Susquehanna Sweet Spot - the Conestoga Trail

Looking northwest from Pinnacle Overlook

Views, views, views.  Each meeting its proverbial quota -- worthy of a thousand superlative words.  So I'll shut up and let the pictures talk.

Looking south from House Rock

Norman Wood Bridge

Holtwood Dam from Face Rock Observatory site

Every one of these views is to be had on a twelve-mile section of the Conestoga trail.  It's a one-day, one way, strenuous hike that I can heartily recommend.

Find a fit friend with a car.  Have him or her follow you in your car to the Lock 12 Parking Lot just off to the north side of PA 372 at the west end of the Norman Wood Bridge.  Park one car there and drive the other to the public boat launch ramp at Pequea, PA, at the end of PA 324 where Pequea Creek empties into the Susquehanna River.  Pick up the orange blazes at the Pequea Yacht Club, formerly the Arrowhead Marina and before long you're plunging into the woods.

For the rest of the hike you're off the roads, usually deep in the woods, following ravines with tumbling noisy streams, and climbing high onto rocky bluffs overlooking the Susquehanna Gorge.  You'll be climbing and descending most of the time, sometimes steeply.  But the payoff is well worth it.  "No pain, no gain," as they say.

Here are a couple of the finest ravine views, Kelly's Run and Tuquan Glen.  Fall color a bonus.

At the end you'll be crossing the river on the Norman Wood Bridge.

This is Amish Country, with luck you'll be passed by a buggy or two.  On the Sunday morning that I came across, I counted four.  There are two in this view, though the distant one is just a dark blur.

Take some time to check out the interpretive signs at Historic Lock Twelve of the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal, which runs some forty miles from the Chesapeake Bay up to Wrightsville.

This hike has a good guide and a decent map, both free online from the Lancaster Hiking Club.

The Conestoga Trail continues north through Amish Country passing through the city of Lancaster and ending at the Horse Shoe Trail.  A lot of the rest of it is road walking, but northbound from the Pequea Boat Launch parking area there's one further woods walk that is well worth the time.  This is an easy section along Pequea Creek.  It features a covered bridge ...

... and then a few miles hiking deep in the woods, far from any road, and right beside large, noisy Pequea Creek.  This is a very easy walk, no climbs at all.  Fall Color was resplendent as I passed through.

And the witch hazel were in bloom.

The highlight here is Suzy's Hole, a whitewater gauntlet tough enough to warrant posted warning signs upstream.

At the other end of this gorgeous woods walk, just before hitting a long Conestoga Trail road walk, the trail passes under a hundred-year-old Railroad Trestle.

This is an abandoned rail line, and the trestle bed has been rebuilt as part of a rail trail that will be the subject of my next report.  A quarter mile connector road near here links the Conestoga Trail with the oddly named Enola Low Grade Rail Trail.  Though the Conestoga Trail is finished with the Susquehanna River, the Enola trail takes you back north and west to it for more killer views.  Watch this space.

I did this section of the Conestoga Trail in two out-and-back day hikes.  Here are the GPS tracks.

The southern section from Lock 12 to Holtwood Recreation Park I did as a side trip during my Mason-Dixon trail hiking.  For completeness, here's that track.

I hope this report raises awareness of this little-known day hike.  It's one of the most concentrated collection of beauty-spots I've encountered anywhere.

Walking on Water - The Chesapeake Bay Bridge 10K

When I moved to Maryland in 1980 I heard about the annual Chesapeake Bay Bridge walk, across the four mile bridge between Annapolis and Kent Island, MD, and I wanted to do it.

Every spring, one Sunday early in May, the older span of the bridge that spans the Bay and connects the DC and Baltimore population to Maryland's eastern shore beach resorts was closed to traffic and open to walkers.  It was free.  All you did was show up and find a place to park or get dropped off at Sandy Point State Park ... and walk.  They offered a free school bus shuttle back to your vehicle.

It was a huge party.  Tens of thousands of walkers did it every year.  As I said, I wanted to do it; but I kept putting it off.  Walking was not my major form of exercise back then.  I had better things to do with my time.  Always some excuse.

Then one spring, some time in the late 1980's or early 90's they cancelled the walk due to construction or other problems.  The bridge authority seemed to like not having to deal with this major logistical hassle.  The event was cancelled again the following year.  And every year after that.  Eventually they stopped even bothering to announce the cancellation.

It was the end of an era.  I had missed my chance.

Then in 2014 came a reincarnation of the event in a new form.  The 'Ten K Across the Bay' Bridge Race was born.  The bridge authorities probably liked this controlled event much better.  You had to pay a pretty steep entry fee.  Sixty smackers.  The private, for-profit race organizers took over the logistics from the bridge authority, recruiting volunteers, arranging parking, shuttle buses, etc.  The people who did the walk had to register and wear a number.  Much less messy for law enforcement and emergency services.  They had to announce their expected time.  They are warned that if they can't keep a minimum pace they will be picked up by a 'sag wagon'.  No all-day dilly-dallying on the span.  They would be a fit and driven crowd.  And therefore a smaller crowd.  They would be off the bridge by early afternoon.

By the time this resurrection took place, I had all but given up hope of walking across the Bay Bridge.  Too bad, too, because now I was an avid long distance hiker.  Specifically a continuous foot-trail hiker, and the route of the American Discovery Trail (ADT) uses that bridge.

The American Discovery Trail isn't my favorite trail.  It is discontinuous in three places.  The Bay Bridge is the first.  The other two are not 'correctible'.  The trail route uses ferry boats to cross the Ohio River at Cincinnati and again across San Francisco Bay.  Worse, the ADT has far too much mileage on roads and paved rail trails and not enough dedicated footpath, tramping the good natural earth.   In fact they seem to consider foot-only travel an annoyance, because their turn-by-turn directions always give a road (bicycle) alternative to the foot-only sections.  No, not my kind of trail.

But I need to hike from the east coast to Colorado.  It's the goal of my 'Personal Continuous Footpath' (PCF) to hike to every place where I have ever lived, to set down a continuous string of footprints connecting them.  I lived in Colorado from 1970 to 1980.  It's the farthest west I need to hike to fulfill the PCF goal.  And the ADT is the only continuous 'named trail' that crosses the US great plains.  There is a new option in Canada.  It's the most impressive trail in the world.  The 'Great Trail' also called the Trans-Canada Trail, which runs 15,000 miles through every province of that vast country.   But Canada is pretty far out of my way.  The ADT, on the other hand, goes right through Colorado. It even has two separate routes across the great plains to get there.  So if I want to stay on any sort of official trail, I'm pretty much stuck with the ADT.  Even so, I would have to find an alternative route through SW Ohio to avoid that ferry.

No problem there.  Just pick a road route.  And now the gap across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge can be walked again, though only once a year, and only if I'm fit enough to do it at a pace of at least three miles per hour.  Well I'm still young enough to do that.  In fact I ended up doing the 10K in 1:45, closer to 3½ mph.

It was a beautiful day.  I reached the staging area about 9AM.

I was set to start with the very last wave, the slowest.  Our wave assembled at the start line at 9:30AM.

Runners had been crossing the bridge since sunrise.  The race is advertised as the fifth largest 10K in the US.  I was crossing the bridge with 22,000 of my closest friends.

The views of the bridge and the bay were spectacular on this bright, breezy, cool early November Sunday.

The organizers had everything covered.  There was a port-a-potty every half mile on the bridge.  Emergency vehicles stationed every mile.  And enthusiastic staff stood ready to help and to cheer you on.

It was over all too soon.

In all, from leaving home to returning, it was an eight hour adventure to do six miles of hiking.  A lot of driving, bus riding, and just waiting in lines.

Here is my GPS track of the race route.

Now all I have to do is hike the gap, almost all on roads, to Cape Henlopen State park on the Atlantic Ocean, where I've already hiked the eastern few miles of the ADT, and then make a short connection from the west side of the Bay Bridge to BWI Airport where I pick up already completed sections of my PCF.  That completed section stretches south to Key West, FL, North on the Appalachian trail to Maine, and now west almost to Ohio on the North Country Trail.  Keep following this blog.  I'll be working my way steadily to Colorado, "God willin' an' the crick don't rise."

Finishing an end-to-end hike of the Mason-Dixon Trail

One of the last views of the Susquehanna on a glorious fall morning.  From here the Mason-Dixon Trail strikes out cross-country for a westward leg that culminates at the Appalachian Trail.

It took me a couple months, hiking an out-and-back piece of trail two or three days a week, but I've now finished the entire 200 miles of the Mason-Dixon Trail.  It was a varied experience.  Highlights were the White Clay Creek Preserve and State Park in the east and the long section of trail along the Susquehanna River from Perryville, MD to north of Wrightsville, PA.

The Susquehanna is the heart of the Mason-Dixon Trail.  It was originally envisioned by Bob Yost as a shorter trail, just along the Susquehanna.  The connections are vital, though.  They make the trail much more relevant.  In the east the trail was extended to the Brandywine Trail north of Wilmington, DE, and the western connection is with the famous the Appalachian Trail near Carlisle, PA.  AT hikers all see this sign as they follow the white blazes across Whiskey Bottom Road.

I clearly remember seeing it on my double thru-hike back in 2012.  I knew that my brother lived right beside the M-D T along Christina Creek in Newark, Delaware, but now I knew that it was not just a little 'local yokel' trail.  It was part of the grand network of connected INTERSTATE trails that I hope will someday become as vast and robust as the Interstate highway system.

The western section of the Mason-Dixon Trail says farewell to the Susquehanna and strikes out westward roughly following Conewago Creek. passing through Gifford Pinchot State Park with an alluring seven mile walk around the south shore of Lake that is the center-piece of the park.

But to get to the AT from Pinchot Lake it's all road walking.  It wasn't the worst place to road-walk, though.  Open farmland give the hiker a first and only look at real mountains along this trail.

Fall color was also near its ripe and shiny peak.  Maples, as always provide the best show.  Here are two roadside encounters of particular note.

The few sections of off-road footpath that weren't beside the river or Lake Pinchot provided some nice variety.  There was this meadow walk through a state game land.

And there was this unusual dry creek bed strewn with evenly sized mossy round rocks.

On the road walk near Interstate 83 I was greeted one morning by this spectacular sunrise.

With this trail done, I'm going back to hike the Susquehanna Gorge to hike the eastern side, within view of the Mason-Dixon Trail route, but arguably an even better hiking experience.  Watch for the next report.

Here is a composite map of the five day hikes it took to complete this segment of trail.

The rugged heart of the Mason-Dixon Trail

Misty morning on the Susquehanna above Safe Harbor Dam

Although the Mason-Dixon Trail is 200 miles long, only thirty miles of it is designated by the US Secretary of the Interior as a National Recreation Trail.  That thirty miles runs through the Susquehanna Gorge from Wrightsville, PA downstream past Safe Harbor Dam to about Holtwood Dam, and that section is the subject of this post.

It's one rugged hike, brutal really.  I slogged through half a dozen or more steep rocky climbs and descents.  The difference between the top of the steep bluffs overlooking the river and the elevation river-side is as much as 400 feet.  Numerous small streams cascade down to the river through steep sided ravines, and if the trail is going to follow the river, it has to negotiate those ravines.  In some cases the trail follows roads inland and avoids the worst of the terrain.  In others the trail seems to have been routed through the very worst of the rocky ridge-spines that separate the Susquehanna from each tributary ravine.  I got the impression that the trail designers wanted to 'show' the hiker special rock formations such as this 'Lemon Squeezer' with a view of the river through the trees in the background.

Well, you get the idea.  The going was slow, the rocks were big and brutal, and the climbs were challenging.  But the hiker gets his/her rewards.  River views abound.  Here's a sampling of some of my favorites.

One of the grandest vistas on the west side, here on the Mason-Dixon Trail, can be had from the top of 'High Point', which has been preserved as a York County Park.  From the summit you can see many miles of river to the south, and a fine stretch to the north as well.

Most of the length of the river below Wrightsville is contained behind three dams.  Conowingo backs up the river just above where it becomes tidal.  Holtwood Dam is placed right where the river flows freely again, just above the upper end of Conowingo's impoundment.

Safe Harbor Dam does the same for the Holtwood impoundment.

In the view of Safe Harbor Dam above you can see a high railroad trestle crossing the Conestoga Creek, just below the dam.  This trestle is on an abandoned rail line and remains the only closed part of a 30 mile rail trail that I will be hiking and reporting on soon.  This section the Susquehanna gorge has great trails and great vistas on both sides, and arguably the quality of the hiking experience is actually better on the east side.  Looking across to the east side from near Fishing Creek, one can see the two prominent windmills atop Turkey Hill.

The granddaddy of all the views along this section is the view from Turkey Hill looking up river toward Wrightsville.  Stay tuned.

The Mason-Dixon Trail doesn't follow the river everywhere.  As I mentioned there are a few road walks.  The trail also meanders through the canyon of Oyster Creek and a few other larger tributaries.

There's also a section of open high meadow walking through the Native Lands Heritage Park.

At the north end of the section, the trail passes under the old US 30 bridge at Wrightsville. 

This is a pedestrian friendly bridge.  Hikers could make use of it and the Norman Wood Bridge to do a multi-day circuit hike of roughly 75 miles encompassing the best trail experience on both sides of the river.  Again, I'll be exploring the east side in an upcoming post.

Below is a map of the track I took over six out-and-back day hikes between the Norman Wood Bridge and Wrightsville along the west side of the river.  For my money this is some of the best hiking east of the Appalachians and north of Florida.