in a small ambulance! Cool, you never know what you might find when you’re geocaching! The radio towers across the highway were partially hidden by the fog. Further down the road we would see fog hugging the hillsides on the distant mountains. Pennsylvania has so many nice views!!

A few “pedestrian” caches followed; nothing real exciting other than the thrill of another find. Rt. 22 has hundreds of caches hidden near it. We picked only a small quantity and left the others for another time. There were two that we couldn’t locate. We looked in all the usual spots but couldn’t find them. We left because we had more important things to do, like watching trains!

Driving to the curve using the back roads avoided going into Altoona. Getting off rt.22 at Gallitzin gave us clear roads with hardly any traffic and no traffic lights. We reached the back side of the curve in about 15 minutes.

Our camera gear was packed in our backpacks. I carried a tripod, planning on using it as a hiking staff if needed. We doused ourselves in bug spray and started up the hill. It was a steep climb but other than a few stops for me to catch my breath, there were no problems.

At the top, we were uphill from the observation platform in the center of the curve. We looked down at the building and the locomotive that is sitting there. The rocks we set up on were thankfully in the shade, not that we had to worry about sunlight. It was just brighter and hotter out on the tracks.

Not much was happening at first. Two trucks were up the tracks a bit, the workers were doing some sort of maintenance. We sat and waited and BS’d.

The picture above shows the curve from space. The yellow line is our path up to the curve and the approximate spot where we set up. Altoona is located off to the upper right of the picture. The track rises as it goes towards Gallitzin, off the picture at the lower right. The curve was built in 1854 by the Pennsylvania Railroad to allow trains to cross the Allegheny Mountains. The curve, approximately a quarter mile across uses the topography of the mountains to lessen the grade to the summit.

 As we sat and talked, we heard a couple toots and then the echoes from across the valley. The men cleared off the tracks and a train came downhill towards us. The engineer tooted to the men as he passed them and then again to us as he went by. A short while later we heard another toot as he passed the observation deck.

A few minutes passed and then an Amtrak train came down the hill, heading east into the curve. He tooted also as he passed the observation deck. It must be in the engineers handbook; “Always toot your horn at railfans on the Curve!”

Next to appear was a train heading west, coming uphill out of Altoona. This one was going slow; we heard the noise of the growling engines before we saw them. There were three locomotives pulling the train. We didn’t think to count the cars. The train seemed to go on forever. We guessed that there were at least 300 cars. Two engines were helping at the end. It is amazing to me to think how much power was in those 5 engines!

After that train there was a lull in the action. Then the sounds of another reached us and finally we saw the engines slowly coming into view across the valley. Eight engines pulled this train! Wow, this will be a long one we thought. We started counting the cars as they passed. 

Forty seven… That was it?  Maybe the engines were being taken somewhere? They sure didn’t need that many to pull that small amount of cars. While we were watching and counting, another eastbound train passed on the tracks behind it. This train was much longer and had some helpers positioned in mid train. It passed before the westbound train passed us.

Once these trains had passed we packed our gear and returned to the car. We had been here for about an hour and a half; we were ready to get moving again. The path going down the hill was much easier going down! We did another cache located inside the bowl of the bend. Frank signed the log as another train passed on the curve above us. We then stopped at two other caches but decided to pass on them since they involved some risky climbing.

The caches I do these days pale in comparison to some of the ones I’ve done in the past. My body just doesn’t bend and stretch as well as it used to. Then there is the healing time, which tends to drag out a bit longer than in the old days!

We were back home around 2PM. My odometer showed that I had traveled a little over 200 miles. We had no slips or falls and we found most of the caches we searched for. I only got us lost once, which is about average, but Frank quickly found our road and we were back on track again. I felt pretty good when we got back, after a stretch or two my back muscles felt normal once again. The pictures came out well and the rain had held off for most of the trip. There were no problems; it was a good trip…as always!

Note; I have to say, I did have one small problem. I found a tick on me before I went to bed. Hopefully it was the only one.  Human nature being as it is, for the next hour or two, I could feel “them” crawling all over me!