We arrived yesterday from Watkins Glen with the thought of just riding through the Allegheny National Forest as we were heading east. After a full day of riding in the hottest most humid day yet, we didn't have any opportunity to explore at all.
After supper at Togis (16 oz T-bone with salad and sweet bar, and eggplant parm for $14.99 OMG I ate all my salad but couldn't finish the steak even with Larry's help) we came back to the hotel to decide on the next days direction...a call from the front desk changed those plans.
Another gentleman riding a Goldwing staying at the hotel asked if we could come down to chat about roads around here. He and the desk clerk told us about a train trestle bridge that is now a park where you can walk out on the tracks that are left. Most of the tracks were taken out by a tornado in 1993. Everything was left as is, and the remaining trestle upgraded and opened to walk out on - complete with glass floor...and yes I stepped on the glass floor! It was amazing to walk out on and even more amazing was the evidence of the power of Mother Nature. This is the Kinzua (pronounced Kinzu) Skywalk.
When you walked out onto this train track trestle you could see forever...it used to span this valley and was built in the late 1800's and took 120 men 97 days from start to finish. It was the tallest bridge in the US standing 24 feet higher than the Brooklyn Bridge in NY.
When you walk out to the end you can look down at the bottom of the gorge....way, way down!
And the tracks are still there as well. Not only the original ones but you will see a larger, wider set all the way up to the end of the trestle that remains today........and you can look down between them as well lol!
Then we were off to the Kinzua Dam. The dam is on the Allegheny Reservoir on the other side of the forest. There was not much to explore but we love dams dammit!
Tomorrow we leave Bradford, PA and are heading east on 6. We hear there is the Austin Dam (or what used to be the Austin Dam) to see as well as a castle built for Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution to aid her escape from France (need to confirm this piece of history) as well as a place that is called Pennsylvania's Grand Canyon....who knows....what I do know is that we got a great deal of rain early this morning and tonight which means we now have much better temperatures to travel .....thank you to whatever God made THAT possible (:
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