August 25, Two Waterfalls

Today we rose to another morning with light fog, with the sun trying to pretend that it was the moon.  Later on in certain places as we rode along the trail, the sun shone between trees, creating sunbeams angling across the trail in the mist.  

Last night we had heard about 2 waterfalls we would see today from a trail volunteer: the white waterfall, whose waters contaminated from aluminum production had stained the rocks white, and the red waterfall, where acid iron-laden water from an old coal mine stained the rocks red.  

We ate breakfast about 10 miles away in West Newton where we had the 2 x 4 special:  two large pancakes, 2 pieces of toast, 2 eggs and 2 pieces of bacon. Last night, people at the campground had recommended this restaurant to us. 

Although the trail became unpaved shortly after Pittsburgh, it it a smooth, wide surface of finely crushed limestone that is in great shape and easy to ride on.  

We had great views of the river which got wilder in appearance as we went upstream, with sections of whitewater and rapids.  Later we found out that a section of the river, the "Lower Yough," is for the the very experienced kayakers, while a different section farther upstream, the "Middle Yough," is less intense and suitable for beginners and average users. We had made a reservation to camp at Ohiopyle State Park, and we had heard from other bikers that it was up a steep hill and that they never wanted to camp there again.  So when we got to where there was a turnoff to the Kentuck campground in the park, we wanted to make sure it was the right campground.  We had a site number, but not the campground name.  We asked some people walking on the trail and one couple, who happened to be from Brighton, Michigan,  gave us a map of the huge park, but it didn't show site numbers in the campground. After some discussion and studying the map, decided that it must be the way as we only saw the one campground on the map.  The trail had a sign that said no bicycles, but that bicyclists who were registered could use it to get to the campground. Near the sign was another bicyclist who said she wasn't registered so we invited her to share our site, and we all pushed our bicycles up the steep gravelly 0.3 mile path, then went around the campground loops till we found #232. Kerry is an Australian optometrist who has a son in DC, a daughter back home and a daughter who raced in the Olympics and rides for a professional cycling team in Spain. She is riding from DC, up into Canada and around part of lake Erie and then back to DC. We also met Rick and Katie (she works in design and he is a dietician in a bariatric medical office) who were camping int the site next to ours.  They invited us to have a beer and some chili, and we had fun time sitting around their fire chatting about bikes and trips until we decided to call it a night.  

From the high bridge over the Youghiogheny River (note our shadows!)