Indian Summer

Indian Summer is an inexact term for a spell of warmer weather sometime after the first frost. Some say it has to be a stretch of about 7 days after the Autumnal Equinox where the temperature is above 70°. It's never easy to predict if we are going to get any more warm weather before the chill of Autumn sets in in earnest so I am calling this Indian Summer.

The leaves are nearing peak color in this area with the Dorrito trees having been harvested last week. Maga11 is coming today to help me plant 8 letterboxes for the Scotia's Scary Secrets event in two weeks. I am looking forward to some time walking around Scotia Barrens with her this morning. RGBisMe and I are happy with a map we have designed to help navigate this area.

We enjoyed some time in the car and hiking a few places this past weekend. A nice drive through Quehanna showed us vibrant leaves and bold elk. Dropped apples near a tree were hiding one of the largest yellow jackets we had ever seen. Mososo Kruppe battled for the muddiest foot award (votes will be tallied in comments section below.)

I chatted online with a good friend who took advantage of the weather to hike and letterbox with her sister. She is only getting out once a month for such an outing but chose the perfect weekend. She was kind in wishing us the same type of weather in a couple of weeks for the Scotia's Scary Secrets event.

I am blessed to live in an area of the country that has such a great representation of each season. The lack of sunlight can be a real drag to those of us who tend toward seasonal affect disorders but I will try to embrace it as a little hibernation this winter and look forward to accomplishing some indoor tasks. Until then, the Autumn foliage is what I will feast my eyes upon to get me through the subtle shades of the oncoming Winter.

Quehanna

Yesterday morning RGBisMe and I drove up to Quehanna Wild Area to do a little hiking. We chose the Crawford Vista Trail and looped back via Dry Marsh Trail. This has got to be one of the most pleasant and diverse hikes we have ever taken. It was somewhere under 4 miles in length but we were so energized from all that we had seen that it seemed like a level walk through the park all morning.

There were fiddle head from at least 3 different kinds of ferns along most of the trails. Lichen was blooming at Crawford vista. Warblers were darting here and there and we could always hear a Black-Throated Green Warbler somewhere nearby.

As we hiked away from the vista into Elk County we actually saw signs of an elk! I looked at the scat pile and said, "That's no deer!" RGBisMe made me take a photo using his compass for scale.

Dry Marsh Trail was actually elevated on a grade through an active marsh. An interesting thing about the entire 50,000 acres is what was state forest land and was sold in 1955 to the Curtiss-Wright Corporation. They used the area to develope nuclear jet engines and conduct research. The land was returned to the state in 1966 and now is managed as the Quehanna Wild Area in DCNR’s Moshannon and Elk forest districts. There are still traces of radioactivity in the wild area although the stateassures us it is minimal. They did, however, remove all hunting camps from the immediate area. The boundary of the wild area is a symmetrical 16-sided polygon.

The final mile or so along Meeker run was so beautiful. I reminded us of the best parts of hiking back to the geocache called Serenity. We think this was better because there was no road walking nor a camp at the end of the trail. There was an old camp foundation at one point but we now know how long that has been gone and why.

Quehanna is so much closer than we realized too. The trails are less rocky because it is out of Pennsylvania's ridge and valley section and is on the Allegheny Plateau. This is probably another reason why we were less fatigued. I can guarantee that this past Sunday will not be the last time that I explore trails in the Quehanna Wild Area.