chestnutridge1

MOUNTAIN WANDERINGS

OCTOBER 18, 2009

Carl is very willing to drive wherever I decide. I say, let's go left there, and he goes left there. So, today, being a

Sunday in mid-October, one simply must take advantage of the day and the transient colors and...go. The skies

were not all that cooperative, but one takes them as one must or one doesn't get to see the colors at all. We'd gone

due east then cut south along 217, which runs for miles along the very base of the western slopes of Chestnut Ridge,

the last of the seemingly endless series of mountain ridges the early settlers had to cross before reaching southwestern

Pennsylvania. I wanted to go up and over it, but not on a busy road, so at the town of Derry, we headed up the

Derry Road, which is the one in the picture above, a MUCH better way to go over a mountain in the autumn than

on a four-laned, well-traveled highway. It had rained the last several days and everything was still quite wet, but

it was a lovely scenario all around. I took the one above and the one below through the windshield, which, alas,

has left a little light glare, but not too terrible.

He pulled off to the side to let me get out and take this one and the series below.

This is looking westsouthwest through the trees and the lower blue is a ridge, not sky.

From time to time the sun came out...but only for moments.

Our great thoroughfare going down the eastern slope of Chestnut Ridge.

This is the Latrobe Reservoir and we stopped and I walked for some way along the guard rail trying

to find a spot to get a picture through the way too thickly-blocking bare branches of old evergreens.

Carl had walked this far with me and then I announced I wasn't walking back to the car, so he went to it and

drove slowly along beside me as I continued walking, looking for a better shot...which never really came to

my satisfaction.

We turned east on 30 toward Ligonier and stopped beside the Loyalhanna so I could take a

couple of pictures.

It's amazing how artfully trees arrange themselves along a bank!

ON TO PAGE TWO