On Friday Jeremy, Lori and I went to our site, Bushkill Park, and met up with Professor Brandis. The first time we had ever gone to our site we were pretty intimidated because there were signs all over the place that said “private property” and signs stating the the fine for trespassing on the property. Unfortunately on our last trip we didn’t get to explore as much as we had hoped we would. So compared to our last trip this trip was much more successful. When we arrived at the site Professor Brandis was already there and met the groundskeeper of the park- he is actually a man who used to work in dining services at Lafayette, but is now retired. He was able to give us a little information about the history of the park and told us that it was fine if we walked along the river on the side of the park. He was also able to give us the name of a guy who has lived near the park for a very long time, and he said he thinks the guy would be very interested in talking to us about our site. We are really excited to reach out to him and hear his story!

Our site is really interesting because it used to be an amusement park that was closed down due to damage from a huge flood in 2004 (from Hurricane Ivan. It was a 100-year flood). Our site is surrounded by the Bushkill River, and even though we weren’t able to enter the park grounds we were able to walk along the river and see a lot of our site. We learned while we were there that at one point was a dam on the river and also an old mill that used to be right on the river! We are really interested in both of these and looking forward to finding out more about them. We also can across an open field (meadow like) and we are really interested in looking into what it was used for. We are hoping to try and take a trip to the Easton Public Library to look at some archives to see if we can find any new information.

We came across some wildlife at the park- we saw deer tracks, we saw a bunch of ducks on the river, we saw a groundhog and we also saw a red fox. Professor Brandis was climbing up one of the banks of the river and the red fox was right at the top of the bank, by the time I had gotten up the bank the red fox was on the move, running across the field and I only saw it for a quick second as it ran underneath a building.

This a photo of the main buildings at the park. The blue building is the fun house.

We came across this building on the back of the property. It was really interesting because on the side of it is a painting of a mill- we are wondering if it has anything to do with the mill that used to be on the river! On the other side of the building is a door frame and if you look you can see grass that is growing inside the building.

Here are some of the ducks we saw on a section of the river. If you look closely you can see some people sitting on the rocks. This is a picture Lori took with her back toward the river looking at the side of the park. These are some views looking down the river.

We followed the river all the way back behind the park and we found a tree that had grown through a tire.