Great Valley Baptist Church, Valley Forge, and Deer

At the Baptist Church in the Great Valley

Yesterday we took the MG out in one of our early evening spins.  Instead of heading out to the Goshen loop we took the Darby Paoli Rd route to go Valley Forge Park.  That route goes out to Church and then Waterloo following Waterloo until it merges with 252 and goes into the park.

I was very surprised to see that road conditions on Waterloo have not improved very much since the last ride we took there.  The road is still full of pot holes on torn up in several sections, especially on the return side.  I thought that by now this would have been repaired but it doesn't appear that they have done much work at all.

As we passed the Great Valley Baptist Church I made a quick decision to stop and take a couple of shot there.  I've been wanting to do that for the last 3 years and have never stopped.  Not the best or most dramatic shots ever but they will do.

From there we continued on to Valley Forge and did a couple of loops through the inner and outer defense lines.  The light was falling dramatically, especially under the canopy, and we had seen several small group of deer on the way in so I did not take the twists as hard as I would have liked for fear of having a close encounter of the deer kind.  However, it is still a nice fun drive on the MG with all the tight hair pin turns and hills to climb.

On the way back I wanted to avoid Waterloo because of the road issues so I went under 202, took the left and followed that to the West Valley Rd for another left under 202 in the opposite direction to get to Swedesford Rd.  Once there I followed it out to Walker and took that towards Old Gulph Rd.  On the way out we noticed more deer in small packs and somewhere on Walker we drove up to a doe and fawn sitting no more than 10 feet from the edge of the road.  They look at us as we slowed down and didn't even blink and eye.

Once on Old Gulph we took the left to South Wayne and took that across downtown Wayne and into the Louella neighborhood.  We followed some side roads, instead of cutting across to Conestoga, that wound us around back to 30 over by Chamonix.  From there we just took 30 to Radnor Chester Rd and Newtown Rd to home.

A great ride, specially in the park.  At this time of day there was hardly anyone else on the back roads at the park and even if I couldn't go as fast or as hard as I would have liked, it was a very enjoyable ride.  Other than the concern about keeping an eye out for deer we could not have asked for better conditions.

I made an appointment to take the MG in today for a complete check before we head out for Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix next week.