A Natural Place (11/29/20)

To escape the house of a few hours, we drove north about 20 miles to Bald Eagle State Park to see The Nature Inn, which is managed by a neighbor. Though we had kayaked on the reservoir many times, we had gone far enough north to see the inn, which was build 10 years ago and designed to blend ecologically into the long valley. The park and reservoir were created 50 years ago when Bald Eagle Creek between two almost perfectly parallel mountains was dammed by the Army Corp of Engineers to create the Foster Joseph Sayers Reservoir. The park is nearly 6,000 acres with the surface of the lake covering 1,700 acres. The area was a logging and iron center through the 19th century. In the 1840s the creek and feeder railroads were part of a Pennsylvania canal and rail transportation system development to counter the Erie Canal, roughly 100 miles north. The park is mecca for outdoor activities, e.g., hunting, fishing, boating, swimming. hiking, bird watching (including bald eagles).