A Tale of Two Trails....

Hershey, PA.     High: 76.  Low: 51

Sparky LOVES to ride her bike, especially on rails to trails...they are USUALLY level, have a good surface for riding and have beautiful scenery. She has been very lucky so far, with trails at many of the campgrounds we have stayed at. This week we are in Lebanon,  Pennsylvania at the Hershey Thousand Trails RV park. There are several bike trails in the area. Check out this website to see what they are: https://www.traillink.com/city/lebanon-pa-trails/

Sparky has ridden the Lebanon Valley Rails to Trails three times now, and here is what she thinks....First, the closest trailhead to the Hershey campground is about ten minutes or less from the campground. It is #4, the Colebrook Trailhead. Sparky got on here, and rode 20 miles total one day, heading north, ten miles each way. The trail was beautiful, plenty of benches along the way, perhaps the most she's ever seen on a trail so far. Surface was crushed gravel and level for the most part. There is a very rough section where the trail is shared with a few residences as part of their access to their homes. That part is rough and narrow. However, most of the section of the trail from the #4 trailhead to Lebanon, about 8th-12th street is level and paved. It's shady most of the way, there are a couple of bridges along the way, and what a wonderful time of year-fall-to ride the trail. The tree colors are fabulous!

The second time she rode the southern portion of the trail. Leaving at the same #4 trailhead, the Lebanon Valley Trail shortly turns into the Conwego Rails to Trails, (at the Lancaster County border line) and then becomes a lot rougher trail. The trail needs to be graded, and where the surface has worn thru to the substrata below, it's big, chunky gravel in spots both on the left and right sides. Sparky likes to ride Eldo's Trek bike, which has a shock absorption suspension fork on it, for these kind of trails. All the same, it was a bone jarring ride for over 50% of this trail. Sparky cut it short after about 18 miles, as the Conwego Trail dead ends at SR240. 

The trail gets good reviews, and nobody is complaining about the surface eroding, but this 70 year old body definitely felt the irregularity of the surface on this particular section of the trail!

We are really enjoying our stay at the Hershey Thousand Trails RV Park. They have a lot of fun activities for the Halloween month of October. There is a pumpkin decorating contest this weekend, a decorate your site contest, (right up Sparky's alley, but she's trying to conserve money at the moment for Christmas ideas and gifts), a costume contest, and a Halloween carnival. Halloween is a really big deal for campgrounds and RVers. The campground is FULL this weekend and all campgrounds in the area are full for the weekends during the month of October. 

Some non-Halloween activities are gentle stretch yoga every morning at 9:00, (Sparky really should go to that one!) pickle ball, nice tennis courts, volleyball, mini golf, and root beer floats. (Eldo should really go to that one! He's the ice cream nut in the family. 

Lebanon is a good sized town, about 20 minutes from the campground,   and has everything you need, Joann's, Hobby Lobby, and Michael's. Haha...That's everything Sparky needs besides the bike trails. It also has a First Watch, one of Sparky's faves for breakfast, and a Friendly's, one of Eldo's favorites for ice cream treats. Hershey is about 20-25 minutes from the campground. 

There is of course the Hershey chocolate factory tour and a museum as well, if you want to get your chocolate fix. We did the "make your own chocolate bar" factory tour years ago, and Covid has lots of restrictions on these kinds of things, so we didn't do that this time.

One thing we ARE enjoying is the beautiful rides around the countryside to get to Lebanon and Hershey. You don't travel through town after town, stoplight after stoplight to get to these places, you are driving beautiful country roads with beautiful Pennsylvania stone and timber barns and countryside farms. It's wonderful.....

That's it for now...see you later!