So how the heck have I been .....

... some of you may have noticed that we here in Central PA had a "bit" of snow last week. If you watched the Weather Channel, you were led to believe that the most pressing problem was that PSU banned tailgating around the stadium and it was homecoming weekend. (The grassy areas were muddy, and there aren't enough paved areas to allow the huge RV's to set up their tailgates.) Never mind that there were folks who were without electricity from Thursday evening until Saturday evening (in some cases). My boss told me he came to work on Friday just so he could have electricity. I mention TWC because that's how we found out how nasty it really got. You see we were supposed to be hiking in the Laurel Highlands. I say supposed to be, because we really didn't get to hike.

I'm no shrinking violet. I've hiked in rain, I've hiked in cold, but on Wednesday afternoon, when I went outside to decide whether to wear a down vest, and realized that it was not just cold, but raining and sleeting, I gave up.




Cold AND rainy, means I'm not going anywhere. Add heavy duty fog to the mix, and well, you get the drift.












We heard about the snow in Centre County when I got a PSU text message on Friday morning informing me that classes were running on time, but that the snow was continuing to fall. Huh? Snow?



A look out the deck doors showed me unrelenting rain and fog, but snow? PSU began an emergency text messaging program not long after the VA Tech tragedy. They text message emergency announcements from water line breaks to panels blowing off the scoreboards and closing roads, to class delays.







An odd manifestation of the system is that my phone interprets the P in PSU as



Poetic, no?

So after getting the message I turned on TWC and by golly, one of the weather weenies was in a parka standing in a driving snow storm in front of the stadium. He was telling us that the University had prohibited parking in the grassy lots, and what were the homecoming tailgaters to do? It was surreal. Especially since here I was at a ski resort in the "mountains" and THERE WAS NO SNOW! (Not that I wanted any, mind you.)

So here's what I did instead....



Meet Ishbel and Ishbel meet Handmaiden Cashbah, no idea what colorway. It was the first yarn in the 2009 Loopy Ewe Sock club. It is so lovely...the color is no where near as lovely as it is in person, that I couldn't bare to put it on my stinky feet. Ishbel is a lovely pattern. Lovely, if you're smart enough to pay attention. I, apparently, am not nearly smart enough and have spent about 20% of my time tinking. First in the stockinette portion of the program I somehow added an extra stitch on one side and pulled it out 3 or 4 times, until I figured it out. Then, I can't seem to "read" the lace pattern, and make silly errors, on a regular basis, that I can only fix by tinking. The one thing I can tell you, is that if you have the time to put into it, it is a fast knit. I really should have been concentrating on my Christmas knitting, however, I have been itching to start this forever! I blew through the first three charts and stockinette in no time, and since I've been home, have knit two (count'em 2) rows. This job just really cuts into my knitting time.



So we missed the catastrophic snow storm. Here's what I saw on Sunday morning.








Sad part is that on the way down, there were still a lot of green trees. With all the "weather", it seems that many trees dropped their leaves without ever getting a chance to turn. The pelting rain, and heavy snow, just pulled leaves right off the trees (and in the case of Centre County knocked large branches down all over the place). We ended up extending our stay by one day, because, wouldn't you know....Monday, the day we originally planned to leave dawned bright and sunny -- cool, but dry and bright. The past two days it has been in the 60's.

Timing is everything.

Miss me?

Don't worry, I know you didn't. So'K. I was away for a much needed break. That away was from the office...oops, excuse me while I change my voice mail back to standard.....

Done. Being away means away from the internets too. Yeah, I checked in once in a while, but really, we didn't try and do too much.

We went here.

This is the Pittsburgh Steeler Training Camp at St. Vincent's College in Latrobe, PA. We were only there about an hour, and a thunderstorm came on fast.









You can see the darkening sky in the distance. They chased everyone (all 5,000 fans) off the field, and we made it to the "Steeler Store" tent, just as the sky opened up. Now conventional wisdom (from here at weather weenie central), is that a massive storm usually is fast moving and lasts around 20 minutes. In other words, stay protected for about 20 minutes and you should be fine. Well, more than an hour later, and we were still waiting for the pounding rain to stop. They were trying to close the tent. We didn't have any rain gear with us at all, so I had to buy two Steeler ponchos (you know those plastic bag thingies).

I ran to the basilica (St. Vincents is a Catholic college and a monastery) and DH walked the half mile to the car. By the time he drove back to pick me up, the rain had finally slowed to a drizzle. My hero.

We spent a few days at a music festival in the north central woods--and I'm not kidding about "in the woods". Tioga County is so remote, GPS couldn't get a fix on our location. You'll never find the place on Google maps and it's a black hole on the satellite map. Don't bother carrying your cell when you hike. It is of no use. But you also do not hear cell phones ringing all over the place either. Nice!

The concerts are in venues all over north-central PA and the Finger Lakes region of NY. Most of them in the Wellsboro/Mansfield area. And many of the venues are churches, and in a few cases the County courtroom. This makes the concerts intimate. You can be an arms length away from the tympani or the concertmaster. And the music is superb. And this is all done via local volunteers, and resources. It is truly pretty amazing.

After a weekend drinking wine and listening to fine music, we hiked in the "Grand Canyon".



Pine Creek, best trout fishing in the north east, was running higher than we've ever seen it. The rocks that you see in the foreground...well, there are more, but they are not completely covered. We usually sit on those rocks. In fact, people have been known to wade across the creek, and hike up the east side of the canyon (this view is from the west bank). The only problem is that you are then 12 miles away from your vehicle, if you parked on the west rim. It is a long way by road or trail from one rim to another. (Except directly across the creek.) No one was wading on Monday. As it is, the hike down on the west side of the canyon, is a rather rugged two miles, along narrow ledge-like trails, with a sharp drop to a run along one side. The trail was also unstable in spots, and slippery due to the recent heavy rains. It is plenty challenging when the trails are dry.





View of part of the trail on the way UP out of the canyon.




















View of "run" on the drop side of the trail. I'm not sure, but I think it is "Little Four Mile Run".



















This is one of those little falls that dot the runs all along their length.













And so we're back, and this is what we were greeted with yesterday.





Yup, rain. Again....sigh. At least we got something of a break from the exhausting political news.

The money shot....

Last week we were away--away from work, away from ringing phones, away from nearly everything we usually do....OK not away from sports, but you can't really have it all. We did what is nearly impossible to do on any vacation. You try to do a lot of different things, and end up so exhausted, the vacation ends up a lot like work. Well, somehow that didn't happen. Even though we hiked, went to a jazz concert at a museum, visited two wineries, hiked some more, went to a beaded jewelry and costume showing at a gallery (me), and visited Kentuck Knob, we didn't wear ourselves out. It was wonderful. And as a bonus, I got this shot when my dear husband, on a whim, decided to stop at Tharp Knob in Ohiopyle State Park, just to see the overlook. It had been raining all day, and I was not happy to walk across sodden meadows...that is until I saw this.



You just can't plan a shot like this. This is above the Youghiogheny River, Ohiopyle State Park and the town of Confluence. If you look closely you can see the homes of Confluence, and the bend in the Yough (lower left). Also notice how green the leaves were--still.



As we turned to leave I got this.....





Look closely [again] and you can see a kite caught in the branches of the tree on the right in the mid-ground.



Damn he does have a good idea now and again........

If you spend....

...your time reading blogs.....ya don't spend any writing blogs.

I think this is going to become one of the sayings I use on my header. I'm going to play catchup today, because, even though I've been knitting, my frogging has been keeping my knitting from showing any progress.

We spent the 4th of July, just hanging out at home. The weather was shaky so we didn't go hiking or even go out to see the fireworks. Instead, we WATCHED THEM ON TV! I kid you not. But when you can hear the rain pounding on the roof, you just know you made the right decision. That and the fact that you have a great goblet of sangria loaded with berries at your elbow, just adds to the satisfaction.

Right after the fireworks, my DH flipping through the channels found a park ranger on our local access channel leading a tour group at Gettysburg, describing Pickett's charge. The battle of Gettysburg took place July 1 - 3, 1863. The guide was a geeky looking fellow, who turned out to be a state historian, and he was incredibly interesting. Because DH and I are both suckers for history, this turned out to be better than fireworks. Gettysburg is roughly 2 hours southeast of us--a pretty easy drive, but neither of us have ever toured the battlefields. We decided that we will try to do something like that later this summer. Besides the Boyd's Bear museum is in the vicinity.....

We did finally get to hike later in the weekend. We hiked a tiny part of the Mid-State Trail.

The Mid State Trail, Pennsylvania's longest and wildest footpath, extends 270 miles (currently) from the Mason-Dixon Line at the Pennsylvania-Maryland border near Artemas, northward to near Morris, in Tioga County on the Pennsylvania-New York border.

In an email to a relative, my husband wrote "we hiked Mid State Trail also
known as "The Wildest Trail in Pennsylvania". We didn't see any black bears or rattlesnakes, though, which is part of the reason for that name. Ummmm....he neglected to tell me the rattlesnake part of this.

We had hiked a bit of it on Friday evening. Only about a mile or so along the ridge. On Sunday afternoon we decided to hike to a trail known locally as the "Indian Steps" which was probably not used by indians, nor is it steps. Just one of those weird local things. It is about 2.5 miles further along than we hiked on Friday. I can tell you that the majority of the trail was unrelenting rocks. We were both wearing Bean knife-edged hiking boots, and it was a good thing. The first .5 mile or so is an easy jog down a track used to service the high tension lines at the top of the mountain. Once you leave the area of the towers, though, rocks, rocks and more rocks ...the perfect home for snakes...Yoi! And the perfect recipe for twisted ankles. I hate snakes--even more than twisted ankles. It also made the going so slow we had to turn around before we reached the Indian Steps. We were probably close, but could only guess based on our pedometer readings which refused to agree.



I love this though. This is the view over Rt 45 to the north west.










This is DH overlooking the view to the south east.



Yeah there is a great swath cut through the forest for the power lines. But even with that there is something weirdly powerful about it.


I think that next time we're going to hike UP the "steps" to the Mid-State and see how far we get.

Next time, Art's Fest!