A Weekend in PA State Parks

I left for a much anticipated weekend in northcentral PA on Friday afternoon. The Immobile One was spending the week in Pittsburgh, focusing on the Steelers training camp and instead of sitting home alone, I had decided to return to my second favorite park in Pennsylvania. Many years ago, I spent a lot of time camping. The man I was then seeing believed in staying in the state of Pennsylvania until he had seen all there was to see, and we traveled throughout the state, camping in state parks and hiking Pennsylvania trails. Often our destinations were based on local festivals being held in towns near the parks. So I was fortunate to see a great deal of our state and to fall in love with it again and again and again. There were favorite places to visit. My all time favorite park was Poe Paddy in Milroy. A rustic little park which neighbors Poe Valley State Park, Poe Paddy is located on the Penns Creek - a wonderful place to spend the afternoon tubing, kayaking or canoing. Because it doesn't have a bath house or running water, it takes a special kind of camper to love it. However, we loved it there and would spend long weekends just enjoying the creek and hiking the Mid State Trail. We got to know the park ranger and also began to spend evenings at his home, drinking wine and talking about the irises that his wife raised. When I started letterboxing, Poe Paddy was one of the first parks that I visited to camp in again. I went there alone, on purpose, to see if the memories were true to life or if they had just become fuzzy during the years between visits. It turned out that the memories left a few things out but that the reality was even better than I thought. I love Poe Paddy and it remains my all time favorite park in our beautiful state.

My second favorite park from my previous camping days was Hills Creek in Tioga County. That was one of my destinations this weekend. The first night out, I stopped at World's End State Park in Forksville, Sullivan County. Unfortunately, I didn't have much opportunity to investigate this park because I got there at dusk and was on my way the next morning before daybreak. What I did see was stunning. The creek which flowed through this park was dry and looked like a creek of boulders. As I was driving through the park, I noticed a large number of hiking trails and overlooks which were well marked and promised myself a return visit to look at everything.

Another stop on my way to Hills Creek was in Mt. Pisgah State Park in Troy, another park I had never visited before. The views of the mountains surrounding this park were awesome and the man made lake was beautiful on this day which was unbelievably clear and cool for a day in July. Unfortunately, one of the boxes that I was looking for took me to a totally unspectacular part of this park. A second box did take me on a little loop beside a branch of the lake where I caught these little ducks in a row. This was a park that I would visit again for a box but am not particularly interested in making it a destination itself.

One last stop at a state park before my reunion with Hills Creek was to the Tioga State Forest. This was an absolutely beautiful area and the boxes located here were in such wonderful locations that I was thrilled to have taken the time to stop here. I saw a lot of breath taking views this weekend but this little isolated waterfalls was one of my favorites.And now it was time to return to Hills Creek - would it still have the same impact that it had on me 15 years ago? My first indication was as I was driving through the little town of Wellsboro. Part of the charm of Hills Creek for me was this quaint little town which was so laid back, depending on the sportmen who occupied their mountains for a livelihood. It is a hunter, camper, hiker, and fisherman's paradise and the town was geared for those visitors. The lady who sits next to me at work and I reminisced all week about Wellsboro. Her in laws had lived there and named the street that they lived on Hanky Panky Street. It was that kind of town. Well, it turned out that WAS is the key word. Wellsboro has grown up. It is still quaint and possesses a large amount of homes painted in the Victorian style and still has a main street with bunches of little unique shops but there was a different feel to it. It felt too modern for my memories. Unfortunately, Hills Creek also seemed different than what I remembered. As I pulled into the park, I didn't get the little rush in my stomach that I used to get. Things looked different. I can't put my finger on just what it was but it was different. I got to my campsite - one that we had used many, many times in the past and settled in for the night. This isn't a park with the campsites in the woods which blocks you from seeing anyone else, the campsites are actually in rolling fields and the park was a hubbub of activity. In a truly ironic turn of events, I received an email Sunday from JJ of the 4Rhines who saw my stamp in the logbook of the boxes in this park and told me that she took a break from everyday life and for the first time, camped alone in Hills Creek that same night. She was in site C65 and I was in site C73. As I mentioned, these were open fields so I am sure that we must have seen each other but since we have never met in person and wouldn't have recognized each other, we still are acquaintances through email only. Once again, though, I was up and out of the park before daybreak, on my way to other boxes and a couple more state parks. The picture here is of the lake as I was crossing the dam on my way out of Hills Creek.

First visit on my state park list for Sunday was Leonard Harrison State Park also outside of Wellsboro. The views of the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania from this park are stupendous as this photo from the location of the box I found there illustrates. The trails through the woods to get to the box were not very pretty but when you get to this view, all that is forgotten.From Leonard Harrison, I had one more state park stop, in Shikellamy State Park in Sunbury. It was not my first stop at this park since I had picked True Indigo up here a few weeks ago when we visited the Finger Lakes so I knew what to expect from the views here. There are two parts to this park, one is down along the river, I have not explored any of that area. Both times I have been to the overlooks high above the lake formed from the Susquehanna River and enjoyed the views of all of the activity below, different from the Grand Canyon vista which is all natural. Different kinds of beauty in different parks.
Last month as we were planning our trip to the Finger Lakes Gathering, True Indigo and I lamented the difficulty in the planning. There were no maps available online to assist us in coordinating our hikes for the weekend. There was actually very little information about any of the parks that we hiked in and once we got to the parks, again, there were few maps available. Here in Pennsylvania, we are fortunate to have so many beautiful parks with a wonderful online resource to information about them at www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/. Here we can download maps, get details of park conditions, book campsites and obtain history about each of the parks in our state. Hopefully, others appreciate this courtesy as much as I do and use it often. Nothing beats our state park system!