Pennsylvania Fall Season 2008

[Bill Cravener]

My good friend, my brother and I took a beautiful Sunday ride yesterday. Friend had his small camera with him and took these pictures of Fall in Pennsylvania. Me on my Yamaha, my brother on his Harley and my buddy riding his BMW. The creek photos are of Oil Creek located in northern PA. The rest of the photos are of the various places we traveled that day. It was just a perfect day temp was 76F and the winds calm. Quite warm for this time of year. Was likely the last ride of the season and I will be parking the bike until next year. Temps are to drop down to the normal upper 50's F by next weekend.

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

   Very pretty!  A _long_ time since I was in Pennsylvania for
the fall.

Thanks,

Steve N.

[Mark Jones]

Lovely photos!

It's hard to believe that beauty like this actually exists in the world, when we hear daily how many things are wrong with it. Glad to see some proof of the former.

[Bill Cravener]

Yep, it was one of them great rides. When you're on a motorcycle taking in the scenery all around you breathing in the fresh air thoughts of all the ugly things happening on this planet are soon forgotten. You guys don't know what you're missing, riding a motorcycle is better then sex!  :bg

[hutch--]

Great stuff Bill, what is the old building alongside the water, is it an old factory ?

[Bill Cravener]

Steve, we wondered that ourselves, the building is red brick and from what we could tell it is an old factory. We should have stopped and taken a better look but we wanted to keep the wheels rolling. We traveled up and down western PA that day nearly 400 miles and to be honest I couldn't even tell you exactly where we were when my buddy snapped that photo. We crossed many creeks and rivers passed many farms and Amish farms passed thru many little towns and villiages it was a great riding day for sure. I'll be parking the bike for winter and it'll be 6 months before I can get her out and ride again. By the way I cropped the above pics from larger photos which were added to a collection of other photos of previous year bike travels.

[hutch--]

400 miles in a day is not messing around, you guys must have been working at it.  :bg

[Bill Cravener]

We hit the road at 9:00 am and got back home around 7:00 pm. We were worn-out to say the least but it was well worth the long ride! We would stop about every 70 to 90 miles to give the butt a break or get a bite to eat or fuel up, that or so my buddy could have a smoke break. I don't do much local riding around town like riding to the local store or whatever I have to have a destination and it has to be at least 100 miles or it isn't worth doing. We hardcore riders do indeed earn the title of Iron Butts that's for sure.

[hutch--]

Different riding position, when I rode bikes it was with clipons and rearsets (like a racing bike) and you used tro get really tired forearms. A mate and I rode from Sydney to Brisbane many years ago when it was the old highway and we did it by the coast road in 12 hours (600 miles). The north coast on NSW (my state in OZ) is flood prone and a long time ago it had concrete roads that used to move when they were underwater so later you got nasty joins in the concrete so when you hit one at 100 mph + it was like getting kicked in the guts with a steel cap boot and after a couple of hundred miles of that you were pretty tired.

Just as an aside, on the way up to Brisbane I was waiting for my mate at a fuel stop in a mountain range in northern NSW which had a lead and trail view of the highway about a mile in either direction. I heard this bike coming with a high pitched screaming noise and it went past and disappeared over the hill doing something 130 MPH plus complete with hsi girlfriend on the back and luggage, it was a Kawasaki Mach 4 (3 cylinder 750 2 stroke). I thought YEP I will have one of those. Hooked one about 10 years later, rebuilt the engine on a chair in my office, ported it myself and got another mate to build a set of expansion chambers for it. It was capable of playing Star Wars it was that fast.  :bg

PS: I just looked up Oil Creek on Google Earth and could find it a bit north of a town called Titusville, is that the right place ?

[Bill Cravener]

PS: I just looked up Oil Creek on Google Earth and could find it a bit north of a town called Titusville, is that the right place ?

Yep, that's the place Steve. We travel up that way often during the summer. Sister and brother-inlaw own a cabin east of Titusville PA just north of the small town called Marienville PA. About 15 miles north of Marienville their cabin sets in a deep wooded area called Pigs Ear very near the Allegheny National Forest. If you do a Google Maps search with the address "Pigs Ear, Pennsylvania" you'll see right where its located. Was there early spring, a bunch of us, and a huge black bear had us all running for cover but that's what it's all about, nature!

By the way back when I was young and crazy I had a 1971 Kawasaki 500 that I'd often push over the 100 mph mark. Now that I'm old I've never passed the 80 mark and always wear a helmet. Just won't want the family to have to deal with a vegetable. :bg

[Bill Cravener]

Steve I got hold of a few of those bear pictures. My nephew-inlaw took these of the bear we encountered last spring. When the bear showed up we all climbed up on the cabin balcony. In the last photo the bear found one of them giant Sheetz soft drink cups sat down on his butt and drank what was left. To give you a perspective of the bears size the burn barrel is from a semi truck tire rim. He stood up once and appeared to stand about 6 feet or so. That's a pretty big bear in these parts.  :bg

 

 

 

[rags]

This is my version of "Pennsylvania Fall Season 2008". These were taken last Sunday afternoon at a county park near my home, on the Eastern side of Pennsylvania near the NJ border.



A kayaker enjoying a quiet day on the lake acomponied by the local swan population:



Reflections of Fall:



Hope you enjoyed them!
Rags

[hutch--]

Thanks Mike, they look great. very pretty scenery and so different to OZ where I live. maybe someone on PA should try and sell the place to tourists as you have some very interesting stuff there and it would certainly be a change from Disneyland and all of the popular stuff.

Bill, I did not know you had bears on the east coast. I gether you don't go outside and "play" with them. We have nothing that large as indiginous animals on land, buffalo in the north which were imported but we have really friendly crocodiles (wil eat anyone) and in South OZ you take great care where you go swimming because of white pointer sharks.

[rags]

Hutch,
There are black bears that live in the mountains in my photos,  and occaisionly they'll wander down into the towns.
But they are normally a non aggressive bear, unlike their cousins the Brown and Grizzly bears that live in the Western US.
Nothing gets your heart racing like when a black bear runs across the road in front of your car.It's amazing to see how fast a large animal like them can run.
Which reminds me of an old joke.

   Two hikers were camping in the Rocky Mountains, and after camp was set up one camper proceeded to put on his running shoes. "Why are you putting your running shoes on?" his friend asked. "Just in case we see a bear." he replied.
"You idiot, don't you know you can't outrun a bear?", his friend said. "I don't need to outrun a bear, I just need to outrun you!"

:green2

[Bill Cravener]

Just one more late fall picture of Northwestern Pennsylvania. This was a picture taken looking southeast over the Shenango valley one early morning from my house some weeks back using my old SLR Fuji digital. Could not believe how orange the sky was that morning. :bg