Forbes State Forest: Mountain Streams Trail System

Ah, sweet March, the deceptive month!  It draws you out into its golden air with birdsong and early spring promises.  The trails are all slippery with hard-packed ice and mud, and only the earliest of incipient little buds are beginning to appear in the undergrowth.  But it was 50 degrees today and sunny.  I had to hustle back down the the Forbes to spend my day off.

There's nothing really all that spectacular about the Forbes State Forest.  It's got some nice overlooks and pretty streams.  But for the most part, its trails run a little too close to human habitation for my comfort.  I went into the Mountain Streams Trails System with an old map that I printed off the Internet about five years ago, but I got shamefully lost in a maze of narrow woodlots on the edge of public roadways and fields.  The map was too sketchy.  

Driving on PA381, back in the fall, I'd often seen parking areas where the Mountain Streams Trail crossed the road.  It called to me, but there were always so many other quadrants of the forest to discover.  Even today, when I finally got back around to the Mountain Streams, I never did make it into the deep woods that I was aiming for on the map.  I ended up wandering around the wrong area, looking for the right path.  I followed a steep and slick woodland road up to this summit, where the view out onto the countryside below was less than spectacular, but definitely worth a trek.  Click on the photo to enlarge it.  These are the Laurel Highlands, not the Laurel Mountains....

On the selfsame summit, there was an odd structure, recently built.  It looked like a horse stable, but inside there were chandeliers and strings of lights.  What is this place, some kind of mountain dance hall?  Is it a venue for wedding receptions? 

The place doesn't look like it's been used yet, but there's a blackboard on the wall with a list of alcoholic drinks.  And the back porch had a pleasant feel to it.  Even at a modest altitude of 2,600 feet, it was surprisingly colder here than in the city.  And there were far fewer springtime birds up in the hills than down in the suburbs.  

It always scares me a little when I hear an engine in the forest.  Not sure why.  I just prefer to hide from motorized vehicles.  I heard a truck hurrying down the icy mountain road, and I hid inside this dance hall.  I half expected them to turn into the parking lot and catch me, taking me for a middle-aged vandal.  After returning to my car, I did end up finding a better map of the Mountain Streams Trail System at the trailhead.  I'll try to get to the bigger woods the next time I go out--hopefully next week.  I found a better place to park for the segment of trail that I was looking for, and I'm actually kind of dreaming of doing an early spring overnight in the woods.