A short trip South

After a great Christmas with Laura, Jason, Sam, Luke and Rudy, Dad and I pointed the car southwards to get away from chilly gray Chenango County for a few days.  We ended up at Assateague Island on the DelMarVa peninsula, where we spent two cold sunshiny days walking on the spectacularly beautiful beach, watching the wild ponies and the birds, and exploring the picturesque fishing village/tourist town of Chincoteague. 

We saw an astonishing variety of birds wintering over in the sheltered bays on Assateague -- flocks of ducks in more varieties than I could begin to identify, whistling swans who make the most extraordinary hooting sound, herons, egrets, eagles, snow geese by the hundreds who rose in a huge flock and swirled low over our heads, filling the sky above us with white wings as we walked on the beach, little brown waterbirds that a nearby birder said were marbled godwits, warblers and wrens in the beach scrub and more than I can now remember.  Ponies and birds -- Grandma Frey would have been beside herself!

We were going to head farther south, but a week of rain was in the forecast, so we headed happily home.  On the way through the Poconos, we stopped early and spent a night at a hotel near White Haven, Pennsylvania, where there was a great hot tub, and had a fantastic dinner at the Powerhouse Eatery.  There was a break in the rain the next morning, so we took the opportunity to visit the Hickory Run Boulder Field in the State Park of the same name.  It was a long drive down rough, narrow roads through deep, wild, gorgeous forest to get there, but worth the trip to see 16 acres of boulders smack in the middle of the woods.  I'd been there as a child on a field trip from nearby Pine Tree Camp, and always wanted to go back.  The field was formed 20,000 years ago by freeze-thaw cycles related to the glaciers.  Amazing.

As we left the boulder field, we passed two hunters with several beagles, heading back toward their trucks in the boulder field parking lot.  One of the hunters was carrying one of the beagles, and we wondered if it was injured.  We drove on a little way and had to stop for a big, indignant-looking porcupine as he scrambled across the road.  Dad speculated that there might be a connection between the injured beagle and the ticked-off porcupine.  On we went a little farther, and now came another beagle, galloping down the road with ears flapping and what looked like a stick caught in its collar.  We figured it was lost and hurrying to catch up with the others, but when it got to us it stopped and nosed at our car as if asking for help, so I got out.  The "stick" was a tracker antenna and the beagle clearly wanted human help, so I picked him (her?) up, mud and all, and we turned around and took him (her?) back to the hunters.  The beagle was clearly a kennel dog and a little scared -- he cringed as I gently scooped him up, but he let me do it and rode calmly enough in my lap.  They thanked us and got on their cell phone with a third hunter who was somewhere out in the woods searching for the lost beagle -- and sure enough, the injured beagle had a nose full of porcupine quills!  So that was our early morning adventure in the Poconos.

These pictures are from our last stop in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, where we visited the Starrucca Viaduct, an amazing stone railroad bridge with 18 keystone arches, built in 1847-1848 by the Erie Railroad.  My great-great-grandfathers John McCarthy and Lawrence Geary, both recent immigrants from Ireland, were part of the crew of stone masons who came to Susquehanna to build it, and I hope that somewhere out there, they are proud of their astonishing work.  Their families stayed in Susquehanna after the viaduct was completed, John's son Richard married Lawrence's daughter Rose, and one of their ten children was my grandmother Catherine "Rena" McCarthy Frey -- so the viaduct is not just part of my family's history, but one of the reasons for it!