Looking Back at 2022

In January we began the new year in Pennsylvania...enjoying our family and the snow. 

The weather in February was wonderful and we enjoyed spending time in Rockport. We visited with friends and spent time with our Texas Granddaughters.

March was a repeat of February, except the wind was a bit crazy. We took a break for our rocking boat by staying in Corpus for a few nights.

In April we spent a week in the Texas Hill Country exploring Wimberley and Fredericksburg. By the end of the month we had closed down the Texas Pearl and started our northern migration. First to Arkansas and then to Kentucky.

May was spent settling in at the lake...catching up with lake friends and family.

In June we spent a long weekend celebrating birthdays and Father's Day with Kyle and his family. Stan and I also spent a few days in the Thousands Islands.

In July we celebrated our 41st anniversary in Niagara on the Lake in Canada. Each month this summer we enjoyed making a few new friends.

The highlight of our summer is having our grandkids come one at a time to the boat. We spend 3 or 4 days doing just what each of them enjoy. Hattie was very excited because it was her first summer to stay on the boat.

In August we took a family vacation to Maine. We spent a week enjoying the great weather, lobster and each other.

After our week in Maine Stan and I took the ferry to Nova Scotia.

September signals the end of summer and the beginning of fall. We spent our last family get together on the lake going to some of the kids favorite places and a few of ours.

The first week in October I spent time in NYC with my friend Pam. We had fun catching up and exploring the city. 

The rest of October and the beginning of November was spent at a house in the Poconos. We truly enjoyed the fall colors and some wonderful hiking.

In November we returned to Rockport ready to enjoy a little more sunshine and warm temperatures, but mother nature had a different plan. Our first two weeks in South Texas were cold and wet, but it was fun to see our Texas family.

In December we celebrated Christmas early with our Texas family and then we drove back to Pennsylvania. We got there just in time for a great day in the snow. 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our family and friends. Our life has taken on an enjoyable routine the past six years. We spend November through April in Texas and the rest of the year in upstate New York. It's actually perfect, at least for us. We get to spend half the year with each of our sons and their family's and we escape the extreme weather in each place.

Our kids are doing well, our grandchildren are growing into beautiful and interesting people and we are all healthy. So 2022 was a good year and we look forward to seeing what adventures come our way in 2023.

Nov. 3 - Drake Creek Trail

“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” -Lao Tzu

Today we decided to hike the Drakes Creek Trail near Jim Thorpe. It was a fairly easy 3 mile hike along a well maintained dirt road. The trail descends about 500' from the parking lot to the Lehigh River....meaning the hardest part of the hike was coming back to our car. Although the trees have lost most of their leaves the hike was still full of color, because the rhododendron form a thick, impenetrable wall of greenery along the slopes of the creek. We definitely need to come back to this area in July when they bloom. The road is used by rafting expeditions to enter the Lehigh River, but it looked like a difficult way to get into the river to me.

The creek forms several picturesque, little waterfalls on its way to the Lehigh River, and small bridges span the creek to allow vehicles and hikers to cross the water as it meanders downstream. The creek finally flows under railroad tracks at the end of the trail and enters the river through a tunnel. We picked up sandwiches at a small grocery store on our way to the trailhead and enjoyed a nice picnic close to the railroad bridge. 

The trail

The first bridge along our hike.

Drake Creek...the rhododendrons make it look like a jungle.

We found lots of interesting things along the way.

One of the many pretty small waterfalls.

The second bridge was by the most impressive falls.

At the end of the hike we had to go down these stairs to get to the creek. This is where we had our picnic here and where the rafting expeditions slide their rafts down into the river.

Looking north along the railroad tracks about Drake Creek.

Looking through the tunnel towards the Lehigh River.

Looking up Drake Creek.

This is where the creek flows into the Lehigh River.

Some of the last leaves falling from the trees. 

Oct. 29 - Bear Creek Preserve

“I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.” ~Anonymous

We've had quite a few wet cold days this week, so we didn't want to waste this beautiful Saturday hiding away from the crowds. So after visiting the wonderful farmers market we found last week, we drove north just a bit to Bear Creek Preserve. 

The preserve is a vast expanse of forests and steep stream valleys in the Pocono Plateau’s Lehigh River Watershed. It's larger than many state parks and provides critical habitat for black bear, coyote, eagles, migratory songbirds and rattlesnakes. We didn't see any wildlife...maybe that was a good thing. 

We hiked two separate trials for a total of 4.5 miles and saw another Buttermilk Falls. If you think that's the only name for falls here...you'd be right. This is the third Buttermilk Falls we've found in the area. I have no clue why they all have the same name. 

Our first hike was on the north side of the preserve. It was mostly level and led to a nice little waterfall and scenic overlook. The leaves are beginning to turn burnt orange and brown and more are on the ground than in the trees. Soon it will look like winter and it will be time for us to move south.

The moss along this trail looked like lime green carpet...very pretty.

Buttermilk Falls

Our second hike was on the western part of the preserve. It wound us through the woods down to Bear Creek. We crossed several smaller creeks along the trail.

Bear Creek

We crossed two little bridges like this one along Shades Creek.

Bear Creek Preserve trail map. I marked the two hikes we did in turquoise.

Oct. 27 - Jim Thorpe, PA

“A man who conquers himself is greater than one who conquers a thousand men in battle”. – Buddha

Today we drove down to Jim Thorpe to explore part of the Lehigh Gorge State Park. The Lehigh Gorge Trail follows 26 miles of a former railroad line along the Lehigh River, providing opportunities for hiking, biking and sightseeing. Our first stop was at the Rockport Access to the gorge. We hiked along the rail trail to see Buttermilk Falls and Luke's Falls. I think we'd like to come back next summer with our bikes, so we could explore more of the trail. It would also be fun to do a rafting trip down the Lehigh River.

Part of the Lehigh Gorge Trail.

Buttermilk Falls

The Lehigh Gorge Trail is part of the longer D&L Trail that is 165 miles long, running from Wilkes Barre to Bristol. 

Luke's Falls

The Lehigh River

Buck Mountain Creek is just one of many creeks that flows into the Lehigh River.

Our next stop was the cute little town of Jim Thorpe. We spent an afternoon here in June, but didn't get to do any hiking in the area. After a nice lunch and a little shopping we hiked to the summit of Mount Pisgah. The Mount Pisgah Trail follows the Switchback Railroad, built in the early 1800s to carry coal from mines in the mountains to the Lehigh Canal below. The trail to the summit was steep, rocky and roughly 0.7 miles long, with 500' of elevation gain along the way. It was truly a workout.

History Lesson:

The Switchback Gravity Railroad, built in 1827, was only the second railroad built in America. It ran nine miles, hauling coal from Summit Hill down to the town of Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe) and the Lehigh Canal. As the name implies, it relied on gravity to come down the mountain, with mules hauling the empty cars back up.

By 1844, the line's success and subsequent traffic necessitated a separate “backtrack” for empties. This created an 18-mile, figure-8 track plan, with the empties pushed up two steep grades by a steam-powered contraption that emerged from beneath the rails.

During non-peak hours, the railroad offered rides along the route for the public, in specially outfitted cars. Following the line's dramatic descents and loops, these cars could attain speeds of up to 50 miles per hour. In the 1870s the route was devoted exclusively to hauling passengers and became one of the nation's first tourist railroads. Only Niagara Falls exceeded the site's 75,000 annual visitors. This wild ride—in which carloads of passengers plunged at high speeds from steep peaks—served as the model for the first roller coaster, introduced on Coney Island in 1884.

This picture can't convey how steep this trail actually was...but the trees look beautiful.

Looking down towards the beginning of the trail and our car.

The trail

The Summit

Looking down on the Lehigh River and the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway. The following pictures were taken from there.

Looking up to the summit of Mount Pisgah.

The Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway train.

Turn Hole Tunnel at Lehigh Gorge State Park. Turn Hole Tunnel is an abandoned railroad tunnel located near the Glen Onoko access to Lehigh Gorge State Park. It was constructed in 1866 and is 496 feet long. Unfortunately there were posted signs saying we couldn't go inside. 

The leaves are quickly disappearing, but the ones that are still here are amazing.

Hike details