Getting to Know Green Lane

We had some errands to run today, so we only had a little time for an outing.  We decided to use our time to get to know Green Lane Park, located in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, west of Harleysville.  The park's trails interlace with the Perkiomen Trail, a 20-mile multiuse trail which links with the 18-mile Schuylkill River Trail to connect Green Lane with Center City Philadelphia, a stupendous and beautiful trail for cycling and walking.

The park's Orange Trail is only 2.5 miles long, but we only had about an hour to hike, so this was a great opportunity to drive over to the park, orient ourselves, and see whether the hiking website, Trails.com, is correct when it describes the Park as having, "scenery reminiscent of the Adirondacks, but without the seven-hour drive."  We had a chance to spend weeks in the Adirondacks last year, and we decided today that the description is accurate:  the Orange Trail is reminiscent of some of the forest trails we discovered in the Adirondacks.

Here is Kathy jumping for joy at a chance to get out hiking for the second day in a row!

No sooner did we hit the trail than Kathy spotted some cute little fiddlehead ferns poking up out of the forest floor, a sure sign that Spring means business...

...and Spring made other dramatic points as we walked along:

The trail winds through hilly terrain that was once used as farmland, and we found many old stone walls.  Here, David climbs over one of the walls:

A number of trees were quite old.  This aged fellow opens a yawning hole for wildlife to adapt as shelter:



Neither of us have seen a tree where so many old scars from dead branches have experienced regrowth.  Yet, here it is.  There were not just a few of these spots of regrowth, but perhaps a hundred on the single tree:

In another stretch of the trail, we discovered a chain of huge trees that fell in a single row, like dominoes.  The first, and largest, tree to fall fell across the trail.  Kathy gives some scale to it as she inspects the trail crew work to cut through the trunk to permit the path to continue on its way:

Another stretch of the trail followed a gas pipeline easement, and we got a panoramic view down the easement slope, out to a hill in the distance:

This trail clearly is old.  Occasionally, we found an old, metal blaze still hanging on a tree near the newer, painted blaze.  This metal blaze is slowly being swallowed by the swelling bark of this growing tree:

Perhaps part of the trail area was used as a camp.  We spotted two old, crumbling shower/toilet houses:

Where the Orange Trail meets the Perkiomen Trail, they follow along a nearby road.  Across the road, we get a glimpse of the Green Lane Reservoir, which is used for a variety of recreation as well as supplying drinking water to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

A 10-mile hiking path encircles the reservoir, and we hope to hike it before we leave the area.