You WILL Get Wet On This Ride: Harford’s Last Creek Crossing Still Has A Home On Tabernacle Road

Unless you were born and raised in the area, spent some time in the Boy Scouts or like to burn away your weekends cruising the twisting back roads of Harford County, chances are you’ve never heard of Tabernacle Road. It’s really not much of a road - just a winding gravely path through the woods near the Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation - but if you’ve ever tried to traverse it you’re not likely to forget the experience.

Tabernacle Road holds the last public ford in Harford County. That is to say, in order to travel across the county roadway from one end to the other requires crossing a body of open water. Rather than channel the bubbling creek under the roadway or building a bridge over the small waterway, the county has instead allowed Tabernacle Road to plunge right through the meandering flow.

Like the Jericho Covered Bridge in Joppa, the Tabernacle Road ford is a throwback to bygone era and something of a local landmark that you won’t find marked on many maps. It’s also become a rite of passage for many a Harford County high-schooler to test their mettle (and metal too, I suppose) by crossing the ford during periods of high-water - with varying levels of success. But could the ford soon become a distant memory?

Continue reading You WILL Get Wet On This Ride: Harford’s Last Creek Crossing Still Has A Home On Tabernacle Road

Ursa Minor Threat: How Legislative Bear Wrangling in Maryland could put Bruins Inside the Beltway

Legislation under consideration in Annapolis would force the introduction of wild black bears into each of Maryland’s 23 counties. But don’t grab your shotgun before taking the trash out just yet - the lawmakers involved admit the bill is little more than a political bluff, designed to beat back the advances of liberal legislators who would do away with Maryland’s annual black bear hunt.

At issue is the fate of Maryland’s apparently burgeoning population of black bears: Will they continue to be managed/harvested through a controversial state hunting lottery, be allowed to breed and expand their territory without the intervening hand of man or will they be plucked from their scant remaining habitat and redistributed to each and every county in the state?

These are the options on the table and, beginning Wednesday afternoon during an Environmental Matters Committee hearing in Annapolis, the Maryland General Assembly will ponder House Bill 762 - legislation giving the state 7 years to establish a population of black bears in each of Maryland’s 23 counties. Continue reading Ursa Minor Threat: How Legislative Bear Wrangling in Maryland could put Bruins Inside the Beltway

The Creature From The Abingdon Basement

Just in time for Halloween come pictures of the now infamous Abingdon Alligator discovered almost by accident in the basement of a local home a week or so ago.

The story, as I heard it, goes something like this: the resident of an Abingdon home was missing for a few weeks and was apparently murdered (that’s a hell of a start for any story about alligators) and the Harford County Sheriff’s Office went to the house with Animal Control Officers to wrangle up a few of the deceased homeowner’s dogs.

It wasn’t until the crew was leaving the house that some neighborhood children asked if they knew about the alligator in the basement. Upon closer inspection, there was indeed an about a four-and-a-half foot long alligator in an aquarium set up in the basement. Animal Control Officers subdued the creature, wrapped its muzzle in duct tape and evidently snapped a few pictures before putting it in a cage and removing it from the scene. Continue reading The Creature From The Abingdon Basement

Can a Thin Population Bear the Hunt?

In four days 51 black bears were killed in Maryland. With little more than 500 American black bears living in the state and a majority of residents preferring a non-lethal alternative to black bear control, the hunting season for black bears took place last week for a third year in a row. But was the decision to reopen the hunt after a 51-year-old ban too soon for this typically peaceful omnivore?

History of the Hunt

The 51-year-old ban on hunting the state’s largest land animal was lifted in 2004 after the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) claimed to have studied hard on the topic. In the mid-1900’s, the black bear was a highly endangered species in Maryland because of logging and hunting. By 1991 there were only 79 black bears found in the wild according to DNR. During the ban, the black bear began a slow growth back up the ladder, but remained mostly in the western counties such as Garrett and Allegany. Scarcely 300 bears later, DNR granted Marylanders the right to hunt the black bear through a lottery. Continue reading Can a Thin Population Bear the Hunt?

Fear and Loathing at Campsite 100

The weekend started like this: me, stopping the car at an intersection in the middle of a 44,000-acre state forest, gray dust rolling past the windows. “Do you want to try it?” I backed up the car and eased the 1997 Nissan Maxima (manual, with spoiler) onto the brown dirt ski slope that is Kirk Road. A Coleman lantern, filled to the brim with kerosene, dangled from the rear view mirror. There was an hour of daylight left, and as battery acid leeched into my veins, I pushed the car harder and harder up and down the impossible rocky hills of the off-road trail.

About five minutes after I had yelled at the guys in the car to shut up, I pulled to a stop at the zenith of a rollercoaster-looking drop-off; I turned off the engine, jumped out and lit a cigarette. Brian and Scott – cooler heads than mine – set off running down the road while I tried to calm down. We were off to a bad start.

Over the next two days we would evade the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police twice, rescue a pair of lost dirt bikers, catch and release a rare wood turtle and a hognose snake, survive an insane 40-mph ride through the woods in the bed of a drunken redneck’s pickup truck, and hone our skills at axe tossing. But first, Brian would have to run off the hippie squatters at Campsite 100, and my poor old sedan would have to traverse the final grueling 400 yards of Kirk Road. Later that night, significantly, after we had laid hotdogs and beans on top of frayed nerves, we hiked out into the black woods, and gazed up at the Milky Way. “How can we see it if we’re in it?” I asked. Not 24 hours later, I was drunkenly calling out foreign moons like Karaoke requests around the fire, imploring the brains among us to retell the icy details: “Do Io again, man…Now do Europa!”