Steps: 2,003,395 !!!
Miles: 843.71
Miles to North Carolina: 0.29
John James Audubon (April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was an American ornithologist, naturalist, hunter, and painter. He painted, catalogued, and described the birds of North America.
Snowy Heron
For a period of his life, lived in an estate called Mill Grove, which is adjacent to both the Schuylkill River and Perkiomen Creek Trails. The estate is now on the edge of a town named Audubon and is not far from the point where the Perkiomen Creek flows into the Schuylkill River.
Greater Flamingo
Audubon was born in Haiti (then called Saint Domingue) on his father's sugar plantation, the illegitimate son of Lieutenant Jean Audubon, a French naval officer (and privateer) and his mistress, Jeanne Rabin, a Spanish Creole from Louisiana.
The house at Mill Grove
Audubon's father sent him to Mill Grove to supervise the estate that included a working lead mine. In search of a horse that had escape his pasture, Audubon met his next door neighbor William Bakewell, the owner of the abundant estate "Fatland Ford", whose daughter Lucy he married five years later. Fatland Ford is now privately owned by one of the heirs of the Campbell Soup fortune. The property is also adjacent to "Walnut Hill", which some of you are familar with.
Map - MG is Mill Grove and FL is Fatland Ford - The ford is roughly where the "S" is in the "Schulkill River". The dashed lines represent where the railroads are (and used to be) with two of them now the the Schuylkill River and Perkiomen Creek Trails.
The Fatland Ford estate is named after a ford, or shallow crossing place in the Schuylkill River that is now located within the Valley Forge National Historic Park.
The British Army crossed this ford a number of times, once to burn the forge that was making war supplies for George Washington's army in the town of Valley Forge. Washington's army used the ford itself, later, when they were encamped in Valley Forge, bringing in supplies such as food and other materials from the northern towns such as Pottstown, Reading, Bethlehem, and Allentown.
Barn at Mill Grove
The Mill Grove property abuts the Perkiomen Creek and is open to the public. It has a dozen or so miles of walking trails of its own.
Source
7 comments:
Wow...I never knew all of this was down there, Iggy. Fascinating reading. Have you walked all of those walking trails, too? (love those pics)
Alice Kay - I have walked all the trails in Mill Grove except for one and some more than once. The trail I haven't walked on (yet) is a new one that connects Mill Grove with the Schuylkill River trail near Walnut Hill.
Mill Grove is a lovely spot. The lead and copper mine is still "visible", it looks like a worn hole in the ground now with a gate on it. But... you wouldn't like to see it. :)
Here is why
At the rate they are building new trails, I'll never be able to walk them all! :)
I was thinking I could list all the walking and hiking trails nearby in a blog entry, but I would probably bore y'all to tears.
*raises eyebrows and screams* BATS?????
Ohhh. James Audubon! When I lived in Louisiana I went to the N.O. Audubon zoo many times. They are one of the top ranked zoos in the country. It was one of my favorite places to go. If you went early you could do a package deal and see the Aquarium as well. What was neat about it was that you could park at one, see the sites and then take the ferry down the Mississippi River to the other, spend time there and then ride the ferry back to your start point afterwards.
2 MILLION steps! What a milestone! I love the history - all things I didn't know. We have a lot of caves in Missouri and it seems every time we go through one we encounter a bat or two. I keep watching for Batman :) Keep conquering those trails Iggy!
Such a beautiful area! And so much history, it's a wonder one could get any serious walking done around there.
Post a Comment