A Shining Pathway up the Hill and Into the Woods

In October, I took back more of my life by amending my work schedule so that I now work just four days a week. After working full-time for thirty years, I thought it was finally time to make a change. It has been one of the very BEST decisions I have ever made.

All of the Fridays that I get back, I think of as my "Freedom Fridays." As often as possible, my husband and I try to take those Fridays as the gifts that they are, and go on grand adventures together. This was a day when we did just that!

We needed to get my car inspected, and we generally take it to the garage of a childhood friend of my husband, back home (for him) in Ebensburg. So it was that we set off for Cambria County on this day.

We didn't really have a firm plan for what we would do, so the adventure evolved hour by hour. In the end, it involved a trek to a fairground, a lovely lunch at a great restaurant, a visit to a railroad landmark, and a walk up a steep, glistening trail into the wild woods.

My husband grew up in Ebensburg, PA. As a child, he often rode his bike to the local fairground. There was a pond below it where he caught frogs and played with his little scuba men. As he grew up, the bigger draw was the fairground on the hill above it. And so after we concluded our car appointment, we revisited his childhood haunts, including the fairground and the little pond.

The sky was bright blue with dramatic clouds. A biting wind chased us up and down the hill. We walked through semi-frozen mud, fought the jaggers to get to the little pond, and in the end, peered through the fence at the fairground where (so my husband reports) many adventures had been had, some of which are best not told.

Finally, it was time for lunch, and we headed to a favorite spot: Off the Rak, a restaurant a few miles outside of Ebensburg that's famous for its steak (and steak salads) - and apparently, based on the orders of the people at the next table, the French onion soup - but I'll have to try the soup on another day.

On this day, I had the house salad with ranch dressing and a baked potato with butter and sour cream, for the very reasonable price of $5.50. My husband had the steak salad ($8.50) and shared some of his meat with me; my salad was much improved by it.

Fortified by a lovely lunch, we headed back out into the cold and the brilliant blue skies and the biting winds. Next, we visited the Allegheny Portage National Historic Site, near the world-famous Horseshoe Curve.

The site had some really cool railroad stuff. As my dad was a railroader, I will be a railroad kid forevermore. My husband's grandfather was a railroader as well. So we have come by our love of trains and railroad tracks quite honestly.

The following verbiage from Wikipedia explains the significance of the site quite well:

"The Allegheny Portage Railroad was the first railroad constructed through the Allegheny Mountains in central Pennsylvania, United States; it operated from 1834 to 1854 as the first transportation infrastructure through the gaps of the Allegheny that connected the mid-west to the eastern seaboard across the barrier range of the Allegheny Front. Considered a technological marvel in its day, it played a critical role in opening the interior of the United States beyond the Appalachian Mountains to settlement and commerce."

We hiked the boardwalk down to visit Engine House No. 6 and straddled the rails. We admired the views. We walked along the broad swaths cut out of the hillside that used to be railroad beds. We attempted to enter the visitors' center, but it was closed.

The building was gorgeous, though, designed in the style of a railroad bridge; the arches did beautiful things with the afternoon light. You may see a photo of part of that building in the extras. Don't you just love a good stone arch? I do!

And from there, we had time for just one more stop. Our next tiny adventure was much closer to home: Plummer's Hollow, a 648-acre nature reserve near Tyrone. We parked at the bottom near the Little Juniata and took a stroll across the railroad tracks and up the hill into the woods. (More info about that nature reserve may be found here and here.)

The main photo above is from Plummer's Hollow. The light is always enchanting (but can be challenging for photographers) in these deep hollows. We had one day of snow this past week, then a day of ice, followed by a day with warming, as well as heavy rains that washed it all away. So at this point, the woods looked a bit spring-like without any snow.

As my husband and I strolled up the green, moss-lined trail into the hollow, we chatted among ourselves, commenting that the road could be either a stairway to heaven or a highway to hell, depending on the weather (and what direction one was heading, whether up or down).

And so the soundtrack to this day is for the photo above. It includes both songs, which are rock and roll favorites of both my husband and myself:

Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven. I'm also including a favorite cover of it by those fantastic Wilson sisters, Ann and Nancy (also known as Heart).

AC/DC, Highway to Hell.