Walk in the Wissahickon Valley Park

After taking Dan back to college after the Labor Day weekend I stopped over at a park near the college. The park is called Wissahickon Valley park and winds along the Wissahickon River (or creek) for about 5 miles until it meets the Schuykill River that flows through Philadelphia before joining the Delaware River.

One of the interesting sites within the first part of the park is this covered bridge which was the only one left from the 1800's. I read the plaque about the bridge and it indicated the covering protected the wooden bridge timbers providing for longer life of the bridge. I had always thought the reason was to protect the wagon shipments from rainfall in the passage from fields to market. I'll have to verify this conflicting information.

This view is the end view from below. The walk through the covered bridge was as I had seen in movies or on TV with the interior being very gloomy. There was also quite an interesting build-up of stonework approaching the bridge and keeping the river within the banks at this juncture. Maybe this was also to protect the investment in the bridge from weathering elements including high water and floods. The plaque indicated that this particular bridge joined industries on both sides of the river when Chestnut Hill was a thriving community in the eighteen hundreds.

While I was investigating I saw this fisherman fishing for trout at the spillway of a small waterfall that was directly upstream of the bridge. While I was there he pulled 3 small trout from the river fishing catch and release style. He indicated he was fishing with minnows although I had always heard that trout liked kernel corn the best. While I was there he must have run out of minnows because he broke open a can of corn on the big rock he is standing on. Another interesting thing he told me is that he has best luck fishing in the spillway of the waterfall due to the better oxygenation of the water. He thought trout like that over the warmer water that I am sure holds less oxygen. I think it may be a better place to ambush food coming down the waterfall and spilling into a constricted area. Maybe both aspects come into play to make this a good fishing spot.

This final view is from the downstream vantage looking back up at the covered bridge with the waterfall barely seen beyond as the patch of white foam directly beneath the bridge. My little cell phone camera doesn't do justice to the bright blue sky, the green vegetation, and the brightly red paint of the bridge. In all, the short visit to the Wissahickon River Park was lots of fun and there is much more to explore since I only covered about .5 linear miles of the 6 miles of river.