This is going to take too long – and I really don’t have the time – but these memories are just the sorts of things that I’ll need. I’m just dashing this off, so you’ll have to forgive me for the state it is in. I doubt I’ll get around to rewriting it.
Our all-too-brief trip to Pennypack Creek Park is detailed after the break. Don’t bother if you don’t have the time. Meanwhile, here’s the tale of a gator they found there not too long ago.
Aly made the decision to go to Pennypack Creek Park. We just bought a bike seat and spent the morning trying to get Julia into it. By the time we rode a test mile at the track next door, we were just exhausted by the prospect of hauling the bikes onto the back of the car. Besides, my back tire was looking a little low. Too much time rotting in the garage. Monika’s belated birthday bash in Ft. Washington was postponed due to pending rain, so we opted for a quick hike someplace nearby.
Aly had been to Pennypack before with Julia’s playgroup friends, Esther and Charlotte. And for all the time that I lived around here, I’m somewhat amazed, somewhat horrified that I have never been here before. I have lived here all my life, after all.
As far as parks go, there’s not much to it. No manicured lawns, statuary or fountains. Just land. Old farmland, a creek and assorted paths. Some used to be rail lines, some farm lanes. The macadam paths are just old asphalt roads left in sort of a half-state of decomposition. In the middle there’s an old stone bridge that takes you through the path that was once Paper Mill Road and is now Paper Mill Road Trail.
After missing the entrance twice, we finally pulled along the side of the road where the park – or at least part of it – begins at the end of Creek Road. This is the suburban version of the park, a small slice upstream from Philadelphia’s Pennypack Creek Park, part of the Fairmount system.
The day before, I had given in to temptation and gotten Julia a set of plastic Mickey Mouse Clubhouse figures. We had lost – or at least we thought we lost until Julia found it under the front passenger seat of our car Sunday morning – the French Pluto, a beret-bearing pup from a used toy store in Glenside. It was part of some EPCOT-themed Happy Meal collection, and ended up in a quarter bin.
They’re all there in this new set – Mickey, Donald, Pluto, etc. – and they’re all her friends. They’re all also in proper proportion — size-wise — to each other, a trait that I always looked for in toys as a kid and which my daughter generally lacks. It made her happy, and that alone is worth the pain of rolling over Goofy in the middle of the night.
She was smiling as I lifted her out of the back of the car, which in turn generated oohs of appreciation from an older couple just leaving the park. That’s the sort of moment I live for now.
We got to the gate and I read the Park rules sign to Julia, in Daddy Authority voice, which she followed along with a concerned nod at each line. She knew the word gate, which amazed me a bit. She probably sees a gate every day, but this was a long, thin road-crossing tubular metal gate and not the tall, solid wooden gate at the playground.
We all held hands as we the path went down the hill to meet the creek, Julia opened her mouth and gave a nice, steady buh-buh noise as we bounded down. She kept it up as the trail leveled, because now it was funny, although she had to fake the bouncing step noise.
We saw a bird watcher wearing a funny little harness for his binoculars and, as a he came up from the creek, we stepped aside as he passed rather than force him to play an awkward game of catch up and pass.
When we came to Paper Mill Road (Trail) we turned right onto the bridge and caught up to the birdwatcher. While Aly attempted to call some ducks back upstream, the birdwatcher called Julia and me over to look at the fish swimming in the shadow of the bridge.
I don’t know if Julia saw them, but she played along. Since Aly had no luck in getting ducks to eat pretzel rods, we all followed the road a bit up a hill before we realized it would take us out of the park. On the way down Julia made a game of kicking a chestnut downhill ahead of us, commanding us to stop as she kicked it and to go as she followed after. Before long, she’d kicked it off the side of the pathway, losing it in the weeds.
She didn’t seem to mind and was just happy to climb back on my shoulders.
It was drizzling bit when we made it back to the intersection of Creek and Paper Mill, but we decided to turn right and walk a bit further. We got all the way over to where Creek crossed Huntingdon Road before we decided to turn back, which is just as well since it really began to rain in earnest.
We hustled to the relative safety of the woods and managed to make it back of the car without getting completely drenched, Julia on my shoulders the whole time. I was carrying the pack and the toddler, yet Aly still found it necessary to point out that I was getting winded as we double-timed it up the hill.
I forgave her and gave her a kiss before putting Julia into the car. I get a chill just thinking of the cold rain hitting me in the back as I leaned over to strap Julia into her seat. Her friends all accounted for, we made our way over to visit (big) Julia and (baby) Charlotte.