33℉ with 3-5 inches of snow in the forecast
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
We drove west through the Catskills, then turned south on 47. We drove the length of the Catskills reservoir that supplies New York City with water. We noted in the last couple of posts about the lack of rain in this area. My pictures don’t do justice to the dramatic low levels of this water system. You can see a bunch of small fishing boats to give you some perspective. Every stream we have crossed is very low or dry. This is home of some of the most famous trout streams in America. There was still water in these, but not a lot. A little research shows that New York consumes 1.1 billion gallons of water from this reservoir. I thought about the similarity to Mexico City, which was built on an area surrounded by huge lakes that are not gone, and underground reservoirs continue to drop.
Then we drove through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. This is a very pleasant drive through a well-managed wildlife area along the Delaware River, which looks quite pretty. Fields are planted for wildlife, but it also is a great buffer for the river. A nice bike trail runs the whole length, and trails go all through it.
Stopping for lunch, we studied options for places to stay the night and agreed on Hickory Run State Park in Pennsylvania, open until the first of November. It will be cool here for a couple of days with rain/snow tomorrow. Then it turns nice for a week. It looks like a very nice park with a lot of trails. Although it was chilly, we built a fire and enjoyed sitting out for a while. Martha cooked sweet potatoes in the fire along with pork chops and peas.
The showers are closed for the season and there are no flush toilets, so I’m pretty sure Martha will be wanting to move on tomorrow. For the first time, she took a shower in the trailer! Out came the exercise ball, the roller log, LL Bean bag and the yoga mat. I asked how it was and she said, “Great”.