Routes: McClay to Foster

FROM 844, I’d usually take McClay as my jump off point. This road starts as a steady, 45 degree drop, a small trailer park on your right and a water hauling service headquarters opposite. The grade makes an abrupt change as it leveled of and cut through a wide soggy bottom bowl of stream and fields, seemingly similar to the arch-typical sterilized country scene that you’d expect to be hung between the large wooden spoon and fork in one of the trailers now behind you.

You’ll notice a marked increase in ascent wherein you pass an actual farm and a scattering of houses. There is a lot of road kill in these tighter bends as they get tighter and more frequent. I’ve killed here.

Before you lies “Big Bend” which has thrown many drivers into it’s bank of shared and soldiered yards or to the left over it’s steep side. And yet more of a climb that rewards you with a 90% recursive bend that seems as tight as it is steep; the loose gravel at the top thrown out as you bear right powering onto South Hewitt Avenue.

SOUTH Hewitt is uneventful until it becomes Rural Valley Road. Visible ahead is North Buffalo Presbyterian. It sits at the end of a huge farm field with nothing around it. On a clear Moonless night you’re just high enough to afford an unobstructed view of the north, east and southern sky. One can enjoy the parking lot and field. There is also an outdoor chapel and small attached cemetery that’s worth wandering through.

ONWARD to Taylorstown famous for having the KKK march through it back in the mid 90s.