Sitting almost 1,400 feet/430 meters above sea level in the Poconos Mountains is this jewel of a 44-acre lake called Sunfish Pond. No roads lead there: you have to hike in to see it. A glacial lake, formed as the last Ice Age was ending, Sunfish Pond is a tranquil and lovely element of the […]
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This first photo shows two of the roughly 1,300 specimens of minerals and gems on display in the Hillman Hall of Minerals and Gems at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. I had a chance to see the exhibit yesterday. It was wild to see jewels created out of the ash from Mount
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66 million years ago, there was a Very Bad Day for nearly everyone on the planet. That’s when the asteroid responsible for ending the age of the dinosaurs crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula and destroyed about 78% of all species.This picture from Trinidad Lake State Park in Colorado shows one of the places where the
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Spooky season is almost upon us, and thus it feels appropriate to share this rural legend and roadside attraction near the border of Carbon and Luzerne Counties in the forested mountains of Pennsylvania’s mining communities. I am writing, of course, about the Cursed Stone Couch of Weatherly, PA. Folktales — especially frightening ones — often
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Today Shippensburg University’s history department sponsored a trip to the Eckley Miner’s Village — a restored community built after 1854 when a mining firm called Sharpe, Leisenring and Company began construction on a small community (between 1,000-1,500 people) specifically to house the coal miners who worked for them. The region had hundreds of similar establishments,
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The Hocking Hills region of south-eastern Ohio is a jewel of an area — ravines, caves, and stone walls interweave throughout old-growth forest. Water is everywhere: streams, small cataracts, and waterfalls echo in many parts of the forest.The area was formed millions of years ago, when the Appalachian Mountains were eroding and the shallow seas
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Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio has long been a place of interest for human cultures. The Blackhand sandstone formed a series of ravines there, and coupled with the abundant water supply allowed for a micro-climate atypical for Ohio. This explains the existence of trees like black birch, Canadian yew, and hemlocks which don’t normally
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Located in downtown Philadelphia’s iconic South Street, Philly’s Magic Gardens is an artistic spectacle. It’s a dazzling outdoor-and-indoor labyrinth crammed from top to bottom and all around with the mosaics of local artist Isaiah Zagar. If you walk around South Street, you will no doubt see other mosaics by Zagar, who has made it his
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Humorous, whimsical, profound, and thought-provoking — these are some of the major reactions to viewers exploring the 42 acre Seward Johnson “Grounds for Sculpture.” Seward Johnson founded the open-air museum in 1992 as a way to promote contemporary sculpture to the general public. Seward, part of the Johnson & Johnson family, never cottoned onto the
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Today I got to tour the Barnes Museum, which houses an amazing collection of art with particular highlights of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modernist works. The paintings reside in a relatively recent (2012) building in Philadelphia. The museum’s decor is spacious and allows for a great deal of outside lighting and comfortable seating in a glass-and-cement
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Conrad Beissel (1691-1768) was the founding leader of a monastic group of dissident Christians in Ephrata. The cloister he set up in this remote location at one point held 80 celibate followers, both men and women. His final home, featured here, was a much larger space than many of Ephrata’s members, and yet it still
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In the most remote parts of central Pennsylvania there are a string of state game lands that go by the name of “St Anthony’s Wilderness”. And on a mountain ridge, accessible only by hiking in, are the ruins of a small coal-mining community around the village known as Yellow Springs. An identifying sign along the
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This is “Arctium lappa,” aka burdock. Originally from Eurasia, it is now an invasive species in North America — this beautiful specimen was flowering yesterday in the Shenandoah National Park, and July and August are typical months when the spiny bulbs blossom in lavender and purple. Although burdock root has long been used in cuisines
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Here you see the ruins of a base-end “fire station” that was created shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor when the U.S. entered the Second World War. Scouting stations like this one, which is on the Muir Woods lookout point (see second picture) were built along the northern California coastline to watch out for
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My niece and I got to hike up Mount Tamalpais, aka “Mount Tam,” one of the most treasured State Parks in California. Cresting off the coast of Stinson Beach, Mount Tam features giant redwoods and moss-covered rocks that frame a high tree canopy — until the trails open up to the stunning ocean views you
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The Auburn State Recreation Area, 40,000 acres of land along the Middle and North Forks of the American River, almost never existed.Once a major locus of interest during the California Gold Rush, the canyon was scheduled to be dammed when it was discovered to be along a major earthquake fault line and that damming it
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This is a close-up picture that I took earlier this month near the Appalachian Trail in Central Pennsylvania of a very tiny fungus with an adorable moniker and a long pedigree for human use. Called “green elfcup” or “green wood cup,” the technical name of this mushroom is “Chloriciboria aeruginascens,” and although it is a
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Pittsburgh’s unusual geography — with three rivers that conflate at different spots amidst steep hillsides — made it difficult for pedestrians to traverse. Starting in the 1870s, German immigrants started building funicular railcars to make getting around easier. Today only two of these remain, and the one featured here is the Duquesne Incline. Built
Pictured here is a circular plaque, commemorating the location of Fort Duquesne in 1774. Today not even ruins remain, but the location is memorable, lying at the tip of a spit of land called “the Point,” right at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in downtown Pittsburgh. As can be surmised from
The Mattress Museum of Contemporary art was started in Pittsburgh in 1977, when an old mattress factory was turned into an unusually immersive art experience. The rooms have installations that are intended to be viewed in their particular locations, and the various tableaus and rooms are a mixture of permanent and artist-in-residence exhibits. The
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