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| I could hear Nathaniel breath a deep sigh of relief as we hit the other side. I parked and we got out and looked at what we'd accomplished, and snapped a few shots of the scene. |
| We continued up the one lane road. As we came around the bend we found
a grove of tall old oak trees, with a few more houses planted in amongst them. The road curved around some more buildings belonging to the old
factory, and then began to climb a little. Soon we passed a small yellow sign that said "Dead End", and up ahead we saw a magnificent old
oak, in front of one last house, and that was the end of the road. "Where do we go now?" I asked Nathaniel. He was the guide for this trip, I'd never been this way before. "Turn back he said, we need to find a small path between the trees that goes up to the railroad tracks." We did, and about 15 yards back, we found the small path between the trees. We got out our backpacks, and took a quick drink of water, and headed up the path. It was very steep, and slippery, covered with sand and broken shale. We scrambled up to the top, and there were the tracks. The old, rusty broken ones, and the shinier, newer ones. It had been the men working on the new tracks that had set off sparks, hammering in the spikes, that had started the brush fire a couple years back. We turned left, and headed west, back toward the factory and the houses. Nathaniel was clearly worried. He was looking for a break in the trees and brush where his class had hiked up a trail. Finally, down by the factory, we found what looked like the start of a trail. He still wasn't sure if it was the same one, but it went up, and so we took it. |
