PA Biking Day 3 - Mount Gretna

While today’s ride was up to Mount Gretna, the highlight of the ride for me was biking through part of the nearly 6000 acre Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area. The massive size of the wildlife management area and its partial emphasis on grasslands have created the expansive and beautiful vista pictured above. As we bicycled through, we essentially had the place to ourselves.

As on Day 2, we started the day by driving from our hotel. Today’s start was at Roland Memorial Park in Akron PA, about a 30 minute drive north from our hotel. Early on we rode through yet another covered bridge.

And again, we were soon in corn fields.

The roads were generally very quiet, somewhat rolling, and surrounded by farmland.

As I mentioned above, I found the wildlife management area simply beautiful.

While corn and soybeans seemed to be the primary crops we saw, following the wildlife management area, we did cycle next to this lovely sunflower field.

While most of the farms we passed were traditional wood buildings often painted red or white, occasionally we would go by something a bit different such as this stone farmhouse. The second building to the right has exterior doors on each of the floors at the centerline of the building’s end suggesting that it was a hay barn years ago.

As we passed through one small town, it was clear that this household loves Halloween. While I dislike seeing Christmas decorations up a month and a half before Christmas, I was absolutely fine with the Halloween decorations.

Part of our ride was on a nice bike trail which was paved in parts and gravel in other areas.

There is a small vacation community that we reached on Mount Gretna, but I did not take any photographs. The roads in that area were quite steep with some of the grades well over 10%. After going up, we were going down, neither situation being ideal for taking pictures. We ended the day cycling through two of the covered bridges we rode through on Day 2.