Deth

Fitness and everything else

We Finally Got To Conewago Potholes When The River Was Low

One of the things I love about geocaching is how it can take you places or show you unique and interesting things that you really haven’t noticed. The can even be practically in your backyard. While we’ve been to the Conewago falls potholes area several times in the past for geocaches, it never worked out that we got there when the river was low enough to truly see it.

We’d originally intended to cache elsewhere today with a nice hike, but that didn’t work out this time, so we decided to visit the earth cache up at the Conewago potholes since that would be a minimal hike. You can park right there. I really do like the idea of earth caches for the reason that they bring you to interesting areas such as this, but I don’t like bothering to find the answers to their questions, especially since they’re usually so visual. This earth cache was fairly well done. The hot and dry summer worked out perfect for us to be able to go here with the low river level, and I imagine that might change with the heavy rains last night and a tropical system moving up the coast this week.

You might wonder how the Conewago Potholes may have been formed. It’s believed that the potholes were formed from old hard diabase rock was eroded by the Susquehanna River as the ice melted from the last ice age. There was much more water in the river then, and more sand. The water caused swirls with sand and debris in it to slowly grind the potholes into the rocks.

It really was a cool place to visit and for the girlfriend to play with her newish camera. We hope to go out there again soon when we can go out further into the river. There were many people fishing and what not today, so we wanted to avoid disturbing them.

This first picture shows the medium-sized potholes. It was interesting how they are right next to each other, but on is much deeper than the other.

Small potholes in rock

A picture of two small potholes in rock. One is fairly shallow, while the other is much deeper and has water in it.

Here is a larger pothole in the rock. This one was close to, if not big enough for some people to fit into.

Bigger potholes in rock.

This is a picture showing bigger potholes in rock from the erosive action of the river.

I thought this one was cool in that it was a bit different from the other potholes. It seems like it must have been eroded from a different type of flow. I also thought it was neat how there are different rings around it. My guess would be from the sediments in the water as it evaporated out of the hole.

Large indentation in rock

Here is a picture showing a large indentation in rock from erosion.

We also spotted this tiger swallowtail butterfly while we were out there. It just seemed to want to sit on the ground right in front of us. It’s been a while since I’ve seen this type of butterfly.

Tiger Swallow Tail On Ground

This is a picture showing a tiger swallowtail butterfly on the ground. There are also a couple of snail shells in the background.

There were lots of this grasshopper type of insects flying around. This one was pretty happy staying put on/in this flower.

Small grasshopper type of insect in a flower

Here is a picture showing a small grasshopper type of insect in a large flower.