lancaster county

CRANKSGIVING – Intercourse, PA 2016

danaelizabethx Cycling, Uncategorized , , , , ,

OK – I swear a bunch of pervos got together when they were naming some towns here in PA and thought; “yeah, Virginville is a GREAT name for a town!”

and “oh, how about Blue Ball?!”

“OH!!  INTERCOURSE!!  One town HAS to be named that!”

“YAASSSSS!!  That will keep people snickering for hundreds of years!”

I’m pretty sure that is how the conversation went….

YES, we have all these towns in Pennsylvania – and yes we still snicker about them.  ANYWAY, I have been obsessed with doing a Cranksgiving from the minute I heard about them.  I missed the one in my area, but saw there was one at a bike shop in Intercourse, PA called Intercourse Bike Works.

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Cycling to the Wildflower Patch

danaelizabethx Cycling, Gardens, Interesting Places, Uncategorized , , , , , ,

I joined a cycling club a few weeks ago which I LOVE – I have met so many awesome people, although I have to admit I was worried that on my hybrid I wouldn’t be able to keep up.  Turns out I had no problems (and they gave me a 20% off coupon to a bike shop which includes bikes—-could we see a road bike in my future??  Probably yes! 🙂 WAHOO!)  Anyway – I have done a few rides with this group – the problem?  There is no time to stop to take pictures and too much beautiful scenery along the way! LOL!!  I knew an upcoming ride was going to go right by this awesome wildflower patch that everyone has been buzzing about lately, but I couldn’t bear it if I couldn’t stop to take a picture – or 100 – so I decided to bike there myself before the group ride.  I talked my mom into going along so we picked a spot that was fairly close by to park and cycle there.  Now you can just drive up and park in the grass, but what’s the fun in that??  🙂

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Conestoga Trail Section B: Part 1

danaelizabethx Conestoga Trail, Cycling, Uncategorized , , , , , ,

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!

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Conestoga Trail – Section A: part 2

danaelizabethx Conestoga Trail, Cycling , , , ,

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.  🙂

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cross over this covered bridge to get onto the Conestoga Trail

 

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