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Bicycle Tour Pittsburgh to West Newton

Greetings,  I hope this finds you well. These pictures and stories are not in sequence as I am trying to figure out how to blog on my phone. Joan stopped ahead of me and took this picture of me riding out of an underpass.   I passed a red smelly waterfall.  I hear there are several on the trail.  A reminder of the many abandoned iron and coal mines in the area.  This smells a little like sulfur, a sign says it is water from an old mine and is acidic and a major source of pollution. Joan is an experienced bike tourist as you can see by her neat pack.  She said keep your raincoat on top. We stopped  at a cemetery and campground in Dravo where a soldier was buried from the war of 1812 and about nine from the civil war. Is a consort a lady friend without a marriage certificate?  I have yet to google it. Once out of Pittsburgh ant it’s burbs, the trail became bluffs on one side and the river on the other. McKeesport was industrial but had a park on the trail with a nice statue of John F Ken

Ride Starts Today!

 We parked in a burb and biked unloaded to the start of our ride.  Mile zero in Pittsburgh.  

Signs from Heaven -Ohiopyle, PA

 Greetings from the Allegheny Mountains. I am glad I got here a few days before our bike tour.  There is a lot to explore near Ohiopyle State Park. One day I walked down to the little tourist community of Ohiopyle.  The town is small with a visitor's center, a general store, bakery and sandwich shops, a motel and B&B, and a few white-water outfitters.   The walk down is on a steep, gravel trail from the campground to the GAP trail.  But then it is a short flat walk on the rail trail across two bridges that cross a river with rapids. I stood on the bridge a while and watched a guy in a small kayak playing in the rapids.  He’d shoot between two big rocks then turn and paddle his way back up that shoot and choose another place to get through the rapids.  It was fun to watch. One of the bridges I crossed while on the trail I remembered reading about in The Great Allegheny Passage Companion.  The railroad built it with the idea another track would be crossing there too, so the pilla

Connecting on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP)

 Woohoo!  I made it! Pulling out of my campsite at Bear Ridge campground I was having my doubts... more on that later. I had to grind up a huge incline to get here. Fortunately I was behind a big truck going 20 miles per hour up the hill.  No rush... "I think I can, I think I can." I arrived in Ohiopyle State Park.  I can't believe no one corrected me when I was constantly spelling it "Ohiophyle" and pronouncing it OHIO-FILE.  The GPS lady pronounced it OHIO-PI'-LEE.  I will ask someone the correct pronunciation.  The GAP trail goes right through this park, but it is quite a long steep downhill to get to it from the campground.  I will drive if I decide to ride a bit. I posted on Facebook about my soon-to-be ride on the GAP and C&O and someone, Ad Carson a Milwaukee recumbent rider, said I should connect with Chere (with an accent on the last e) who is spending the summer in Cumberland, PA. I have met Chere before when riding, though I don't remember

Armstrong Trail and Preparing to Launch

Dear Friends and Family, When I started my ride today on the Armstrong Trail in PA, the river water was like glass.  It was incredibly beautiful.  I didn’t know which way the river was flowing. I rode from Templeton to East Brady and back for about 24-28 miles. I know, I just wrote to you.  But I want to test using my phone to write to you this way. There is a trick to loading up the pictures so that the most recent show up last.  I haven’t figured it out yet. I drive eight miles down to Templeton to get on the trail.  The town looks like a company town.  One street seemed to have the same style of house on both sides of the street. The Armstrong Trail goes along the Allegheny River too.  Sometimes people built homes in the abandoned rail corridors before the trail got built so we detour  around them. I watched a small snake  struggle to eat a bloated toad.  I made a movie of it but I don’t know if it uploaded.  Let me know. I stopped filming after a while.  The snake couldn’t get purc