Quarry Exploring

Charlotte, Abby, and I spent three hours this Sunday afternoon sneaking around the limestone quarry near our house and hiking the mountains behind it.  It. Was. Glorious.  I hadn't been on a good hike since coming home, and I think my soul was just aching to go exploring.  (Note to self: we all need play time.)

The quarry itself is dilapidated and beautiful; full of crooked, sagging rooftops covered in thick layers of white dust; twisted pipes and electrical wires trailing like rust-colored jungle vines; windows with missing panes.  Due to running machinery we couldn't actually explore up close, so we settled for climbing around on the old train and inventing stories about groups of runaways living in the quarry (because it looks like the perfect place for such things).

Before the climb

After that, we trail-blazed up the side of the mountain and found a bunch of secluded cow pastures.  (Why there are cow pastures up there, I have no idea, but they are lovely.  It’s like another world.  I wish I had pictures, but thanks to sky-high weeds and unsteady ground Char couldn't whip out her camera.)  Finding an actual path up the mountain proved trickier than expected, involving a detour directly through a patch of scruffy bushes, into a creek, and across the train tracks before we finally found a gravel road leading onward and upward.  From here, the hike got very messy.  We scrabbled up the incline, knocking stones loose, grabbing for sturdy looking branches, and yelling “Rock!” whenever we dislodged a sizable object with potential to knock out the person below (there were quite a few of those, and usually the person yelling only did so after the rock had already bounced off someone’s knee or shoulder – there was a lot of yelling all around).  By the time the three of us reached the top, the incline was too steep to let go of anything.  Abby and I hung onto flimsy-looking tree branches while Charlotte looked for a place in the brush to climb through.

    

“There’s barbed wire up here!” she called, to which the reply came, “Well, figure out how to climb through it!  We’re NOT going back down!”  The barbed wire turned out to be nothing more some rusty metal fencing, so we shoved over it and plunged into what looked like a mess of dense, wiry bushes.  Unfortunately we found ourselves in the middle of a thorn patch.  A minute or so of yelping, ripping, and squealing and everyone was free, though not without a few cries of “I’m bleeding!” and “There are thorns in my underwear!” 

Then we were through.  The pastures stretched ahead of us, tantalizingly separated from our strip of wildflowers and weeds by a singing electric fence, long sunlit grasses melting into the shadows of the mountain beyond it.  A few black cows dotted the hills.  We marched through the thick weeds along the fence, suddenly transformed into dirty, sweaty, thoroughly bedraggled British explorers (with terrible accents):

“Hullo!  I daresay we’ve stumbled upon Welsh countryside!”

“No, I think it’s the Amazon.”

“Nonsense, it’s most assuredly Wales.”

“The Amazon!”

“WALES!”

There’s something intoxicating about the thrill that comes from being almost (but not quite) lost.  We plowed on for maybe half a mile, stepping into rabbit holes, jumping over miniature creeks, and tangling in spiders webs until we decided it might be a good idea to figure out how we were going to get down again.  Abby found a promising spot where the bushes thinned a little, and we decided to go for it.  Alas, MORE thorns.  Lots of them.  Story of our lives, I guess.  We got about five feet into the bushes and found ourselves completely surrounded by prickly things.  Charlotte got stuck and Abby slipped on a thorn patch right in front of me (after she got free, I of course fell into the same patch).  Much wild giggling ensued.  I concentrated on freeing my shorts from all the thorns, ignoring Char’s shouts of “Blood!  Blood!  BLOOD!” which kept increasing in volume.  FINALLY, somehow, we both tugged ourselves free and half-ran, half-fell the rest of the way down the bank to where Abby was waiting below on solid ground.  Charlotte was, in fact, bleeding and not just being overly dramatic (I took pictures as evidence). 

 The rest of the days adventures included splashing around in giant quarry puddles, throwing mud at each other, and getting stuck in various thorn patches.  (Come on, it hasn't been a REALLY good adventure until you've gotten a few scratches and some thorns in your underwear.  Seriously people...)  We arrived home three hours later, scraped, a little bloody, covered in mud and prickles, and quite happy.  

Dear reader, if you ever find yourself in Bellefonte and are looking for an excellent hike, go check out this quarry.  So much fun.