So, I've decided that Shawnee State Park (the one in Pennsylvania, not Ohio) is one of my favorites. The lake is its centerpiece, of course, and it's got a beach and all that aquatic stuff. But the park also has a really nice campground and some pretty good trails.
Plus, it's in the "Ridge and Valley Province" with its low ridgelines (see in the distance) and its broad, lovely valleys. This is truly scenic country, the old Pennsylvania of myth and legend, where contour-plowed hillsides run up the lower reaches of the mountains, and big, prosperous farmhouses of ages past stand squat and graceful along winding roads. Most of the barns are well kept and marked with hexes.
I had a bit of a prejudice against Shawnee because the first few trails I walked in this park were maintained with a lawnmower, and the woods were remarkably southern with lots of low pines and almost no understory. But today I found that the park also contains typical eastern mountain forest, too, as in the second-to-the-last photo.
There are scads of historic markers along all the roads down here. I'd like to stop and read them all, but time is never on my side. And of course, here in the south-central part of the state, you've got to have covered bridges. This is the Colvin Bridge, located on a public roadway on the edge of the park.
The bridge is seen here from within the park. Notice the big redbrick farmhouse sitting among the trees to the right of the bridge. The thing is enormous, probably six bedrooms. This is Trump Country, to be sure, which is a horror and an embarrassment. But it's also historic and beautiful.
And here's the Forbes Trail, which is said to more or less follow the route that General Forbes cut through the virgin forest from Carlisle to Pittsburgh in a successful bid to route the French from the Ohio River Valley. Carlisle was the westernmost town before the mountains back in the 1750s. For that matter, it still is...
Even though I had a whole Saturday to myself to do whatever I pleased--the wife and kids out of town--I didn't have time to do all the exploring that I wanted to do at the park. Sadly, I was also preoccupied on this visit, dwelling on stress-inducing things that were to take place later in the weekend. I hate to have things hanging over my head, and it did dampen my experience of an otherwise wonderful park. I'd like to say I'll go back soon, but two hours and fifteen minutes each way is just so far to drive. But I do love the countryside out this direction. Everything out here is so much neater, and cleaner, and the views are so much more expansive. You forget just how claustrophobic Pittsburgh is until you get into a place like this.
