Catoctin Mountain Park — situated right next to Cunningham Falls State Park, is in north-central Maryland and is run by the US National Park Service. Its 5,120 acres overlook the Monocacy Valley. Back in 1935, the area was put under the CCC to be fostered as a public recreational area. Cunningham Falls State Park has […]
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Tobyhanna State Park was formed out of state lands that had been on a large artillery range that preceded Tobyhanna Army Depot. It has 5,540 acres of land surrounding Lake Tobyhanna, which is named after an American Indian term meaning “a stream whose banks are fringed with alder.” Today I saw a lot of birch
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The Range Trail is a winding path that traverses across swampy and rocky forest in the Tobyhanna State Park, established in 1949. As you can see from the third slide, the area was used by the U.S. military as a live-artillery training ground during both World Wars. I didn’t see any shell remains on my
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This is Humpback Mountain, an incredibly ancient formation dating from the Alleghenian orogany — ie, when the Appalachian Mountains were formed — between 325-260 million years ago. Made up of granite with greenstone, the mountain is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, and you can see why they are called that because of
These are the Shohola Falls, dropping a total of 200 feet in the half-mile course it makes along the Shohola Creek as it drops from Shohola Lake. Located in the Poconos Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania, “Shohola” is an American Indian word that means “meek” or “faint”. This area is part of the Catskill formation and
The origin of mushrooms is ancient — in fact, a 2020 scientific paper reported the discovery of fossilized fungi found in the Democratic Republic of Congo dating from 715 to 810 million years ago! Yet there is much scientists still do not understand about these fruiting bodies of the Earth’s mycelium layer (a network of
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The National Park at Acadia is a jewel among the United States natural lands. The movement to make trails and preserve the area for posterity and enjoyment got going in the 1800s. Even though many of the civic groups who galvanized these measures cut both women and people of color out, women were among the
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https://chrissysenecal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/PXL_20230807_185351865-1.mp4 Acadia National Park received its name in 1919. The biodiversity of New England’s only National Park is unusual, stemming from its past history of glaciers. Here you see some glacial domes on top of Mount Sargent. At 1,373 feet above sea level, one can see for miles around.
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The town of Salem, Massachusetts, began as a settlement called “Naumkaeg,” but the Puritan settlers who arrived in 1626 renamed it after the Hebrew word for “peace,” which is of course ironic considering the legacy of witch-killings for which it is most famous. This exquisite example of an early New Englandtombstone comes from the Charter
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This view on top of the Beehive Trail in Acadia is enjoyed by hundreds of people every summer day in the national park. As one follows the adjoining Gorham Mountain and Bowl trails (in the picture the pond is the Bowl), the plaque on the fourth slide appears, dedicated to a “Waldron Bates” (d. 1909),
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