For our second anniversary, Tracy and I went to southern Pennsylvania to kayak, hike and sightsee. We left Charlottesville around 1500 on Friday the 7th and drove 231 from Madison through Sperryville to Front Royal before picking up 81 — a beautiful way to go. We stayed in a bed and breakfast in Chambersburg that night and the next; here's a panorama of our room:
It was a neat, old house. The stairway leading up to our room (which was on the third floor) was pretty wild:
The first day (Saturday), we decided we'd go and kayak on Raystown Lake. It's a big lake, though, with plenty of power boats, so we thought we'd kayak on the river that feeds the lake. We went to Warrior's Path State Park to put in:
The water was moving so fast, though, that we only made about 200 ft upstream before we got to a "rapid" where the water was moving so fast we were unable to make any headway at all. We tried twice to get up it, failed, and floated back to the launch to pull the kayak back out of the water. From there, we headed up the lake to Aitch, where there was a launch in a no-wake section of the lake. The photo at the top of this post shows a view of the hills over the launch; the photo below shows the pier next to the launch:
Near the pier we spotted a grey heron who, surprisingly, let us get close enough that I got nearly a full-frame photo of it with my 105mm lens:
From there, we drove to the visitor's center for the lake, got a recommendation for dinner (which was only so-so), and then went back to the B&B to crash.
The next morning, we drove out from Chambersburg to Caledonia State Park. There's a little water there, but only a very little water, so we decided to hike the Ramble Trail:
It was a very easy walk, and very pretty. There were a couple of picturesque bridges, like this one:
I took a picture of Tracy from that bridge with my iPhone; the HDR messed up, yielding a very cool, painterly effect:
After our hike, we drove over to Sachs Covered Bridge, which is near Gettysburg. Tracy took us on beautiful back roads whenever we went anywhere. The scenery was varied, but this gives a good sense of the colors and the winding roads:
The Sachs Covered Bridge predates the Civil War and was restored in the 1990s.
It was pretty cool — especially inside: all the wood that went into supporting it was fairly impressive.
From the bridge, we went into Gettysburg, which was swarming with people (and traffic). We spent some time getting oriented and finally ended up at the Dobbin House for a very late lunch (after waiting an hour for a table). The food was good; it was a touristy place with servers dressed in period clothes and such. But that food was good, which is what mattered.
Gettysburg is far prettier than I imagined; the photo above gives a pretty good feel for what the battlefields look like. We drove on a portion of the "Auto Tour" (a clever double entendre, since you drive it and do the tour without a guide); there were cannons lining the roadside pointed out over the battlefields:
It strikes me as a little funny how picturesque we find cannons when we see them in these battlefields. I'm not sure we really associate them with weapons of war anymore. I don't think I do, at any rate.
The park service has erected an observation tower on the western side of the southern battlefields; it's quite tall and a fair climb to the top:
The tower provides a commanding view of the battlefields:
The countryside to the west of the battlefields is also beautiful:
We left Gettysburg around 1700 and headed to Codorus State Park to camp for the night. They have a section of the campground that's just for tent campers (no RVs) and more rugged than their other sites (no electricity). Compared to backpacking, though, it's luxurious: you drive up to it; it has a picnic table; and it has a fire ring with grill.
The next morning, we kayaked on the lake (the above was our fourth attempt at the panorama, which is why neither of us are smiling — we'd given up expecting it to work); the launch was just a little down from our campsite. From there, we drove home by way of Warrenton.
