Black Moshannon Boardwalk / Big Mouth Singers

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
~ Charles Dickens.

My husband and I nabbed a hoagie at Hall's along the way and headed up the hill to Black Moshannon. We spent some time hiking at various locations around the park, and then left there to do some more walking in Moshannon State Forest, a bit further up the hill. The clouds and winds eventually increased, and by afternoon's end, I was wishing for my gloves and more layers of clothes! Brr!!! That was a chilly March breeze, for sure!

These two photos are from the Black Moshannon adventure. Above you may see the wooden boardwalk, stretching out before me, into the land of endless bog and sky. There is a beaver lodge on the far shore, but you can't quite catch a glimpse from this angle.

Black Moshannon is a sort of unusual thing, which is to say a high bog, sitting at an elevation of 1900 feet along the Allegheny Front. At one point, there were many lumber mills that operated nearby. In the 1930s, the CCC boys built many of the structures in the park; the park itself was established in 1937.

The boardwalk path features some weird plants, both skunk cabbage and pitcher plant. I have put a photo of one of the pitcher plants in the extras. I thought it looked like a toy my baby sister had, called Big Mouth Singers.

The toy had a keyboard, and each key corresponded to a creature with a mouth, which would open and sing that note. Pitcher plants, in real life, though, are carnivorous plants that lure insects in to their deaths. They attract and then drown their prey with nectar. Eek!

I have two photos, so here are two songs. One, for the walkway above, I wanted a song about walking, and here's a fave: Dire Straits, with Walk of Life. Keep walking, my friends! Second, for the bunch of "big mouths" in the extras, here's a song about mouths: Meat Loaf, with You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth.