| Just a couple of miles north of where we were staying is Bushkill Falls. These are described as the 'Niagara of Pennsylvania'.
Either whoever wrote the description has never been to Niagara or
Pennsylvania is hard up for waterfalls. They do have a small tourist display
of the Lenape (Delaware) Indians showing a bark longhouse and a few
descriptions but nothing of real hstorical interest. |  |
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The display of local wildlife is better, with a reasonable display of
mammals and birds. These are the local deer (probably whitetail). We have
seen them but not where there are so many people. |
| The foxes are more shy and I'm not sure what was up
the tree. It seems a bit large for the ubiquitous groundhog. |  |
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There is a collection of the larger birds, mainly waterfowl. There is still
a lot of water here. |
| We have even seen wild turkey roaming the woods and
heathland. They usually look a lot scrawnier than this one. |  |
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We haven't seen snowshoe hares with their enormous feet but I have no doubt
they are here in abundance. |
| The Falls area is privately owned and they charge $9
for access. However it is an extensive area with several well maintained
paths and walkways and hundreds of wooden steps. The shortest viewing route
is about 0.3 mile and the longest probably 3 miles. The latter is definitely
for serious hikers! We did most of that route. |  |
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There are several falls ranging from a few feet to 50ft. This is the first
principle fall you can see from all the walkway routes. |
| If you get the right position then they can be quite
spectacular. There is a wooden walkway all along the canyon rim so you can
see the falls from a range of angles. |  |
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.We wandered on down the canyon looking for the lower falls. Despite the
number of tourists it was quite peaceful with the sun filtering through the
trees. |
| The pathway does get quite steep, rough and ill
defined as we leave the river to make our way up to the Bridal Falls. |  |
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The name may be what leads to the comparison with Niagara. They are pretty
falls but the name is really the only link. |
| .But there is something soothing about waterfalls this
size rather than awe at the sheer power in its namesake. |  |
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There are good opportunities for photos and many were being taken. |
| We carried on to the most distant falls climbing over
400 steps on the way. |  |
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The walkways are quite impressive but very steep. There were some pretty
tired looking people we saw along the way. They reckon about 2.5 hours for
the full trip. We took just under an hour to do most of the route and
we didn't hurry. |
| There is a view of the Delaware Valley from the top.
The main Delaware River runs left to right from here. It is the boundary
between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. |  |
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Along the way we noticed many of the net-like bags created by a local insect
pest known as a bagworm. They seem to be particularly bad this year. |
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