The Bucolic Brandywine River Valley

We are currently staying in a campground a few miles west of West Chester, Pennsylvania, sandwiched between Kennett Square and Coatesville, in the small town of Embreeville.  This is a beautiful area of green rolling farmlands and old stone farmhouses that are 100-300 years old, some are even older.  The west branch of the Brandywine River flows along one side of the campground, where on weekends people canoe with softened voices and fish quietly on the banks.  It is really a beautiful area, and one of the many reasons I love this part of the country.

Last week Lee and I went canoeing on the Brandywine.  The campground rents canoes at a very reasonable price.  (The people in the canoe below are not Lee and I.)

 Looking upstream:

Looking across the Brandywine from the campground.  The landscape is so perfect is hardly looks real!

It is certainly a perfect spot for a flock of Canada geese:

Across the street from the campground is the coolest thing - a train engine!  It is parked there on weekends and nights, but during the day it hauls stuff, apparently from Coatesville (a steel manufacturing town) to a train yard somewhere to the east.

The engineer blows the whistle when the train crosses the road next to the entrance of the campground:

On weekends, it is safe to walk on the tracks, so I am told:

The train engineer is self-employed.  Can you imagine?  What a cool job!  Perhaps even I could do it, except when there is a mechanical problem of some kind.  Then I would be "up a creek".  Maybe the Brandywine.