Larry's Creek

Note: For the original news release see the March archive. We will be in and out of internet range for the next two weeks.

The Susquehanna is a long river with several branches. One branch starts in north western Pennsylvania and runs into the Chesapeake Bay. It isn’t navigable by large boats because although it is wide it is not very deep. For a time it factored in American history as the dividing point between north and south. For the Brownsberger story the river offered a path to go north. Like us they would have been looking for a route that would not take them up and down too many hills.

At the moment the river and its tributaries are flowing swiftly with winter run off. We have been told that it has been a dry spring though and you can see that the river can be a great deal higher. There are water marks along the bridges to prove that and there is evidence of flood plains in several places. All along the river in Sunbury there is a wall which protects the low lying town from flood. On the west end of Williamsport there is a river diversion with very high earth and rock dykes which protect far more than the two ball parks known as the home of Little League baseball. Just west is the town of Jersey Shore where another wall has been built around a factory to protect it. Further west at Lock Haven the Piper Airplane factory employing 30,000 people was flooded out in 1972 and never rebuilt.

About ten miles west of Williamsport we turned north onto Rte. 287. The Susquehanna is behind us but we are now never far from its feeder streams. There is much less traffic on this road so it is possible to listen to the water and the birds - very pleasant. Emily Dickinson’s poem “ How still it is here in the woods’ came to mind. Ron’s geography background is now coming into play. Although I much prefer the rock formations around Muskoka it is neat to see how the Alleghenies were formed. The rock is slate - sedimentary rock which has been pushed up with tremendous pressure. All along the rock you can see rivulets of water and moss working away at its layers. There are signs cautioning falling rock and you can see where the next weakness is developing.

We are right out in the bush at the moment. After yesterday’s grumpy man we came across a cairn built in memory of a doctor who was killed by a black panther near English Centre in 1846. At a village store the locals don’t think there are any more panthers around but they did mention bears. Needless to say I did not drive the van very far from Ron today (Wednesday).

We had lunch today in the general store/restaurant in Salladasburg. After we told the proprietor about the walk, she said, “You must tell the boys.” Ron moved to another table where three men in their sixties were having lunch. The one tucked his foot long beard into his T shirt before eating. His father is still living at age 99 - - many in the local families have lived into their nineties or past one hundred. These guys were prepared to solve all the problems of the nation including going to a flat tax for all. They indicated that in former times many locals worked at the Piper factory or at Bethlehem Steel in Williamsport. There are not so many jobs now. But on the bright side, fishing season was opening up this weekend. We passed several hunting and fishing lodges on the road today.
Pictures:
2 views of the rocks and moss

The dyke we passed on the west side of Williamsport

A billboard advertising the Piper Museum