Since the weather has been so nice I decided to try to finish biking the on road section of the Conestoga Trail. I asked my mom if she wanted to go with me because we would be going through a few more covered bridges and I knew she would like to see them – but she is very uncomfortable riding on the roads. We decided to have my dad drive the route so we could see just how busy the roads were. When we got to the end of the on road section we decided to bike back to Oregon Dairy (which is where I stopped my ride last time) and meet my dad there for lunch. It seemed like we would be going down more hills than up. There was a short on road section that we skipped because it was pretty busy, but we found a good place to pull over and jump on our bikes to start our journey! Although some of the roads had a bit of traffic, for the most part we saw very few cars because we were on back roads in Lancaster County. We actually saw a bunch of other cyclists and some horse and buggies!
Conestoga Trail
Conestoga Trail – Section A: part 2
The Conestoga Trail is a little known trail in PA that is 63 miles long, starting in Furnace Hills, PA where it meets the Horseshoe Trail and goes to York, PA where it meets the Mason-Dixon Trail. It is considered an endangered trail because big sections of the northern part of the trail have been rerouted onto roads due to landowners revoking trail access. I can’t say that I blame them – on the one hand I want people to get outside and explore, but on the other I’m not so sure I would want people trampling through my private property either. I can see both sides.
While the southern most section of the trail is considered the most scenic, I decided I was going to do the whole thing in sections- why not? 🙂
I began with the on road section of the trail (Which is near the end of section A of the trail guide) as it is hunting season and a big portion of the start of the trail is closed until hunting is over – this way I could get the “boring” on road section of the trail out of the way first while the days are still nice. I found out this section is ANYTHING but boring. While some of the roads are fairly busy (which is why I decided to bike it instead of walk), the views of farmlands, animals and covered bridges were amazing – good old Lancaster County! This section of the trail is a little hilly with one section I had to get off and push my bike up – it was steep even to walk it! The only other thing besides cars you need to watch out for on the trail were the road apples which if you are from PA you will know this is a nice way to say horse poop from the Amish horse and buggies. 🙂
blisters and bug bites 