THIS MONTH:

Heading to the Jeep Invasion and the 9th annual Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival, June 7-9, in Butler, PA. The Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival is a tribute event to the original jeep, the history behind it, the people who created it, and its birthplace, Butler Pennsylvania. The event provides Jeep enthusiasts with on and off-road experiences that embrace the vehicle’s past and the lifestyle it now fosters. The family-friendly event is held at Coopers Lake Campground, about an hour north of Pittsburgh, PA every year with on-site off-road trails, a Jeep “playground” obstacle course, Jeep History exhibit, huge vendor area with 150 companies and more…

COMING UP SOON:

Participating in this year’s Ladies Offroad Challenge which begins May 13th and continues for ten weeks. Designed by Charlene Bower as a fun way of building skills, the challenges offer something for everyone, and can be as hard or easy as desired — though at least one is designed to push participants outside their comfort zones…


Joining the ladies at Woman and Machine New England for a day of automotive learning fun focused on cars, engines, welding, and more. This automotive educational and networking event is designed for those who want to understand more about their vehicles and/or explore the skill sets that make up various realms within the automotive industry. The event is open to everyone from seasoned professionals to the wrench-curious ladies who are interested in learning more about cars from other women …


Attending the Ladies Offroad Network Convention in Atlanta, GA. The 3rd annual convention will be held August 1-4, 2019, with lots of hands-on opportunities to gain all types of offroading skills, learn and engage with other offroad ladies as they share their stories, and laugh the whole way. The convention is an action-packed, interactive 4-day weekend educating, motivating, and guiding offroad ladies…


Back to Pennsylvania Coal Country to guide for the 2019 Women’s Wheeling Day at Rausch Creek Offroad Park hosted by Jeep Girls Rock. The day focuses on learning, enjoying the trails and meeting new friends, and is for all trail levels, from beginners to advanced. Female Guides will be assigned to each group and will encourage those who have never wheeled before as they build confidence out on the trails and learn what their vehicle is capable of (guys are welcomed to attend and ride along with women drivers at this family event) …

HISTORY OF THE BANTAM JEEP

Butler PA was home to the American Bantam Car Company, a central character in the invention, development and production of the very first Jeeps. The Bantam jeep was the prototype for what would eventually evolve into the World War II US Army Jeeps, the Willys MB and the Ford GPW. The Bantam prototype was called the Bantam Reconnaissance Car, or BRC, and the first one was driven from Butler PA to Camp Holabird, MD, where the Army tested it for 30 days. The Army liked what it saw, and wanted production of 75 vehicles per day. Unfortunately, Bantam could not meet that production schedule, and the Army gave Ford and Willys the Bantam’s blueprints to produce enough vehicles. Ford and Willys fulfilled the Army’s contracts for 600,000 Jeeps for World War II. While Bantam produced a total of 2,675 jeeps, it never produced another vehicle after that. Instead, Bantam produced ‘jeep’ cargo trailers, torpedo motors and other military use items until they closed in 1956.

ABOUT BUTLER PA

Named by Smithsonian Magazine in the top ten best small towns in America; Butler, PA, is home to 14,000 residents. Butler is located 35 miles (56 km) north of Pittsburgh and is a nationally accredited “Main Street” community with a thriving downtown shopping and restaurant district.

Established in 1803, the town became an industrial and manufacturing center. It was here that some of the first all-steel railroad cars were built by Standard Steel Car Company in 1902. The automotive industry soon followed, and the American Austin Car Company set up shop here in 1929, eventually changing its name to Bantam and creating the Jeep prototype in 1941.

Like many towns centered on manufacturing, Butler has seen some ups and downs, but has continued to flourish. Recently, the Marcellus Shale boom has created new jobs and revenue via the somewhat controversial gas drilling practice known as “tracking.”

BALD EAGLE STATE PARK

The 5,900-acre Bald Eagle State Park is in the broad Bald Eagle Valley of northcentral Pennsylvania. The 1,730-acre lake laps the flanks of Bald Eagle Mountain, surrounded by forests, fields, and wetlands. With two campgrounds, boating, fishing, swimming, the Nature Inn, and diverse habitats that are excellent for wildlife watching, Bald Eagle State Park is a great destination in the heart of Pennsylvania. The Nature Inn, voted the #1 Eco-Lodge in the nation, offers sweeping lake views, comfortable modern accommodations and amenities, all within the natural setting of Bald Eagle State Park. Everything in and around the lodge was designed with the environment in mind, so it all blends right in. Throughout the inn, one theme resonates above all others – Birds. From the bird tracks leading you to our front lobby, to the Audubon and Ned Smith prints in each room where binoculars and birding books encourage visitors to get out and observe the birds — including a nesting pair of bald eagles just behind the inn in Hunter Cove.

PENNSYLVANIA COAL COUNTRY

The Coal Region is a historically important coal-mining area in Northeastern Pennsylvania in the central Ridge-and-valley Appalachian Mountains, comprising Lackawanna, Luzerne, Columbia, Carbon, Schuylkill, Northumberland, and the extreme northeast corner of Dauphin counties. The discovery of anthracite coal was first made near the Schuylkill–Northampton line in the vicinity of Summit Hill by a hunter in 1791 and the first mine was established in 1775. The anthracite mining industry loomed over the region until its decline in the 1950s. The Knox Mine Disaster in 1959 served as the death knell for deep mining which faded away in the mid 1960s; almost all current anthracite mining is done via strip mining. Tours of underground mines can be taken in Ashland, Scranton, and Lansford, each of them also having museums dedicated to the mining industry. Also evident are patch towns, small villages affiliated with a particular mine. These towns were owned by the mining company. Though no longer company owned, many hamlets survive; one of them, the Eckley Miners’ Village, is a museum and preserved historical town owned and administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which seeks to restore patch towns to their original state.

ABOUT HICKORY RUN

Hickory Run is a 15,990-acre state park spread across the Pocono Mountains in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. With 44 miles of hiking trails, there are a variety of experiences available, but the park’s most notable feature is the huge boulder field located in the northeast corner. The boulder field can be reached via a graded dirt road or by hiking the 3.5-mile Boulder Field Trail from the trailhead on SR 534. The field comprises about 720,000 square feet (16.5 acres) in area and the top of the boulder layer is virtually level with the approaching path. The largest of its kind in the Appalachian region, the Boulder Field consists of a gently sloping expanse of boulders occupying the axis of a small valley. It is surrounded by a coniferous forest with stony loam soils. The Boulders are between three and thirty feet in diameter and are hard, gray-red, medium-grained sandstone and conglomeratic sandstone from the Catskill Formation which forms the adjacent ridgelines. There are two widely accepted theories about the formation of the boulder field. One theory suggests that boulder-size blocks are generated from the fracturing of an upslope bedrock outcrop by alternating freeze and thaw. As boulders accumulate at the base of the rock slope, periglacial ice-catalyzed heaving and sliding transports them downslope during cold climatic periods to form boulder fields. The second theory says that boulder fields are formed by the exhumation of corestones initially formed underground by the action of spheroidal weathering on jointed bedrock. Later, the weathered rock, which is called saprolite, is progressively removed by erosion from around the corestones to expose them as isolated boulders. In time, these boulders are altered and redistributed by the accumulation of unconsolidated soil and sediment; freeze and thaw; and perhaps by periglacial action or glaciation during cold periods to form boulder fields. The presence of glacial erratics south of the area of the Hickory Run boulder field indicate that this area has been covered by an ice sheet at least once. The most extensive ice sheet to cover the area containing this boulder field occurred prior to 900,000.

Nesconset | Paris | Belgrade | Tremont | Butler

MORE NOTES FROM THE ROAD:
May – PA Trail cleanup
22-30 April – Minnesota
16-21 April – PA Trails
1-15 April – New Jeep
15-31 March – Paris
1-14 March – Arizona
15-28 February – San Antonio
1-14 February – Sedona and Glamis
January – Iran
December – Holiday Road Trip
16-30 November – Senegal
1-15 November – Paris
October – New York
September – Southwestern Deserts
22-31 August – New York
8-21 August – Serbia
1-7 August – Ladies Offroad Network
22-31 July – Moab
9-21 July – Woman and Machine
1-8 July – DC Dirt Camp
25-30 June – Orienteering
1-24 June – Paris
7-10 June – Bantam Jeep Festival
1-6 June – Roadtrip to Bantam JeepFest
May – Wheelers Overland
Archive

REFLECTIONS

EGYPT: CAIRO REFLECTIONS

A quick overview of impressions from a stop in Cairo during our recent scouting mission in Egypt and Sudan … [read]

SPECIAL REPORT

ALGERIA SCOUTING

A look into south-eastern Algeria on the border with Libya and Niger: overlanding with the Tuareg in one of the most remote corners of the Sahara … [read]