Samuel Justus Rail Trail

Friday was perfect for a 4-mile hike along the Allegheny River up in its northern reaches.  I hadn't hiked the Samuel Justus Trail in many years.  Rail trails are not my favorite.  I don't like sharing the trail with bikes and dogs.  Also, they tend to be heavily traveled.  Rail trails run through all the places where railroads go--or went--which means they sometimes take you through the grittier, less scenic parts of cities and towns.  But, like railroads, they do often follow rivers, which is nice.  I give money to the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy because I want America to have a network of public footpaths like they have in Europe.  In the United Kingdom, you can walk pretty much anywhere.  Wanna walk from London to Edinburgh using footpaths?  It's entirely possible--though some of those footpaths take you across pastureland with some very unpleasant bulls roaming about, and they can include road-walks.  In some ways, a network of rail trails would be better. 

The Oil City trailhead is tricky to find, so I hiked from Franklin toward Oil City.  I'm not sure how it is that it's only 5.5 miles from one town to the other if you walk the trail, but by car, it's 8 miles.  The road is on the other side of the river and might be on the outside of the curve, but that wouldn't add 2.5 miles to the trip, would it?

I'd like to walk the whole thing, but my cousin told me there's no Uber or Lyft up there, so I don't know how I'd get back to my car.  Might be fun to park in Oil City, kayak downriver to Franklin, then walk the trail back to the car.  It'd take quite a while.  (A thing people in Oil City used to say: "Flush your toilets; Franklin needs water."  If you know the two towns, then you know why that's ironic.)

The Allegheny: river of my life.  I've been in nearly 30 countries and all but 6 states.  I've lived in New York, Oklahoma City, and half a decade in Africa. I speak French quite well and a smattering of other languages--just enough to get by.  But I do love knowing where I'm from and keeping strong ties to that place.  This river feels like home.  It roots me.