only one more trail to go in the anthracite section

Today Pam and I did three trail heads on the northern section of the trail. How north were we? We walked under Route 80. I find it hard to believe that we walked all the way to Route 80.

Today we met in Rockport, and I shuttled us over to White Haven. There are two trailheads in White Haven, named after industrialist Josiah White. During the War of 1812 he directed the effort to find a way to ignite and burn effectively Anthracite coal, and succeeded. The he created a little company called the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. The D&L was his baby.

We parked at the first trailhead, and then walked thru town to the second. (My friend Debbie says they have the largest burgers ever at the White Haven Diner.) This section of town clearly supports the trail traffic. Sandwich shops, general stores, bike repairs, etc. After looping around the shopping center, we reentered the trail. The first thing we see is a bike rental/river sports place. There's lots of places to park, and the trail is still road. After passing under Route 80 and a railroad bridge, we were finally on the trail. We saw a sign that said Lock 28 with an arrow. I said to Pam, if we started taking every detour, we'll never get done.

 

So we soldiered on. There were tons of ruins in this section. There were a lot of huge locks. Pam saw another one of the lock arrow signs and this time we went. We went straight and ended up at the waters edge. As we were coming back up Pam found the ruins. Bigger locks than I've ever seen before. They had to be three stories tall, stones, and make all the other locks we've seen before look like children's  toys. Don't forget, these were dug and built by hand by immigrants (Scottish, German, Irish). No machines.

 

We stopped a lot so the walk journey took nearly 5 hours. It ended with a lovely waterfall -- Buttermilk Falls.

 

After picking up the car, we drove back to White Haven and all those parking lots. We took the car as far as possible, and then went down to look at Lock 28. The one we had skipped at the start.

Miles/Steps:   12.5.
Weather:        mid-50s, overcast
Bathrooms:     At Rockport. I-2.5 with composting toilets. One stall was trashed.
Wildlife:          heard lots of birds, but saw no wildlife other than a swallowtail and a millipede
PPE found:     4 masks