ALLEGHENY NATIONAL FOREST (PA)



WEDNESDAY - It sure seemed like we drove a long way today, when in fact we did. We started our day in north central Ohio, outside of Cleveland, then made our way through northwest Pennsylvania with a stop in Erie for lunch. Then traveling across southwest New York and crossing the border back inside of Pennsylvania for 2-miles before we came to our new campsite.

197-miles from campsite to campsite, we haven't driven that far since way back in early April when we were scrambling to get from Big Bend Natioanl Park in south Texas all the way up to just outside of Dallas to watch the Total Solar Eclipse with friends.

That was a lot of driving for us and I'm going to try and make sure we don't do it again!



For the next two days we're going to be camping in the only National Forest in Pennsylvania, the 513,655 acre Allegheny National Forest. As far as National Forests go that's pretty much midsized compared to the other 153 National Forests in the Nation.

New York's only National Forest is tiny by comparison. At just 16,352 acres the Finger Lakes National Forest is the second smallest National Forest in the entire nation. If you're thinking that New York doesn't have any large tracts of public land you'd be terribly wrong.

Outside of Alaska, Adirondack State Park in upstate New York is the largest in the nation at just over 6,000,000 acres. That's right, its not a typo, that's 6-million acres. That's larger than eight of our smallest states and accounts for 20% of the land in New York state.



THURSDAY - With our only full day here to explore we took a drive back to Quaker Lake which we passed on our way to the campground yesterday.

But first we took a drive down to the boat ramp here in the campground. It provides accesss to the Allegheny River which flows passed our campsite. There were about a half dozen trucks with empty boat trailers in the parking lot, but we didn't see a single one on the river.

Those ripples on the river are all wind driven.

After checking out the other loops in the campground we headed back to Quaker Lake.


At the Quaker Lake Picnic Area parking lot we saw trees beginning to show their fall colors.

Also in the parking lot was this apple tree with plenty of fruit almost ready to eat.

The lake level is controlled by this unmanned spillway.


Even though the apples in the tree by the lake weren't quite ripe, the apples in the tree behind our campsite look ready to devour. Tricia helped herself to three of them and they are now located in our refrigerator. Hopefully chilling them will sweeten them up!



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