A Surprise!

No, the title of this post is not referring to the fact that I am actually posting on this blog, although that is probably a surprise too!
It's referring to a surprise that I had yesterday.
I had heard something being mentioned yesterday morning when we were eating breakfast about something in the afternoon. Later on, I asked Mom what that was about and she asked me if I wanted to know or if I just wanted to wait and find out. For some reason, I said I would wait. When we left, I still didn't know what we were doing. Actually, we didn't go all that far from home (about 3.5 miles), but it was still neat.
We went to the Locust Campground where they have a boat that they use to take people on rides on a restored section of the Juniata Division of the old Pennsylvania Canal.
Here are some pictures from our ride.
Click here to see the pictures that Dad posted from our ride.
This is my ticket for the ride.
Here are a couple pictures of the boat that we rode on the canal.

This is our Captain for the ride - Mr. Dave Knox.

Here he is giving us a little bit of the history of this part of the canal before we get started.

Mr. Knox left several of the children that were on the ride take turns driving the boat. This is Noah. Mr. Knox figured he had experience driving a boat and asked if he brought two of each animal on board!

We even had a sing-along time on our ride! There were songs like "I've Been Workin' On The Railroad," "She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain," and others.

This is a picture taken from near the bottom of the second biggest tree in Pennsylvania. It measures 9 feet in diameter and 27 feet around. It is a Sycamore tree - actually better known around here as a Buttonwood.

The Indians would wet the bark from this tree, place rocks on it to flatten it, then use it for their writing "paper."

"Captain Knox" gave us some history not only about the canal but also about how his family came to be the owners of the land that this part of the canal is on. It was very interesting.

This is a scene down the canal from the front of the boat.

This is what they call "the lake." It was at places like this that the canal boats would tie up for the winter. The livestock would be taken to a local farm.

Here is a scene back up the canal from the dock.

Thanks For Dropping In!