You know the old saying that the place we know the least about is our own backyard? Welp. I decided to finally walk this little local gem of a rail trail following a long meeting at work. The Lancaster Junction Rail Trail gets a nice mention in the guide book Rail-Trails Pennsylvania (see Notes) and I am trying to complete all the trails mentioned there, so this is an easy one to check off. I needed a good leg-stretch after a few hours sitting and what the heck, it's on the way home (sort of), so why not?
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| Drink stand and honor box |
The original
Reading & Columbia Railroad line was begun in 1861 to link Reading to the transportation hub at Columbia then on the Susquehanna River where goods and people could be transferred to the Tidewater Canal that delivered produce, lumber, and especially coal to the Chesapeake Bay. Later teh line ran directly along the eastern shore of the Susquehanna all the way to Perryville, Maryland. This line was active until the 1970s with a busy freight and passenger service between Lancaster and Reading. At Lancaster Junction where the rail trail ends, it meets an active freight line which could be heard at all the road crossings sounding its horn as I walked back.
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| Chiques Creek |
Chiques (Chick-eez) Creek sidles up against the old rail bed for a mile or so before it veers away to the west to makes its zig-zaggy way to the Susquehanna River and the Chiques Rock cliffs. This little creek is prone to flash flooding and with recent torrential downpours, the woods on either side of the trail are stacked with muddy, woody debris and scrubbed clean of living vegetation.
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| American Toad, |
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| Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on New York Ironweed |
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| Orange Coneflower, Rudbeckia fulgida |
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| Early Goldenrod, Solidago juncea |
So about that little drink stand and honor box (pictured at the top) I came across about halfway to Lancaster Junction. Seeing as it is summer in Pennsylvania, it is almost sacrilegious not to have an ice cold root beer and, being a devoted fan of homemade root beer, I could not pass up the opportunity to drop $2 into the honor box and grab a bottle from the cooler. Would it be the real thing, I wondered as I unscrewed the cap which popped and brought a hopeful head of foam to the top.
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| Lancaster Junction |
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| Historic freight warehouse |
Let's go back in time to when I was ten and on my annual summer visit to stay with my Great Uncle Russ and Great Aunt "Ginny" Virginia who lived in the Appalachian/Blue Ridge Mountains. They lived in a cabin just up the hill from the Shenandoah River and tended their own orchards, hunted and fished, raised bees, foraged the woods, farmed a little, and generally lived off the land. Every summer Uncle Russ produced a heavy wooden flat filled with tall, glass, recapped Coke bottles filled with dark homemade root beer - the fizzy kind with a kick. I lived for that stuff. I dreamt about it all winter. I begged for it when I got there. And when allowed to drink a whole icy bottle by myself (no more little jelly jars!) when I turned ten, I cried. It was that good.
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| Beer and the lemonade chaser |
Well, I cried again on the Lancaster Junction trail today as I gulped that nice fizzy cold root beer. Just like I remembered, it zinged of sassafras and birch root. It sang of sarsaparilla and ginger. And just like that old family recipe (still in the family, still made) it faded with hints of cinnamon and clove. Holy moly. It was good German stuff that would have made my Uncle and Aunt applaud. Kudos, too, for the (also German) summer tradition offering a chaser of homemade lemonade to follow the root beer, just in case "the fizzy makes one dizzy" as Aunt Ginny would say. I bought both, returned the glass bottle after a refreshing break, and sipped the lemonade on my slightly wobbly way back to the start. Happy summer!
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| The real deal. |
Notes:
My favorite rail trail guide,
Rail-Trails Pennsylvania, is available through the
Rails to Trails Conservancy which serves as an organization dedicated to the national rail trail movement to promote community accessibility, connectivity, public spaces, and local recreational economies. Note that federal rail trail funding has been hit very hard with the passage of recent legislation that claws back hundreds of millions of dollars dedicated to helping communities develop their rail trail infrastructure. Please consider supporting RTC as they fight to restore funding, restart grant programs, and stabilize community rail trail transportation and recreation projects. I do!
