It really is amazing what it out there, just beyond your own back yard.
Today, my wife, Cecile, and I joined a friend of ours, Jeff, on a hike with the Sierra Club. 
We met at Smedley Park, a county park in Springfield, Delaware County, right off of Baltimore Pike between Interstate 476 (the Blue Route) and the Springfield Mall. There were about 20 in our group, ranging in age from 27 to probably 85.
Cecile and I have been to the park numerous times in the past. Usually hiking the same set of trails that run underneath the interstate and along the trolley tracks towards Media. But today we headed east along a trail that we did not even know existed. We were told by the hike leader that the land is owned by Swarthmore College, and leased to the county. It contains some of the oldest trees in southeastern Pennsylvania. William Penn trees as he called them, because the area has never been logged and the trees may have been there since before William Penn founded the state.
We followed the trail along a creek, frequently having to cross it or one of its tributaries. The further we went, the smaller the streams became. The trail ended, or so it seemed, behind a church on Sproul Road. The yellow blazes that mark the trail continued though, along the road, Route 320, and then across it. They continued down Route 420 to a bridge over another small stream. The trail continued into a small patch of woods next to this bridge. Eventually this small patch widened until we could barely make out the houses that back up to this park we never knew existed.
The trail eventually lead us to the familiar trolley tracks, but at least a mile east of where we've ever been. We followed these tracks, and got to see the underside of the parking area behind the mall. Who knew that it was built on a steel structure about 80 feet above the trolley and this trail that runs behind it? We also got to see a Red-Headed Woodpecker, which a bird-watcher in the group informed us is rarely, if ever, seen in this part of the United States. Unfortunately my camera has lost half of the pictures from this trip, so there is no evidence that it was even seen.
Eventually the trolley trail led us back to where we had parked, and we drove away with a new appreciation for what exists just beyond our back yard.
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