My! My! My! It Was COLD This Morning!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

My! My! My! It Was COLD This Morning!

Happy Birthday, Doris!

Both of us awoke this morning with the same thought: “It’s too cold to get out of bed!” But Tom got out of bed long enough to look at the thermometer, turn on the heater and jump back into bed. The thought of shaving in a building with no heat and an outside temperature of 33 degrees was just too much. The inside temperature was 42 degrees.

And we each discovered that the best way to sleep in cold weather is with our heads inside the sleeping bag with a small hole just above our head to let in the oxygen.

About 50 minutes later we got up. Tom shaved and dressed while I tried to stay out of his way in this small living space. Then he did the same for me. It was easy for him when he had his coffee made and could just sit and drink his coffee while I made the bed and got dressed. We have worked things out as to the best way to live in this small space.

We both worked on breakfast, ate and cleaned up. The weather radio told us that the temperature was going up to about 60 degrees today, so we decided to just hang out this morning and go to the Kinzua Viaduct and the Kinzua Dam in the afternoon.

It was a short and easy trip to the viaduct. We had been here years ago when all we could do was to walk through a pathway to the end of the bridge and peer through the chain link fence to look down at the ground below. This railroad bridge was still in service until 2003 when the men were making repairs to the bridge. I expect that the men had enough warning to get down from the bridge and get to a safe place before a tornado came ripping through the valley and took the bridge down in 30 seconds.

I think sometime around 2009 or 2010 work was started to make this place an historical site. Work was done to build a walkway on the same supports that were originally used for the bridge but with them being reinforced. People walk on planks on the railroad ties out to a platform and look at the valley of disaster left behind by the tornado. The bridge supports are strewn on the valley floor, and dead trees tell of what happened here. One can not only look over the railings around the platform and along the walkway but look through the six approximately 30” square reinforced glass panels that are laid in the floor of the platform to see the wreckage below. This new Kinzua Viaduct State Park was opened in 2011.

Two asides: 1) All along the railings around the side of the walkway and the platform are iron rod railings. On top of these railings are 2x10 wood planks fastened to the railing at about a 50 or 55 degree angle. It had been coated with something that made it look gray. But all along the wood there were bare spots where the coating had been sanded off. If you looked closer you could see that at some spots someone had carved things into the wood or written them on the wood that were just too deep to be sanded out and repaired.

Aside 2) whether true or not, there was this statement that I overheard while on the walkway: the angle of the top wooden railing was used because kids were walking on top of the flat railing. I said it was a death wish and Tom said it was the kids’ sense of invincibility.

Other things that we saw were old wells that were used for drilling for oil. None that we saw were working. We also saw spots of color in the trees while most places we were too late for color there.
We drove over to Kinzua Dam looking for something that matched the picture that Tom had in his head. He couldn’t find it. We were glad for the drive but sorry that Tom didn’t find what he was looking for.

It was such a fantastically beautiful day. At 4pm it was 65 degrees by the thermometer in the van. It was just so nice.

We rode back to the campground looking for a gas station so that the van would have  a full tank to start out tomorrow morning. Not finding any we had to go a half mile further to get it and then drive back to camp.

When we got back to camp Tom dug out the lounge chairs and we took advantage of the core-warming day.

Dinner made, cleaned up and dishes done (last time necessary for this trip) we settled in for a night of relaxation and computer work.

Tomorrow we travel to Hills Creek State Park. That means that there is no internet service. (We have one more trip to the laundry room to send this blog. I hope it’s warm in there.) So this is the blog entry until Friday night.

The weather radio says that there is rain coming. We hope we get out of here before it rains here. We were put in a “dry spot.” (If this is a dry spot I’d need hip boots for a wet one.) And in the best of all worlds we hope to get to Hills Creek and set up before the rains come; maybe even get to Leonard Harrison State Park before it rains. We’ll deal with a rainy night and a showery departure for home.
Talk to you next time on Friday, from HOME.