I have photographed the wilds

My latest and greatest Indianabeer.com story has been posted. Check it out yo.

Also, do not forget about the "greatest movie ever made".

And now, on to the wilds.

The fishing trip to Pennsylvania was good. Six days of driving, fishing, hiking, and generally traipsing around central PA was exactly what I needed. My brother made a bow and arrow. It actually worked.
You can enlarge most of these pictures by clicking on them. I encourage you to do so.

Although you can't enlarge this one. It's my brother, tying flies in the car at Penn's Creek. Big March Browns were coming off the water. It was pretty cool.



This is an old train tunnel where we parked on Penn's Creek.



This is a picture of the wild brown trout that I caught in the water. It was a pretty big one. Penns Creek has probably the best population of wild brown trout in the state. It is a completely spring fed stream so it stays full and cool and the right ph all year round. This fish hit a #10 March Brown emerger my first 20 minutes on the water.




This is me holding the trout. It was probably 15 inches long. It looks really small in this picture.




When my Dad holds the same fish, it appears much larger.




This is Penn's Creek. This year we fished down from Coburn whereas last year we fished up from Weikert. We also fished for a little while at Poe Paddy, which is in the middle of the two towns, but that wasn't much fun for me because when we got to Poe Paddy I realized I had left my fly box in the woods where we were fishing near Coburn because I had fallen in the water a bit and emptied my pockets etc. and forgot to get the fly box so I had to try like 30 minutes on dirt roads over a big ridge and then hike into the woods 20 minutes to get to the spot. And my fly box was still there. Thank god. There's probably $250 worth of flies in there.




My dad also caught a nice Penns Creek wild brown trout.




This is Big Sring Creek which is just north of Penns, maybe a half hour away? It is also completely spring fed and in places the water is this really remarkable color.



These rivers are in central PA. My dad left us for Jersey and my brother and I traveled north, through Lock Haven where we found a bar with a great beer selection that reminded me a lot of Boxer's Cafe in Huntingdon where I went to college which. They even had the same glasses. It was pretty cool.

We camped at Colton Point State Park on the West Rim of the Pine Creek Canyon (aka "Pennsylvania Grand Canyon" as the tourism folks call it). This is rural PA. Very close to the New York state line. In fact, here is a google earth image to orient you.



Anyway, the forest in the northen part of PA is really great. Lots of bugs, but you just sort of learn to pace around so they have to work for it. But the Northern Hardwood forest type is just beautiful forest. Tons of beech, hemlock, some oak, couple birch species, and lots of black cherry. Although the black cherry is worth a lot of money for furniture wood so it is pretty hard hit. A couple mature trees can go for tens of thousands of dollars...or so my grandfather told me. But he would probably know. Anyway, I found this branch on the ground near our campsite and thought it was cool. It is probably from a cherry tree but maybe a sweet birch. the little cracks are lenticels, breaks in the bark where stomata used to be that supposedly are important for oxygen diffusion into the surrounding bark. ANYWAY... the lenticels here had what appear to be the fruiting bodies of some sort of fungus growing out of them. Which is cool.



There was some other cool fungus around out campsite like this really cool black jelly fungus, probably in the Exidia genus.




Then that reminded me of this other Jelly fungus I saw in the Smokies once. It's called Witches Butter and it's edible. Tremella mesenterica.




And that reminded me of this other really cool alien space ship fungus I saw once in the Smokies. I don't actually know what its name is, but "cool alien space ship fungus" sounds good to me.




Adam tying more flies in camp.



This is a picture of Slate Run.




It rained a shit ton one night. But my tent really held it together and kept me very dry. But I did have to deal with the mud. And I had to dig some channels to drain the area in front of my tent. The giant Coleman tent without sealed seams also managed to keep my brother dry (mostly).





Clivus Multrum.



Adam and Pine Creek Canyon. The leaves were just starting to leaf out up there.




A picture along Cedar Run.



The Eastern Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) was out in full force along cedar creek.




This is part of a huge pool on Cedar Run. You'd think there would be a ton of trout there but no rises whatsoever.




Rest assured that my brother did catch a ton of fish, I just don't have any good pictures of them.

Clivus.