Road Trips and Hike Reports

This entry isn't  really  about the trail.  We went to Kinzua Bridge State Park finally in PA.  It's some place I've been aware of since at least the time we moved to PA but just never made it to it.  This was the location of a very tall railroad trestle that crossed a creek and a small valley.  It was an impressive and old structure that very few people paid any attention to until it fell down during a storm in 2003.  The rail line it was on was abandoned and rather than demolish what was left of the bridge, it was made into a mix of man made and natural spectacle in the form of a state park. It's hard to appreciate from the photos how huge this bridge was and how high up you are when you walk to the stub end of what is left of it.  It's an impressive and imagination stirring view but a LOT of people would find walking on the bridge (which is made of boards with some gaps in them) nerve wracking.  There is a lovely modern visitor center/muse...

Our friend Fred drove down from NY to join us at our camping cottage at Little Pine State Park .  We walked directly from our cabin to the dam which impounds Little Pine Creek to form Little Pine Lake.  This dam was built in 1950 and is one of a number of dams along this watershed which protect cities like Williamsport from flooding.  Interestingly, this creek is a tributary of Pine Creek which cuts a massive, and well known gorge through northern PA.  We did a backpacking trip along Pine Creek a few years ago. The state park site was originally the site of a CCC camp but it doesn't sound like the state park as we know it was necessarily CCC built.  We chose to walk the lake front trail but Little Pine State Park is on the Mid-State Trail and there are some epic long distance hikes that could include the park in their itinerary.  The entire area around the park, including the very old and rustic bridge along the access road, is pretty remote and not near an...

This is the same park where we did one of our 2 overnight backpacking trips back in May of 2020.  We headed out Saturday after Brian's Target shift and made it to our hotel in Grove City PA by about 8:30 pm.  It was a reasonable trip. We were at the trailhead by 9 am this morning. There were almost no other people at this sometimes busy State Park.  There is a bridge that crosses Oil Creek in the park which is very old and was recently closed.  At first it was closed completely, effectively bisecting the large state park right down the middle in a very unfortunate way since even driving between the two halves is quite a chore without the bridge.  Thankfully, they opened the bridge to pedestrian traffic a few weeks ago. I did a solo visit to this park sometime last year I think.  I expected that today's 7 mile hike from Alltrails would be the same hike I did on my solo day trip.  It turned out not to be.  This turned out to be rather different....