OMT Gallery

Welcome to the OMT Gallery, the repository of the various pictures that we’ve used as the banner header of One Man’s Tofu.

We try to update the banner at least once a month, sometimes more often, sometimes less so. The only rules are (1) they must be original photographs (usually taken on our bike rides), and (2) they must reflect the time of year that we post them to OMT.

You can click on any of the pictures for a full-sized view, and if you want to download them for your desktop background, knock yourself out. Like our writing, our photographs are out there for your enjoyment.

Some of these were taken with our old digital camera and others by our new one. We suspect you will be able to tell by the size and the quality which is which.

When you notice that the OMT picture has changed, check here for our commentary.

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Pittsburgh # 4028
Added 05 November 2009

Pittsburgh’s Frick Park is adjacent to our neighborhood here in Swisshelm Park. In fact, the Nine Mile Run entrance to the park is right down the hill from us. Although we’ll always have a special place in our heart for Schenley Park, we especially like Frick Park because it’s handy, much bigger, and much less developed than Schenley. The bike trails in Frick Park are not entirely unlike those that we ride up in the Laurel Highlands, although not nearly so secluded.

Along one of the trails in Frick Park, Pittsburgh, PA

Frick Park is surrounded by Squirrel Hill, Edgewood, Swisshelm Park, Point Breeze, Homewood, Regent Square, Swissvale, and Park Place, so there are always a lot of people with their kids and dogs everywhere in the park, even on weekdays, and on days when the weather isn’t that great. As a result, the park shows signs of heavy use in some sections. Also, we’re used to going to remote places to bike and hike, and sometimes the noise, traffic and, well, the constant crush of people in Frick Park can get on our nerves. Especially since it really can be a great place to take a break from the city when there’s no one around.

This shot is along one of the hiking/biking trails, not too far from the tennis courts, looking down into a ravine carrying one of the tiny off-and-on streams that feed Nine Mile Run, which winds its way through the lower part of the park and on through the woods until it empties into the Monongahela River at Duck Hollow. It was taken just last Sunday, after the rain the previous day had knocked down most of the leaves. These ones managed to hang on through the storm, but we’re sure that by this time they’ve packed it in and called it a season.

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Laurel Highlands # 2479
Added 11 October 2009

Once again, of course, we’re in the Laurel Highlands, this time along Laurel Ridge Road, which, as the name suggests, runs along the peak of the ridge, from Linn Run Road all the way to US 30, spilling out on to that highway between Laughlintown and Jennerstown. This picture was taken at one of the state forest fire ponds, those places where small creeks are dammed up to form a pond that firefighters can use in the event of a forest fire. In the summertime, this location is conspicuous only in its profound unremarkableness, if that’s a word, and we don’t think that it is … but in the fall everything changes.

Fire pond, aling Laurel Ridge Road, straddling Westmoreland and Somerset Counties, PA

There is a mix of hardwoods around the pond, along with a few white pine, mountain laurel and rhododendron, all of which makes for a very full and rich palette of colors. If you’re lucky enough for the wind to be calm, always a crapshoot at this elevation, the pond becomes like a mirror, reflecting the trees in complete upside down perfection. But even with the wind blowing, and the surface of the pond disrupted, you’d be hard pressed to find a prettier spot. It’s set back from the road about 50 yards, and surrounded by trees, so that when you’re on Laurel Ridge Road, unless you know it’s there, you could go right past it without even noticing it.

We’re glad for that; if more people knew about it, we’re sure that before long it would be … well, you know what people tend to do to anything that’s special …

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Laurel Highlands # 0738
Added 16 September 2009

(Note from -daj: Of course, the following paragraph is obsolete. OMT is no longer “kaput” .. we’re back on the air and fully in business. But rather than edit that paragraph out, we felt it important to let it stand. Nothing worse than rewriting history, you know.)

Well, if you’ve checked out our main page, by now you know that OMT is kaput, gone, finished, consigned to the dustbin of history, as we like to say. But before we closed up the offices, sold off all the equipment, and brewed one last pot of java, we thought it might be a good idea to do one final update to our Gallery page. Especially since we are now on the cusp of a new season, and, as regular readers know, we have something of a glut of fall pictures.

This pic was taken along Jacob Miller Road, just outside of Rector, PA, the little town were we park our car when we go on our Laurel Highlands bike excursions. The road used to go all the way up to the top of the ridge and then back down the other side to the village of Edie in Somerset County, and used to be called Rector/Edie Road. Now, however, it stops about a mile outside of Rector and becomes private before eventually petering out in the woods.

View from Jacob Miller Road, Rector, Westmoreland County, PA

On the other side of the ridge, however, it’s still an open road all the way from Edie to the peak, and then becomes a gated trail, called “J. R. Miller Road”, which starts back down the other side and presumably meets up with Jacob Miller Road somewhere in the woods, but we’ve never been quite able to navigate the entire trip. The road is virtually absorbed by the woods and becomes impassible for bikes, horses, and even on foot.

It’s been a gas sharing our pics with you, and we hope you’ve enjoyed them. But as George Harrison said, “all things must pass”.

Later …

                -daj

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Cook Forest # 1827
Added 24 July 2009

We don’t often get up to Cook Forest anymore, mostly because it’s such a long drive. With the Laurel Highlands just an hour away on the Turnpike, the trip up to Cook Forest, especially with that section of PA 28 above Kittanning that is two-lane, with lots of curves, and the tendency to get stuck behind slow-moving trucks, is something that we really have to want to do, and we don’t want to do that very much. Besides, having to spend a grand total of over four hours on the road on days when we go up there takes a lot of the fun out of the proceedings.

Once we get there, though, all of the trouble of getting there fades to black in the face of the quiet beauty of the surroundings, especially when you get outside of the state park proper. This picture, taken from the bridge in the village of Clarington, just east of the park, can serve as an example. As you might expect, it’s particularly beautiful in the fall.

Clarion River looking west from the Clarington Bridge, Jefferson (left) & Forest (right) Counties, PA

But even in the summertime, on a quiet weekday morning like this one, when the tourists are gone, the air is a little crisp, and the river is mirror-like still, a ride through the Clarion River valley is just the thing to recharge the batteries. We haven’t had an opportunity to make the trip yet this year, but we’ve been thinking about it a lot, and stumbling across this picture has gotten us to jonsein’ for one of our long, peaceful rides along River Road.

It may have to wait until fall this year, unfortunately …
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Pittsburgh #0023
Added 02 July 2009

Pittsburgh’s riverfront trail system has, in the past few years, become quite extensive. As an avid mountain biker, we find them to be a constant source of enjoyment. On the Allegheny/Ohio, you can bike all the way from Millvale almost to McKee’s Rocks. Along the Monongahela, you can go from the Glenwood bridge to Station Square on the south bank, and from Schenley Park to Point State Park on the north bank (the infamous “jail trail”).

Plus may others … there are spurs that veer off and eventually peter out, and completed segments that just sort of stop short on either side, like the one on the north shore of the Mon across from The Waterfront, that starts in a parking lot in Duck Hollow and stops abruptly at the railroad tracks in Hazelwood. It’s maybe two miles long, and it’s one of our favorites because its isolated location and lack of easy access make it a trail that is little used. We often try to squeeze its four-mile round trip into our nightly run, when we have the time.

40th Street Bridge, Allegheny River, Pittsburgh PA

The picture you see here is of Pittsburgh’s 40th Street Bridge (whose formal name is Washington’s Crossing), along the Allegheny River. That’s Lawrenceville in the background. The side of the river that we’re shooting from is the Millvale Riverfront Park, right along the trail. This is a nice spot, especially in the evening, to sit and watch the river. There are picnic tables, and a small pavilion, and most of the time is quiet and largely deserted. Probably the best feature about the trails along the river are places like this where the trees and the weeds are cleared out and you get treated to a nice vista. Along the majority of the trails, river views are generally blocked, but at regular intervals, things open up, and Pittsburgh’s inherent beauty hits you full force.

The transformation of this city’s riverfronts in the past 20 years has been nothing short of remarkable. The city of Pittsburgh has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the land along its rivers, and its citizens are extraordinarily lucky to have groups like the Riverlife Task Force leading the way to transform these former industrial wastelands into the beautiful assets they have the potential to become.

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Pittsburgh #0609
Added 01 June 2009

Market Square at lunchtime on a weekday is a great place for people-watching if that’s your thing, and it’s not especially ours, but one can easily get swept up in things. It’s been a hub of activity ever since we first encountered it back in the mid ’70s, when we were taking classes and working part time in the old Sperry Rand building, and it had been for many years prior to that. The Sperry Rand building was later demolished to make way for PPG Place, which abuts the one side of Market Square. Back then, Market Square was where good, clean fun and bad, dirty fun co-mingled in a way that always made it a worthwhile stop, even at night when the risk factor went up exponentially.

Still, we were young then, and risk was part of the game, and we only got mugged twice, which is not bad, considering.

Market Square, Pittsburgh, PA

These days though, it’s exclusively in the daytime when we visit Market Square, on our bike, usually with the camera. Sometimes we’ll buy a 5-lb bag of bird seed to feed the pigeons. After watching them drink up the steaming condensation dripping from a Port Authority bus tailpipe to wash down someone’s discarded french fries, now black with dirt, oil and soot, our seeds probably constitute the only decent meal they can ever hope to get. And they certainly seem to appreciate it, materializing in huge numbers from out of nowhere the instant we broadcast the seed across the cobblestones.

And, of course, there’s nothing like a hot dog from one of those dog wagons, a fixture in the summertime, which is just the thing for the energy to bike home. Downtown, remember, is at river level, and the trip home is by definition all uphill.
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Linn Run #186
Added 29 April 2009

Another of our countless photographs of Linn Run, the tiny trout stream that winds its way down from the Laurel summit along one of our favorite bike runs. This photo was taken just inside the west entrance of Linn Run State Park, about 100 yards upstream from the Adam Falls picnic area.

There are a number of private camps along this part of the stream, and the traffic is always light. People don’t seem to want to spend their time in the state parks anymore. Everyone wants to be constantly occupied these days, and the idea of visiting a place in which all there is to do is to spend a couple of hours hiking or biking near a mountain stream seems to them like an awful waste of time. Which, as far as we’re concerned, is fine.

Linn Run, Westmoreland County, PA

It’s much more enjoyable for us the fewer people we have to deal with when we’re out in nature. There are fewer and fewer places in the world where we can escape idiots, and the longer Linn Run and places like it seem to be boring to the masses, the better we like it. Although we do worry about people who have lost touch with the quiet serenity of the forest, with its sounds and smells so different from the city. But we get over it pretty quickly.

This is one of the comparatively rare summer pictures we have of this stream. There comes a point at which the camera intrudes on our riding, and we seem much more sensitive to this in the summer months than we do in the fall. In the summertime, we just want to ride, man, but in the cool of the fall, with the leaves in full color and the sun low in the sky, we take an entirely different approach. Every once in a while, though, we feel like slowing down and recording the experience in the summertime, and this is from one of those sessions. This photo dates back to 1999.
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Pittsburgh #276
Added 14 April 2009

As many of our more loyal readers are acutely aware, OMT’s been out of commission since early February, but we’ve been feeling the old draw again.

Just today we were poking around the OMT offices to have a look at things. We’ve been thinking lately of rebooting the franchise, and one of the first things we noticed was that our banner photo, our front porch to the world, as it were, was hopelessly out of date. That picture of the observatory on top of the Laurel Ridge, overcast and snow-covered, was hardly the kind of message that OMT should be sending here in mid-April. We’ve had quite enough of the winter, and we’re sure that you have too, and as much as we liked that picture back in January when we posted it, today it just makes us want to take the gas pipe.

We’ve finally figured out that looking at that picture every time we came in to the OMT offices was having a profoundly negative impact on our overall productivity, and so we’ve decided to cast it out, to dispense with it …

OTFD, as we used to say …

So, as a first step toward putting OMT back on the air, we thought it would be a good idea to put a fresh face on things. It’s hard enough for us to crank out these screeds which you all have come to know and love under normal circumstances, and it’s damn near impossible when we have to look at snow in April.

After an exhaustive search through the OMT photographic archives, we’ve come up with this picture. We took this around 10 years ago in front of Phipps Conservatory in Schenley Park, long before the recent renovation.

Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA

Of course, you can’t even see the building in this view, and the tulips were removed as part of the renovation, so Phipps no longer puts on such a colorful spring show as this.

But we thought that the change would be enough to shake up any visitors who might be checking in to see whether or not anything’s happening here at OMT, and that they just might check out the Gallery page for news.

Most of what we’ve been writing the past couple of months has been pure shit, but we think that we are starting to come out of whatever malady came along and kicked our mojo in the ass, and so we may very soon be back on the air again. Certainly there’s been no shortage of topics for OMT’s consideration.

But with OMT, as in life, there are no guarantees … we’ll just have to see how things shake out.

In the meantime, enjoy the tulips …

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Laurel Summit #100_1050
Added 28 January 2009

High atop the Laurel Ridge, straddling Westmoreland and Somerset Counties in southwestern Pennsylvania sits the University of Pittsburgh’s Laurel Summit Airglow Observatory. Built back in the 1960s, by the 1990s it was abandoned, and had fallen into serious disrepair. Then the vandals and the rodents moved in, and we were beginning to think that on one of our next bike trips up to the summit, we were going to find it had collapsed into a heap.

But one fine summer day several years ago, as we were riding along Laurel Summit road in the vicinity of the observatory, we could hear someone pounding a hammer. As we got closer, it got louder, and when we turned into the very road that you see in the picture (absent the snow, of course,

Laurel Summit Airglow Observatory, Forbes State Forest, Somerset County, PA

and with considerably more leaves than the just rhododendrons you see here) was Alec Stewart, a young assistant professor from Pitt who had taken it upon himself to restore the observatory. We stopped to have a chat with him, and he told us that he was a student of the professor who originally built the observatory, and that he had the professor’s enthusiastic approval for restoring it.

We learned that the observatory never housed a telescope; it was used primarily for the study of upper atmospheric gasses (hence the “airglow” business), but that Stewart was planning to put a small telescope in it as part of the renovation.

As you can see from the picture, he did a fine job, and it’s now used from time to time by Pitt’s astronomy department. According to the web site of Christopher Chirdon, who helped Stewart with the renovation, the observatory has been transformed into “a clean and operational location for weekend student retreats, amateur astronomy excursions, and a base of operations with first-class 1.5 KW 2-30 MHz shortwave radio installation with DSP capabilities“.

Well, those “DSP capabilities” are just gravy as far as we’re concerned … we’re just happy to see this structure preserved as one of the unique features of one of our favorite places to bike.

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Linn Run Road #100_0806
Added 27 December 2008

As anyone who has been keeping up with our Gallery already knows, Linn Run road is the jumping off point of our Laurel Highlands bike runs. This is the actual Linn Run creek in Linn Run State Park.

Linn Run creek, Linn Run State Park, Westmoreland County, PA

We don’t think that there’s any time of year in which this little stream isn’t beautiful, but it’s especially so in the winter time.

It gets pretty treacherous up here this time of year, because in the winter Linn Run Road is open to both regular traffic and snowmobiles. This essentially turns the road into a shiny, treacherous, sheet of ice, which requires studded tires to navigate. We learned this the hard way once when we got hopelessly stuck, and had to wait for a group of snowmobilers to get us out.

Lesson learned.

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Pontius #100_2935
Added 19 December 2008

Come January 7th, it will be three years since we got our cat, Pontius. We’d always had dogs when we were growing up, and we’d developed that special kind of mistrust for cats that real dog people seem to possess – it never occurred to us that we’d even own a cat, let alone get so attached to one.

When we got him, we were going to name him Meldrick, after Meldrick Lewis, the character on the TV show Homicide – Life on the Street, but in the end, we settled on Pontius, as in Pontius Pilate. Even as a kid, we always thought Pontius Pilate got a bad rap in the gospels, because he was just a bureaucrat trying to do his job in an impossible situation.

Pontius - Christmas 2008

We can just hear Caesar saying, “heckuva job, Ponchie”, when things in Judea started to implode. It wasn’t Pilate’s fault that he was thrust into the center of some cataclysmic theological maelstrom, any more than it was Judas’ fault for betraying Jesus, since the old man was pulling all the strings, anyway. If we were in Pilate’s sandals, we would have done just what he did when the rabble came to him – “You wanna crucify him, knock yourselves out … Lavabo, baby … The wife and I have tickets to the chariot races tonight”, and left them to work god’s will.

Again, as is our wont, we digress …

We hadn’t had the big Christmas tree up ever since Pontius moved in. The first Christmas, we tried having one of those table-top trees, but it wasn’t long before he had it on the floor, which shards of glass everywhere from the smashed ornaments. We love our cat, but we really missed having a Christmas tree, so this year we hit on the idea of putting up the big tree, but decorating it only with lights and tinsel garland – something he wouldn’t be able to destroy, even though he wouldn’t be able to keep away from it.

And it’s worked out fine … he only bothered it for the first night or two, and now pretty much accepts it as being part of the territory. But the “snow” blanket that we have under the tree is made from some kind of synthetic material that is very warm to the touch, and it has become a magnet for him … He snuggles up under the tree and .. well, the picture says it all.

We’re a bit concerned about what he’s going to do after the holidays when his new warm nest disappears. But like anything else when it comes to our buddy-boy, we’ll deal with it when it comes to pass.
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Forbes #560
Added 26 November 2008

This is one of our favorite pictures, taken on one particularly frigid winter morning, once again at the summit of the Laurel Ridge. This fence is at the entrance to Laurel Summit State Park, which in reality is little more than a tiny picnic area with tables and a small pavilion, and not much else.

But it’s a great place to park the car for a hike in the woods. It’s right near the Spruce Flats Bog, the remnant of an ancient mountain top lake, which was completely taken over by forest until clearcutting at the beginning of the 20th century resulted in the water table rising back to the surface, since there were no more trees to drink it up.

Laurel Summit State Park, straddling Westmoreland and Somerset Counties, PA

Also nearby is the vista from Beam Rocks, which look from the ridge to the east as the rolling hills of Somerset county unfold before you. And then there’s just the woods themselves, recovering nicely now, some 90 years after the lumber men came through and did their damage.

We often stop here for a break when we’re biking up in this part of the woods.

We can remember one time many years ago, when we were having a particularly bad day at work, we just walked out of the office, got in the car, and drove an hour to this spot, sat on a picnic table and just chilled for a while. Then we got into the car and drove back to the office, now better able to cope with the stresses of the day.

No one dared ask where we’d been for three hours.

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Forbes #504
Added 19 November 2008

Another picture taken in the woods at the summit of the Laurel Ridge in the Forbes State Forest. This is Weaver Road, which snakes through the woods providing maintenance access to a couple of microwave relay towers that are on the summit.

In the direction in which we’re facing, Weaver Road is eventually gated, preventing unauthorized vehicle access. From that point on, it becomes a trail until it finally peters out deep in the forest. It used to go all the way back down the mountainside into Rector, but the line on the map eventually becomes dotted, and then ultimately disappears from the map. This is borne out in reality. After reaching a fork about 3 miles from this spot, the road slowly merges with the forest. And that’s true of both forks in the road.

After passing the microwave towers, and before encountering the gate, there is a huge blackberry thicket along the road which becomes full of blackberries in August.

Weaver Road, from the intersection with Hickory Flats Road on the Laurel Summit, Forbes State Forest, Westmoreland County, PA

We haven’t seen such an abundance of blackberries since we were kids and used to pick berries along the railroad tracks near our home.

And further down, past the blackberries, there are tons of huckleberries in the ditches along the sides of the road that ripen in September. These are nothing like the blueberries that you find in stores, or even like the berries that we grow on the cultivated bush that we have in our garden.

No, these are tiny huckleberries, bitter-sweet, and bursting with that unmistakable, earthy flavor that the cultivated varieties can only dream of.

Weaver Road is a late summer berry lover’s dream.

Of course, by the time this picture was taken, the dream itself was a dream.

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Great Allegheny Passage #2668
Added 05 November 2008

The Great Allegheny Passage is the bike/hiking rails-to-trail that currently runs unbroken from McKeesport to Washington, DC. Recently, a major victory in closing the missing link to Pittsburgh was achieved when the owners of the Sandcastle water park, that citadel of trailer-park-trash entertainment, agreed in principle to allow the trail to traverse their property.

We get to the trail by bike by taking a long, circuitous route that takes us through Braddock, North Versailles, and finally McKeesport. Sometimes, we just bag that difficult, traffic-choked bike trip and rack up the bike and drive to the tiny community of Boston, Pa, a couple of miles south of McKeesport, where there is a trailhead.

The Passage is the cream of the crop of all of the local trails. All of the towns along the trail, big and small, have various facilities for trail users, from stores and restaurants, to restrooms and camping. Most of the trail from Boston follows the course of the Yougiougheny river, and affords some breathtaking vistas of this quiet, mirror-like stream.

Well, maybe we’re engaging in a bit of hyperbole when we say, “breathtaking”, but the views are nice, and if you bike the way we do, working up a good spin so that you can get a nice speed going, you can be panting when you see them.

This particular photo was taken at milepost 25 (from downtown Pittsburgh), at a rest stop at an old cemetery, that has restrooms (which you can see in the pic), and camping facilities right along the river, complete with fire rings and level pads for pitching a tent. That’s our bike in the picture.

Great Allegheny Passage - Rest area at milepost 25, at the site of the Dravo cemetary.

You can see the main part of the trail to the extreme right in the photo. It’s a great spot, very quiet, very peaceful, with the high bluffs looming above. The fact that this is within direct biking distance of our home (it’s about 19 miles from Tofu Towers, and we’ve made this very trip in the past), makes it all the more special.

One of the reasons we love this trail is because of its transitions between long stretches deep in the woods, with the serene river at our side, punctuated by visits to former coal towns, whose company houses, recognizable underneath vinyl siding, new roofs, modern windows and other modifications, remind us of our own upbringing in the tiny coal-patch town of Yatesboro.

We have already started working out the logistics of making a bike trip from our home all the way to Washington, DC, which we hope to pull off in the next year or two. We’ve decided that we are going to do sections of the trail next summer as day trips, using the car of course, all the way to DC, so that we can familiarize ourselves with the trail and the facilities along the way. Once we’ve worked out the details, and have upgraded our camping equipment, we plan to take sufficient vacation time to make the trip.

We’ll be 57 in the spring of 2009, so there’s no time to lose.

This picture is the first one to be published on OMT less then 24 hours after it was taken. Not that there’s anything particularly special about that, but we thought you might be interested in knowing.

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Ligonier #0143
Added 30 October 2008

Darlington/Rector Road is not a road that we bike on, because it’s not a terribly interesting road for biking, per se, but it’s a beautiful stretch of road, and it’s on our way to the Linn Run corridor, which is one of our favorite biking places.

Ordinarily, we turn right off of PA 711 onto Darlington/Rector Road, and we park our car in the village of Rector, and bike from there. But this particular picture is on a stretch from which we turn left from 711.

Darlington/Rector Road, off PA 711, about three miles south of Ligonier, Westmoreland County, PA

The trees line both sides of the road, much as they do along PA 381 in the nearby Rolling Rock Farms, but this stretch has much more mature trees, and they turn a beautiful mix of colors in the fall. We have tons of pictures from along this stretch at various times of the year.

This one in particular was taken about eight years ago, well after peak color, when the leaves have already started to fall. Even so, its fall beauty is still evident. We were looking for a post-peak picture that represented the October/November transition, and this one fit the bill rather neatly.

We took this picture with our old camera, so the quality isn’t the best. But we stopped here on our way home from having a great day biking in the mountains, and so for us, the quality doesn’t matter so much, because we can still see with our mind’s eye all of the missing pieces. Still, we hope that you will be able to glean at least a suggestion of what we experienced that day. We remember it being colder that day than it looks in the picture, but there’s nothing like biking in the mountains on a cool fall day and then coming home and having a nice warm supper. We’re hoping that we can get up there some weekend in November and spend another day in the woods before the hunters come out.

Guys with guns in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania are not something that an Obama supporter like OMT is terribly interested in running in to in the middle of the woods.

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Linn Run Road #100_0806
Added 18 October 2008

Linn Run State Park, and the adjacent tract of the Forbes State Forest, an area that straddles Westmoreland and Somerset counties in the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania, is one of our favorite biking areas. Located just an hour away from Pittsburgh via the Pennsylvania Turnpike, we can get there quickly, bike in the woods all day, and at the end of the day when we’re tired and not in the mood for a long, difficult drive, we can be back at home in no time.

Linn Run Road, approaching the summit of the Laurel Ridge, Forbes State Forest, Westmoreland County PA

The contrast of this with Cook Forest is one of the reasons why up until this past week, it had been over three years since we’d biked along the Clarion River.

Linn Run Road starts at the bottom of the ridge in the village of Rector, PA, where we park our car. We then bike the entire length of the road, which is a little over 7 miles, but which has an increase in elevation over that course by about 1200 feet. The road follows Linn Run, a tiny but beautiful trout stream that starts up in the ridge, and eventually flows into the Loyalhanna Creek, near the famous Rolling Rock Farms.

It’s a beautiful ride at any time of the year, but especially in the fall. Most bikers drive their cars to the top before unloading their bikes to explore the trails up there, like Beam Run Road and the others, but we prefer making the entire trip ourselves, not just for the workout, but also because it really is one of the great underrated rides in the region.

Intersection of the PW&S Railroad Grade and Beam Run Road, on the Laurel Summit, Forbes State Forest, Somerset County, PA

Linn Run Road follows the course of the old Pittsburgh, Westmoreland and Somerset Railroad grade, long since gone, which about 100 years ago literally hauled the entire forest out for lumbering. The forest we enjoy is second growth, now about 90 years old. The entire region had been clearcut, and the Commonwealth took title to the devastated area around 1910, and turned the region into one of the main tracts of the Forbes State Forest, although at that time the idea of “forest” required a leap of the imagination.

James Thurber once called his home in Cornwall, Connecticut, “the great good place”. This area, with its quiet beauty, is ours.
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Beam Run Road #100_0922
Added 04 October 2008

Beam Run Road is a gated road that runs along the Laurel Ridge, meandering back and forth across the border between Westmoreland and Somerset counties. Closed to traffic, except for occasional vehicles accessing gas wells, and state forest maintenance vehicles, the approximately 12 miles of Beam Run road is primarily used as a biking and equestrian trail.

Beam Run Road, north of Rector-Edie Road, Forbes State Forest, Somerset County, PA

Its conditions range from the rather sublime, as in this photograph, to deeply rutted areas, and extremely steep grades. The little directional signs that you will find at intersections rate this as a “Mountan Bike Expert” class trail, and, while that is certainly true some sections, there are long stretches like this one that are less challenging. One of the unfortunate things about using photos in a blog header is that you have to crop them. In this particular case, we were quite disappointed with the final cropped version, because so much of the sky was lost. The sky was quite spectacular on the day we took this picture, a sense of which you can get from this full version of it.

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Stone House #19
Added 20 September 2008

This picture is an exception in that it wasn’t taken on a bike trip. It’s along State Route 85, between Kittanning and Yatesboro, in the village of Stone House. In fact, this is the very spot where the old Stone House Inn was located, the ruins of which I can remember.

Site of old stone inn, East of Kittanning, west of Yatesboro, Armstrong County, PA

The site was cleared away in the early 1960s, and now there is a rather unremarkable looking house on the location. But some of the features from the inn still remain. For example, the stone sluice from the old mill that was behind the inn is still there, and still ports water down to the creek below. There’s a sharp drop-off behind the tree where where the sluice is, which you can see in the second, “bonus” photograph. Although filled with leaves, there is still water flowing through it, which is piped under the road, before it eventually reaches the Cowanshannock Creek, behind us as we view this scene.

Site of old stone inn, showing sluice from the old grist mill, Armstrong County, PA

This tree was around when the inn was there, and apart from the sluice, is one of the last features on the site that dates from that time. Most years, the tree turns rather disappointingly drab in the fall, but every so often when conditions are right, it can be truly spectacular, as it is in this photograph. We drove up past the tree this fall, and it was unfortunately having one if its drab years, with its leaves a less-than-impressive yellowish-brown. It leaves one to wonder about the different conditions that can produce such different results.

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River Road #19
Added 01 September 2008

This photo was taken on River Road, along the Clarion River, between Millstone and Belltown in Elk County, about 100 miles north of Pittsburgh. About 10 years ago, they improved the old dirt road with tar and chips, which has made this run much more pleasant than it used to be.

River Road, approaching Belltown, Allegheny National Forest, Elk County, PA

In wet weather, especially in the spring, the road was susceptible to ruts, to say nothing of the mud, so the arrival of tar and chips has been a godsend, and has completely transformed this trip. Now, the complete 24-mile length of River Road is either asphalt or tar and chips all the way from the Cook Forest ranger station to its end about a mile past Hallton. It’s a beautiful ride, especially in the fall, and it’s not terribly challenging either. And, once you get outside of the state park, traffic is minimal. Some weekdays I’ve made the run and haven’t seen a car for over 20 miles.

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