This Sunday, October 16 is the Ridgewalk !!
Yesterday, one hundred and fifty 6th grade students exited school buses to a blaze of colored leaves atop Alma Hill-the highest point in Allegany county!
They were participating in the Youth event of the Jones Memorial Hospital Ridgewalk and Run. The Ridgewalk which promotes physical fitness and wellness, wanted to encourage students to exercise more by providing them a fun and educational day hike in the woods.
A beautiful fall day greeted the students as they began a 2 mile woods walk. There were 8 educational stations as they wove their way through rocks three times their height, past a Geodetic Survey Bench Mark, maple sap collection tubes, an oil well with its lines connected to the pump house that they could enter, a 1950’s fire tower and observers cabin, and two communication towers.
At the stations they learned:
- What the Bench Mark was and why it was there,
- How the sap is collected and made into syrup,
- Why moss grows in the cracks of rocks,
- That we now live where an inland sea used to be and how it led to the formation of sandstone, conglomerate rock and creation of the oil and gas deposits found in Allegany county.
- How the oil is pumped out of the ground and separated into oil, water and gas, seeing and smelling real crude oil,
- Why the fire tower is there and why it was needed, why they aren’t used now,
- The names of many trees, ferns, moss, and fungi
It was a great day for everyone.
