EAST COAST USA (DAY TWENTY)

It's now Thursday morning and we're less than 2 hours from Ricketts Glen. The three of us have become fast friends and my whole attitude about my trip has changed. Instead of being anxious to end it I've become anxious to extend it. We talk about the Glen and all the fabulous water falls and once again I decide to spend another day with these two nut jobs. Brian looked me in the eye and said , "You'll probably never get the chance again to see this place and you're so close. What's another day?" Truer words were never spoken and I was sold.
Here we are in a small town along the way buying groceries along with tonic, ice and limes of course.

Because we had slept in a little later knowing we only had a short ride today, we didn't arrive at Ricketts Glen State Park in Pennsylvania till early afternoon. We checked in, set up camp, donned our hiking gear and rode to the trail head. Here's Ken all decked out for the hike.

This would be a good time to share a bit of history on this incredible natural wonder. Back at the onset of the American Civil War in 1861, Robert Bruce Ricketts enlisted as a private in the US Army.
He led a battery of men during the famous battle of Gettysburg and swiftly moved up the ranks to colonel. At one time following the war he owned 80,000 acres of land in this area. He had purchased the land for it's timber. Diameters of four feet were common and many trees tower to 100 feet in height. Fisherman exploring the lower reaches of Kitchen Creek discovered the dozens of waterfalls. Colonel Ricketts built trails to the area of the waterfalls which came to be known as the Glens Natural Area.
The ranger station gave us a map and suggested route to see all 22 waterfalls along a 3.2 mile trail that she said should take us about 3 1/2 hours to complete. I'm going to give you only a few of the photos I took because it's a photographer's paradise and by the end you are almost numbed to the extreme beauty.

This next one was the tallest waterfall in the park at 96 feet.

It was one of the most beautiful spectacles of nature I'd ever seen but by the end we were all simply exhausted from the climb. Ken is the youngest at 56, then Brian at 62 and then me just three weeks away from my 68th birthday and we were definitely feeling proud of our accomplishment.
Back at camp again it was time for a refreshing vodka tonic and a bit of rest from a very physically demanding day. I was going to head for Niagara Falls in the morning so we prepared a feast for dinner. It wasn't fancy but for some reason it was the best tasting meal I'd had on this trip. We had picked up some fresh picked sweet corn earlier at a Mennonite market so we boiled up six cobs. This along with fried thin sliced pork chops and boiled baby potatoes completed our meal. Yum!
We decided to scrounge up some wood and build a fire so there we were telling stories and talking about our day long into the night. It was a special moment in time for all of us.