The Domes at the Catskills & Other Stories: Day 2

Incredibly, the second day of our Catskills adventure was almost as surreally strange as our first day. It wasn’t bad, and indeed, a lot of it was awesome, but at every turn, we’ve been confronted by the weirdness that I suppose constitutes normalcy in rural America.

We started out the day with a little ride around the Walnut Mountain Park carriage trails. We honestly expected this to be pretty easy, but if you look at the map, you’ll notice that the trail cuts back and then climbs about 350 feet in maybe a quarter of a mile. It got so loose and rocky along that stretch that we actually wound up dismounting and pushing our bikes up the hill! 

Walnut Mountain Park. Note the contour lines leading northwest from the rightmost parking lot.

At the summit of what turned out to be a pretty damned challenging climb

This was a pretty park and mostly a fun ride, but that one section smoked both of us. By the time we got to the bottom, we were both pretty ready to do something else despite having ridden just three or so miles.

We drove out to Stone Arch Bridge Historical Park for lunch. Very cute park with a decidedly sordid past. We learned this as we were walking around. They have a little sign that explains the area’s history.

This plaque explains the park but also opens up a lot more questions... 

A cute spot for a picnic lunch

Atop the stone bridge. A famous murder happened right here!

Stone Bridge selfie

So, of course, we had to look up the Hex Murders because Sally and I both felt like they’d buried the lede pretty badly with that write-up. I’ll quote briefly from AmericanCatskills.Com, but this entire story is well worth your time.

On his return home, Markert was viciously murdered as he crossed over the Stone Arch Bridge. He was shot five times in the back and side of his head and beaten with a heavy walking stick, resulting in several severe scalp wounds and a badly fractured skull. At least one of the pistol shots was from close range, as blackened powder marks were found around one of the wounds. The body was then dumped over the side of the stone bridge into the cold creek below, a drop of approximately 27 feet…

Adam Heidt and his son Joseph, the brother-in-law and nephew of Markert, respectively, were both quickly suspected of having committed the crime, for they had not been on good terms with Markert and had long wished him dead. The suspected motive for the murder was that both the Heidts believed Markert was a “hexenmeister,” or sorcerer, who possessed supernatural powers, and that he practiced the “black art” of witchcraft. The Heidts believed that Markert was a “principal midnight visitor to the “hexenkanzel,” or witch pulpit, a spot in the neighborhood where the adepts in the black art were said to meet to say their incantations against those whom they sought to harm or destroy.” Both Adam and Joseph believed that Markert had placed a hex on Adam Heidt and his family which had led to personal illness, prevented their cows from giving cream, the death of several their cattle, the death of a horse, killed their crops and frustrated business plans. The Heidts also believed that Markert’s hex had led to the death of several family members.

Needless to say, Sally freaked. She swore she could feel the ghost’s presence. Meanwhile, I've been trying to figure out how to work this sad tale into a future Necropolis story ever since we learned about it. Sullivan County is close enough to New York City that one of Blaine’s ancestors could have easily been involved. With the timing, this would have to be the same one who built the Diogenes Building, the guy who famously laid the four hundred pound cornerstone with his own two hands. I’m not totally sure what the angle will be, but I’ve long had this theory that the Winters family informally policed the ultrahuman community in and around New York before the government or society at large became aware of ultrahumans’ existence.

But we’ll see how that goes.

Oh by the way, Stone Arch Bridge Historical Park also has the oddest public toilets either of us had ever seen. And Sally lived four years in Paraguay’s hinterlands!

You just pee in the hole.

 We went to a brewery on Sunday, so we decided to go to a winery yesterday. But the nearest winery turned out to be about twenty miles away, just over the Pennsylvania border. Neither of had even realized we were that close to Pennsylvania, but indeed, we wandered out towards the Delaware River, and then there we were, in the Keystone State.

We stopped for a snack and just to wander in the town of Narrowsburg, seated right on the Delaware’s banks. The town was founded by the logging industry around the Revolution. Loggers would cut tall pines for sail masts, tie them together into massive rafts, and then float them down to Philadelphia.

Sally with a snack in Narrowsburg

Cute town, and they even had a brewery! We wound up getting some coffee and a snack, wandering through the second-hand stores, and then trying the local IPAs in the former bank vault-turned-brewery tasting room. 

Fun! And not at all weird.

From there, we drove on to Three Hammers Winery, a truly excellent Pennsylvania place hidden up in the Poconos on a site of the former Hammer brothers’ farm. We’d been in the car quite a bit by this point, so we got a little lucky that they have a short nature trail. Hiking the maybe third-of-a-mile trail gave us both time to stretch our legs and mentally prepare ourselves for wine.

My only quibble here is that Three Hammers gets their grapes from Washington State, so these are essentially Washington Wines produced in Mid-Atlantic Pennsylvania. But their tasting selection included a truly fantastic Chenin Blanc as well as an excellent Malbec, so I suppose you just have to take the good with the bad. Still, it felt a little unfair comparing the Three Hammers products to the wines we get in Connecticut, where they use locally grown grapes.

Nature Trail selfie

Three Hammers Winery nature trail

The only problem at this point was that we were maybe an hour’s drive from The Domes. We stopped briefly to get some chicken and vegetables for the grill and then drove on the rest of the way, finishing our day with a little walk around the campsite area.

It occurred to me at a certain point that maybe I’d been wrong about that statue of Pan yesterday. I mean, in what context besides “Satan” can these other statues be taken. For that matter, how many of these things are hidden around this campsite?

Hiking around the Domes site.

I thought this was maybe supposed to be an angel, but...

...what in the world is this?

Anyway, we wandered down by the water and then came back to grill before settling in for another evening by the fire. Honestly, that might’ve been my favorite part of the day.

We’re off to Vermont here shortly. Our adventure continues…