Three Gems in Four Days

The four days that followed our visit to Gary and Carol took us to three gems of places as we returned from Pennsylvania's Allegheny Mountains to the Southern Tier of New York.  We'd like to share them with you.

The first was the Pine Creek Rail Trail, which runs north from Jersey Shore PA to Ansonia PA.  "Jersey Shore"???  This place is 250 miles from just about anyplace on the true Jersey Shore.  According to Wikipedia, that font of wisdom, a fellow set up a store on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River in the 1700's, then had competition move in to a spot across the river from him.  Farmers bringing goods up or down the river stopped either on the "Eastern Shore" or the "Jersey Shore." 

The nickname stuck and the town officially changed its name from Waynesburg to the current confusing one.  A week ago we passed through the city of Northeast, PA, which is located in the extreme northwest of the state -- but in the northeastern corner of Erie County!  Oh, those wild and crazy Pennsylvanians.  We'll revisit more Pennsylvania place names like Intercourse and Bird-in-Hand when we visit that part of PA in October. . .

The Pine Creek Rail Trail was as scenic as any we have been on.  The only downside was the limestone/clay surface, which could have used a little more clay and a bit less fine gravel on the surface.  It never felt squirrelly or unsafe, but the road friction knocked about 3 or 4 mph of speed off the average for any given amount of effort.  Like many trails it had gates to keep cars off the trail, and these were wide enough for us and our panniers to pass through without dismounting, except for this time to take the picture.

The trade-off was worth it, as the bridges, rock outcroppings, tunnels of trees and constant presence of Pine Creek were wonderful.  We rode 25 miles from Lock Haven to the start of the trail then 25 miles down the trail on day one, staying at the Hotel Manor, then another 30 miles to the north end of the trail the next day.  The hotel restaurant patio overlooking the river was a great place to hang out!  The weather even cooperated and got cool enough that night that we could sleep with the windows open, listening to the gurgle of Pine Creek.  The next morning as we recrossed the bridge to the trail we watched these fly fishermen trying their luck just below the hotel. 

The northern end of the trail goes through an area known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania.  It is a grand canyon, but nothing like its stark, rocky namesake in Arizona.  This photo from the PA state park website shows the view from the top. 

As we suspected, the view from the bottom is not particularly awesome, as it just looks like a bunch of really tall, heavily wooded bluffs next to you.  We did come to one hiking trail we could have taken to the top, but leaving the bike and all the gear for an hour or two did not seem like a good idea. Perhaps we'll come by another time and check out the view from above in person.

Like New York, Pennsylvania has a series of marked bike routes following roads with wide shoulders, low traffic, or in this case the Pine Creek Rail Trail.  We followed Bike Route Z along the shore of Lake Erie a week ago.  This time we followed Bike Route G from Jersey Shore to the NY state line.  It was a pleasant ride on remarkably flat roads as we exited the Alleghenies and headed to the Southern Tier of  NY.

Our next destination was Corning, NY, and it had two gems of the highest order that we spent a day and a half exploring.  The first was the Rockwell Museum of Western Art.  It has nothing to do with artist Norman Rockwell (although they did have a Norman Rockwell print of a cowboy on display), but rather was the outgrowth of a fabulous collection of art related to the American West put together by the Rockwell family of Corning.  It was donated to the city on the condition that the city house the collection properly, and Corning's former city hall, built in Richardsonian Romanesque style in 1893, has been its home since 2001.  We're fairly sure the buffalo broke through the bricks about then.

They have a number of exceptional works, such as Albert Bierstadt's Mount Whitney (1877) and Cyrus Dallin's 1914 bronze On the Warpath, which seems to be taking a hard look at William Robinson Leigh's 1947 The Buffalo Hunt. 

On special exhibit, they had two painting from 2006 and 2007 by Mark Knudsen that caught our eyes, Coyote Mesa and Mile 95.  Another special place was the Remington-Russell Lodge, a room set up like a western lodge complete with fireplace and ringed with paintings and sculpture by Frederick Remington and Charlie Russell, two of the giants of western art.  At the risk of our readers discovering that our photos aren't perfect, we invite you to click on any photo in our blog to enlarge it.  To get back to the blog, just hit the back button on your web browser, up there in the top left corner.

More importantly, the Rockwell Museum had excellent commentary about various pieces in their collection that described the tension between stereotypical views of western subjects, particularly of Indians, and more recent attitudes and insights.  It was odd to have a museum of art devoted to the American West in south-central New York State, but the collection and curatorship were outstanding and we came away enlightened as well as entertained.

Which brings us to the final gem, and one which truly shines like a gem -- the Corning Museum of Glass.  In a modern building they have put together a museum that knocked our socks off.  As befits a place claiming to be the world's largest museum devoted to glass, it has a most impressive historical collection.  As fairly old folks ourselves, we are always drawn to the really old stuff, and these three pieces attracted our attention more than others: a colorful small (3-4" across) bowl from Rome, about the time of Christ; the bearded face of a man, from Lebanon in the 3rd century BC; and a cup with the face of a rather different man, from Germany in the 3rd century AD.  One of the oldest pieces they have (and the oldest extant glass image of a person yet found, if we understood the commentary correctly) was this image of Amenhotep II, made using the lost wax method usually used for bronze sculpture, and dating to his reign about 1400 BC.

We viewed literally thousands of pieces from the Middle Ages and beyond that we somehow restrained ourselves from photographing, and learned more than we imagined we could absorb about glass-making and the creativity of man using glass.  But we couldn't pass up this stained glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany, created for a Hudson River mansion that is no more.  We will be in the Hudson Valley next month, and suspect we'll see a bit more Tiffany in situ as we tour a half-dozen of the fabled mansions still to be found there.  For a nice contrast, they had on display around the corner this modern stained glass by Narcissus Quagliatta from 1982 entitled Melancholia.

Another large gallery focused on the modern art glass movement that began in the 1960s, including this close-up of Michael Glancy's 1989 glass and copper work Global Entropy, and a few others we failed to note the names of in a neighboring gallery.

Then there were the galleries and demonstrations devoted to the chemistry and physics of glass, particularly the "Glass-Breaking" demo in which a youngster from the audience became the envy of every other kid in the room as she destroyed regular glass, safety glass and plate glass as the presenter gave a quite erudite explanation of the physics and safety issues connected with each type of glass.  The most surprising point he made was why they make the side windows of cars with plate glass rather than the safety glass used in windshields -- if you crash, you sometimes need to get out through a side window, and plate glass will let you out by shattering into little shards, while safety glass will not.

For another short demonstration we stood, protected of course by glass, as this fellow pushed glass rods into a flame and with a pinch here and the pull there, made the little dolphin we could see on display afterwards. 

Nearby we got this joint portrait, of sorts, in front of the reversing mirror.  As you stand away from it, you appear upside down.  As you walk toward it, your image suddenly explodes into fragments of light, reappearing as you step even closer, this time right side up and enlarged.  Youngsters found this one pretty hard to resist.

Another fascinating exhibit for the adults (but one which put a few of the kiddies to sleep) explained fiber-optic cables.  Suffice it to say that they are pretty amazing things, and we'll move on to the grand spectacle that we ended the day with, a one-hour-long glass blowing demo that involved two craftsmen and a commentator who sometimes pitched in when things got complex.  It was pretty amazing to see them go from a few globs of clear molten glass to a bigger and bigger glob which then got rolled through a glazing material, lettered (it says Syracuse Chemistry to honor a field trip by the Syracuse University Chemistry Department in the audience), and then spun out with centrigual force into the grand bowl that we came back the next day to photograph (it had to be cooled gradually in a furnace overnight to "cure" it properly).

We're now on our way to Cooperstown NY, not to see the Baseball Hall of Fame but rather to spend a week at a cabin on the shores of nearby Lake Otsego, for half of which we will be joined by daughter Lisa and family.  We had a close call leaving Corning for Elmira.  But, as you can see, NY Bike Route 17 wanted to avoid Big Flats every bit as much as we did, we stayed to the right, and the tires stayed inflated.  It will probably be 2 weeks before we write again, as we hope to "veg out" full time this coming week.  After a little over a month on the road and a little over 1000 miles under our belts, we will need a vacation from our vacation when we get there!