Little pink houses

Holden & Zoe

Originally uploaded by edenza

The recent documentary series on national parks shamed us into finally visiting the one right here in our little town: Allegheny Portage Railroad National Park.

What’s that? Well once upon a time it took almost a month to haul anything from goods to passenger from Philly to Pittsburgh. The state, like most states, used canal systems to do this. When it was decided that this wasn’t acceptable, the solution was this: let’s build canals from Philly to Hollidaysburg (a little town near Altoona) and from Pittsburgh to Johnstown. Then we’ll build a system of inclined plains to get the canal boats over the mountains. We’ll haul the boats out of the water and put them on flatbeds. We’ll use counterweights to help get the stuff up & down the planes. It’ll cut that trip from 26 days to 5.

And so it worked.

The Allegheny Portage Railroad was largely responsible for opening the west in the mid 19th century, connecting Ohio to ports in the east. Steam engines became more powerful and engineers designed the Horseshoe Curve (and built the Gallitzin Tunnels at the top of our little mountain) and the APRR was phased out of existence.

But we got a national park out of it b/c it’s really kind of a historically cool thing, if you’re into that stuff. Our 20-mile radius is like crack to rail junkies. Right by our house there’s a bridge over the Main Line and there are always rail buffs there taking pictures & videos. I haven’t done a good pic there yet. Maybe I will soon.

So anyway…

Our park is nicely educational and has a cool film which explains all this stuff (in a very nice 70-seat theater). We also have a good hiking trail which is a breeze to go down and hellacious to go back up.

The kids enjoyed having a hike (not so much the hike back but they recovered quickly). Zoe had already had her soccer game Saturday morning, hence her uniform (over seats b/c it was cold in the morning on the mountain). Between the soccer game & the park, we stopped at the pharmacy to pick up her prescription. While there, we had ice cream simply b/c we can (yes, our pharmacy has it’s original soda fountain; penny candy too).

Oh and last week at a kid party, a girl said I was lying when I said that we had a milkman. Which reminds me, this is also the time for the pumpkin patch at the dairy farm (until the 18th).

BTW: national parks, memorials, battlefields, etc. that I’ve visited include: Castillo de San Marcos, Canaveral Seashore, Antietam, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, National Mall, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington Monument, Rocky Mountain NP, Boston National Historical Park, Allegheny Portage RR NP, Eisenhower, Gettysburg, Independence & Valley Forge. If I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll address the question of “which is your park?” posed in the documentary.