One can tell much about a region’s inhabitants by the way they treat their natural treasures. This place is great for kayaking. The park is fantastic for a leisurely bicycle ride. Glen Onoko is not a very nice place to hike. The trail is poorly blazed leaving hikers scratching their heads in confusion(I watched them). It is a perilous trail that could be made safer quite simply by adding some handrails, boardwalks, or performing basic maintenance. Eagle Scouts do these sorts of projects all the time, for free. Worst of all is the seeming absence of any type of authority figure. The trail is so contaminated with graffiti, that photos of the falls farther than 10 feet away will inevitably include genitalia or epithets. That didn’t really bother me from a photographer’s point of view because the falls are pretty weaksauce and ten feet away was fine for framing the shots. The falls trail is littered top to bottom with beer cans, plastic bottles, and candy wrappers. The whole time I was here, I couldn’t stop thinking of ISIS overtaking that ancient Syrian city and smashing cultural antiquities. The local youth, and by extension their parents, don’t have one iota of respect for a place that they should treasure. It would be easy to pass these things off as the acts of a few bad apples, but the place is completely trashed and the graffiti shows signs of spanning generations. After visiting Rickett’s Glen for years, this place isn’t beautiful, it’s an eyesore. As we returned from the trail, under the trestle, I saluted the last bit of graffiti and thumbed my nose at it. I’ve included a photo of the childish admonition. As we passed over the trestle we’d just walked under, I was sickened but not the least surprised to see a few pieces of AIRBORNE litter. Someone up the road was inflating condoms and sending them aloft over the river. Nice! We got back to the parking area, and my wife took the kids into the old train tunnel as I put the bags in the car. What looked like a normal group of teenagers, because I give people the benefit of the doubt, was in fact the same group which was inflating the aforementioned prophylactics. Numerous passersby observed this sick ritual and said nothing. I got in their face and they had the audacity to laugh it off. They then left after I photographed their license plate as insurance against any angsty retribution while I was away from my vehicle. As I had every right to be at the park, I will include the license plate as well. Perhaps the people of Carbon County should raise their children to show some respect for one of the few resources that’s bringing money into their community. But probably not. Because Freedom. If you still want to come and see the filth, by all means take the road into the park that descends from the Jim Thorpe memorial, because you ain’t seen gridlock until you’ve seen Jim Thorpe in the summer.
Joseph C.
Place rating: 5 Baltimore, MD
Gorgeous park where we were able to spend HOURS occupying ourselves.
