“Great Guernsey trail”

Thursday
This morning we drove into Cambridge, the county seat of Guernsey county, to visit Mosser Glass. The origins of the company go back more than half a century to the time when Orie Mosser was the plant manager of the Cambridge Glass Company. His son Thomas began working there as a teenager, learning the trade from Bottom to top. When Cambridge Glass closed in 1954, Tom decided to continue in the glass business, creating a company of his own. His beginnings were very humble, operating out of an abandoned chicken coop, but his perseverance and dedication to quality paid off, and today the family tradition, with family members continuing to operate the company. They offer factory tours, and of course have a retail shop. Much of their stuff didn’t really appeal to me - a sort of retro look - but they seemed to be doing good business. After that we went to take a picture of the impressive County courthouse building, (see extra), then found the trailhead for the “Great Guernsey trail”, a disused railway line. At a mere 7 miles in length, It’s not particularly “great” in the sense of length when compared to, for example, our local Little Miami trail which we use so much, which is over 70 miles in length, and connects to various others, but the return trip gave us 14 miles which is a comfortable distance for me. Much of it passed by marsh land which is a favourite habitat of the red-winged blackbird shown in my collage, and you could hear various other bird calls to, but they weren’t being very photogenic! However, the most memorable moment was seeing not just one, but three snakes sunning themselves on one of the old railway bridges. I believe they are Common water snakes, quite harmless, but they were quite a size, so I kept my distance and used the zoom on my camera, just in case! After our ride, we found an ice cream parlour, (!) then started our journey home!