View From a Wooden Bridge

With quite mild conditions expected, my husband and I seized the day, and headed to Cherry Run, for one of the first official wading sessions of springtime. The day was sunny and breezy, and I don't think it cracked 60 degrees F in the woods and waters, where we were, but in some places around here, I'm sure that it did.

My husband had put a new battery in the Impala, and when he fired it up, it started just fine. So we headed for Jim's in Bellefonte, nabbed a takeout chef salad and cottage fries, and polished them off at Governor's Park while sitting at a picnic table under a pavilion. The wind just about blew us away!!!

But when we got to Cherry Run, the wind was not as amazing, which was a good thing overall. So we took our chairs and daysacks and cooler and water shoes and headed for a nice flat spot by the green and mossy stream, surrounded by rhododendrons.

Some big trees had fallen along the creek where we usually get in, and my first thought upon looking at the situation was . . . hmmm, not sure I'm going to go in today. But a bit further down the creek, another pair of trees had fallen, creating a sunny area with a downed tree the whole way across the creek; the sunshine was lovely, the wide area almost seemed a bit beachy, and the fallen tree made an ideal accessible handrail for wading!

So we changed into shorts, put on our water shoes, and in we went. Sometimes I take my camera along and take pictures from the middle of the stream but I didn't bother this time. The rocks can be quite slippery and the camera is too precious so I left it along the edge of the creek. The water was quite cold and refreshing, and we spent a little bit of time slopping around in Cherry Run.

Here are two pictures from our day playing in Pennsylvania's woods and waters. The one above, I call View From a Wooden Bridge. The one in the extras, of Cherry Run itself shining in the afternoon sun on a day that was more like April than February, is called River of Light.

I have two photos, so let's have two tunes. The first is the Eagles, with Seven Bridges Road*. I just learned that they used to warm up before a concert by singing this song together. Here are versions by Girl Named Tom, Home Free, and hold onto your hats, DOLLY PARTON!!! Wait, just one more: by Ian/Iaian Matthews, who later was a member of Fairport Convention. My second tune is for the shining river in the extras, and the song for that is John Mellecamp's To the River.

*On a more personal note, I bought the Eagles version of Seven Bridges Road when it came out on a 45 rpm record back in 1980 or thereabouts. My husband and I finally saw the Eagles together in October 2010 at PSU's Bryce Jordan Center. They opened the show with Hotel California, and you could have heard a pin drop as the first few bars of the song rang out. The feeling in the air was electric. After the intermission, the Eagles came back out on stage and suddenly there were these gorgeous voices singing in perfect harmony in the darkness. It was Seven Bridges Road!!!  Lord have mercy! Now THAT was a fine moment.  <3