The Lost Weekend -- Part One (Chocolatetown)

Not much blogging this weekend. Real life intruded.

I spent most of one day bushwacking up at our place in the mountains. The weather's been cool and mostly clear -- an ideal time for cutting out underbrush. It's a constant battle. If you don't stay on it the forest will slowly, but surely, overwhelm everything. So, it's death to bushes, vines, seedlings and shoots. Nice workout, but I'm still feeling it in my arms.

Fall has turned ugly. Just a couple of weeks ago the trees were gorgeous, with vibrant bright colors. Now, up in the mountains the they are mostly bare -- gray and dull brown punctuated by dark evergreens. When the sky is overcast, as it often is this season, the effect is just plain ugly. Soon all the leaves will be down and it will be time to clear them up. A lawn service guy will take care of most of it, but I want to get the brush cut out before he comes. Ah, the endess joys of home ownership.

"She Who Must Not Be Named" and I drove down to Hershey with some friends for dinner. Of course, with Christmas season coming up, we stopped by "Chocolate World" at Hersheypark to pick up this and that at the store there. After seemingly interminable browsing through the candy racks we left with several pounds of chocolate. Then on to the village of Union Deposit and Union Canal House for dinner.

It's an old inn dating from the middle of the eighteenth century that had its heyday during the first half of the nineteenth when it served traffic on the Union Canal, from which it now takes its name.

The Union Canal was part of a vast system of canals constructed in the US from the late eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth. The purpose was to link the commercial cities of the eastern seaboard with the rich interior of the continent. There was intense competition among the major cities, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, to be the first to linke to what was then called the "Northwest" -- today the Midwest. Of course, New York won that race with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825.

Pennsylvania's entry into the race was the "Main Line," designed to link Philadelphia with Pittsburgh and the Ohio valley. The Union Canal was an important element in that system, linking the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna rivers. The Main Line was never really competitive with the Erie for the simple fact that Pennsylvania had no water route through the Appalachian Mountains. What emerged was a system of local canals and rivers linked together in the middle of the state by the Allegheny Portage Railroad. The whole system was cumbersome and was soon replaced by railroads. The canals, however, did for a couple of decades provide significant economic stimulus to agricultural communities in central and eastern Pennsylvania. The village and inn evoke that marvelous era.

It was a pleasant evening -- good friends, good conversation, and well-prepared unpretentious food. Then home and to bed without any blogging. Aaaaah!

You know, blogging is fun, but I really should try to engage the real world more often.