Another American Adventure: McConnells Mill State Park

Monday, July 5, 2010

McConnells Mill State Park

We got so frustrated with the search for temporary housing - one place was not open today, the other 2 don't have anything available until August - that we went for a hike! I knew of a place not too far from here - McConnells Mill State Park - so that's where we went. My maternal grandfather - William Duffield Queen - owned a mill in Loretto, Ky in the early 1900s. This must be like what he had.

We saw on a bank sign that it was 100 degrees today; Jubilee and I must have brought the heat with us. But the hike was almost all in the shade and Jubilee was able to take a few dips in the creek even though swimming was not allowed. It felt good to sweat and walk, a lot preferable to doing 30 minutes on a machine at the gym.

Tomorrow I'm hitting the streets early to see if I can't find a place so that we can move out of the motel.

4 comments:

Sally ClayJuly 6, 2010 at 4:13 AM
It's great to be in touch with your latest adventure, Beth. Good luck finding a satisfactory place to live today! Meanwhile, back to our latest Scrabble game. . .
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beth cioffolettiJuly 6, 2010 at 4:49 AM
At least I have a wireless connection in the motel, Sally - otherwise Jubilee and I would have to watch TV!!
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Sally ClayJuly 6, 2010 at 11:28 AM
Heaven forbid! It's good to hear from you.
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AnonymousJuly 7, 2010 at 8:22 AM
nice photos: covered bridges and mills and humans and doggie -
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.