This was a rainy day, going from Confluence to West Newton, PA. A total of ~53 miles. We were hoping that the rain would stop by around 9, but it didn’t so we decided to press ahead! At least it was warm and raining, not cold and raining. About 40 miles into it it stopped, but started to get colder. I stopped at “The Ruins” about 10 miles from our destination campsite in West Newton and got a tour of the site. Very interesting. A lady artist purchased the place, it was originally a coal mining site. Her expertise is mosaics. She converted the office to a house, built an artist studio, and then started putting her mosaics up in the old ruins of the coal mine, inviting fellow local artists and international artists to do the same. The lady who gave the tour was very knowledgeable about the coal mining effort in this area. All along what is now the Great Allegheny passage, were coal mines with very good quality coal. Most of it was used to make coke for the Pittsburgh steel factories. They would mine it here, ship it by rail to Connellsville to convert into coke, then back to Pittsburgh to make steel. The rail line that ran along what is now the bike trail from Pittsburgh to Cumberland was operated by the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie rail line and there were as many as four tracks running along. The lady was saying that it took 5 tons of coal to make 3 tons of coke, the rest going into the air. There were over 40,000 coke ovens in this area. Apparently the soot was so bad people would need to wipe down their walls in their houses every week, and do their wash on Mondays, the day after Sunday when the coal ovens were not operating. So much for the good ol’ days. The campsite at West Newton was very nice. The Gap Trail Campground caters to bikers like us. They had a bike wash, good hot showers, a nice covered meeting area for doing all our cooking and socializing, and nice grassy area alongside the river for pitching our tents. Everyone was quite cold, it had dropped into the 50s and going down to 39 in the evening. But after hot showers and bundling up in our winter clothes, and after a great spaghetti meal, we were all in fine spirits! The evening sleep was interupted with the occasional train going through (the tracks were right on the other side of the river) and a midnight fire alarm siren that went off, sounding like it was right next to my tent. My God, it was sooooo loud you would think it could be heard from 50 miles away! Apparently the volunteer firemen don’t live close to town! Anyway, I managed to get a pretty good nights sleep amazingly enough. I guess biking all day will do that to you.
Here are the RidewithGPS stats.
Biking across the USA with Mike 
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