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Programs for the Week of Sept. 29 at Hyner Run NORTH BEND — Join the park naturalist at Hyner Run State Park, 86 Hyner Park Road, North Bend, on Saturday, Oct. 5, at 2 p.m., to learn about the different “PA Snakes.” Topics will include the myths that have come up, diets, habitat and more. Meet at the amphitheater by the pool. Please bring a lawn chair. All children must be accompanied by an adult in order to participate in the park programs. Programs may be modified or canceled in the event of severe weather or new state or community guidelines. Programs for the Week at ...

Aging and ailing, ‘Message Tree’ at Woodstock concert site is reluctantly cut down

Masses of people at the 1969 Woodstock festival stopped by the towering red maple tree a little ways off from the main stage. Many scrawled messages on paper scraps or cardboard and attached them to the old tree’s trunk. “SUSAN, MEET YOU HERE SATURDAY 11 A.M., 3 P.M. or 7 P.M.,” read one note left on what later became known as the Message Tree. In another, Candi Cohen was told to meet the girls back at the hotel. Dan wrote on a paper plate to Cindy (with the black hair & sister) that he was sorry he was “too untogether” to ask for her address, but left his ...

Gated roads opened for deer season in Sproul State Forest

RENOVO — The Sproul State Forest will open some seasonally gated roads to provide additional motorized vehicle access to portions of the Sproul State Forest. With these additions, there are over 500 miles of roads on the Sproul State Forest open for vehicular access by deer hunters. Each fall we open roads that are normally gated, offering hunters greater preseason scouting and hunting opportunities. Opening some of the roads that are typically closed, through the remainder of the year, also points to areas that have an abundance of deer. These roads will remain open depending on ...

Shore’s Dave Rothrock gave fly fishing lessons at Trout Run Park

Dave Rothrock can toss line from a fly rod some 100 feet or even longer by employing a double-haul cast. Used to reach farther distances on a stream to waiting fish, the double haul is not a cast that Rothrock teaches to novice fly-fishers. The Jersey Shore resident who has taught fly-casting and guided anglers and has more than 50 years of experience stalking trout, would rather teach them the very basics of getting a fly on the water first. Recently, he gave a quick lesson to Mike Hill, of Farragut, where they were set up on a grassy area of Trout Run Park. Within 10 minutes, Hill ...

It’s almost deer season in Pa.: Game commission offers tips, info about upcoming year

It’s probably safe to say that most people, given the chance to trade their cell phone for a landline, swap out their vehicle for a horse and buggy, or replace their washing machine with a bucket, a bar of rough homemade soap and a 100-yard walk to the nearest river, would opt to keep their modern conveniences. Tools offering efficiency, ease and comfort are hard to forgo. There are exceptions, though. Bowhunters — who represent one of every two deer hunters in Pennsylvania overall — each year willingly go afield with stick and string, albeit often modernized, finding ...

A bag of Cheetos created a huge impact on a national park ecosystem

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A bag of Cheetos gets dropped and left on the floor. Seems inconsequential, right? Hardly. Rangers at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southern New Mexico describe it as a “world-changing” event for the tiny microbes and insects that call this specialized subterranean environment home. The bag could have been there a day or two or maybe just hours, but those salty morsels of processed corn made soft by thick humidity triggered the growth of mold on the cavern floor and on nearby cave formations. “To the ecosystem of the cave it had a huge ...