lock ridge park

Today, Bonnie, Megan, the wee one, and I headed to Alburtis and Lock Ridge Park.  We chose it because we thought it was all was paved. It's mostly paved.

Lydia was sick—she's got Bonnie's 5-pack-a-day cough—so she didn't come. Rumor has it that she spent the day reading. Jealous.

When we arrived we parked and a dog started barking at us. We said out loud "would leave their dog in the car on a day like today?"  I said, maybe they went to the latrine. Five minutes is fine. Then a girl came over and said "he's mine". Turned out they were doing a photo shoot of shelter animals, and he doesn't play well with others so he had to stay in the car.

She was no more than 20 feet away, so he was okay. (Now. He was a pit/bull mix. Abused. Megan noticed the scar on his back. It was ugly. The rescue-girl said that was 100% better. I can't imagine what condition he was in when he arrived."

A loop—with several paths— at Lock Ridge is about a mile and a half, so we walked around twice. But we didn't take the same paths so we were a little closer to 2.5 miles in an hour. The one by the railroad was flooded and we couldn't tell how deep it was. Probably fairly deep. It extended into well onto the grass. So we didn't complete it. We turned around an came back.

There was one much longer path, but that one was not paved. Megan didn't want to jostle the baby around on stones.

I usually only come to this park for the 5K in August. To get to the park we drove to the start point, then followed the 5K route. A lot out-of-the-way but it worked. During a 5K there is no time to look at anything or take pictures. Today, I looked at everything and took pictures. I found two staircases and took them both. The others continued on. That's fine, I'm a big girl. But then I came to a fork in the road and yelled "Which way did you go?" They yelled "left" and I went left and caught up with them. The museum was not open until one, so neither were the bathrooms.

What is this place you might ask? From the Lehigh County website: "What looks like a stone castle was a coal burning iron furnace. The beauty of the furnace and surrounding structures belie their industrial roots."

When you live in the Lehigh Valley you can't escape iron. Or limestone. And by extension cement.