Four More State Parks for My Collection

Like you, O reader, most of my dreaming and scheming about outdoor destinations is done online.  Isn't that what brings you to my obscure and rarely-updated blog anyway?  The advantage to online research is that you can find photos, and websites, and Google reviews of a place before putting in the time to investigate it for yourself.  But one glitch is that reading about places online can cause you to build up false expectations about them.  I don't say this with any sort of disappointment, but I added four new state parks to my collection on this recent trip to central Pennsylvania, but none of them impressed me all that greatly.  Pictured here is Greenwood Furnace State Park, which has it all: a beach, hiking trails, a campground, several historical displays, a gift shop.  I liked it.  But I wouldn't have driven three hours just to be here.

I also visited the notoriously remote Penn Roosevelt State Park while I was here.  It can only be accessed by way of gravel lanes that wind through the Rothrock State Forest.  I'd always imagined it as a sort of outdoorsman's paradise.  There's nothing there but a pond, a small campground (with sites that cannot be reserved), and perhaps the most isolated public restrooms in the state.  No electricity, only tent-camping, no playgrounds, or ranger stations, or showers.  It's nice as car-campgrounds go, but it's mostly just that: a campground deep, deep in the woods.  There was nothing to film there except a few picnic tables under trees.  In fact, there was not a single occupied campsite on the day before July 4, though a friendly young ranger showed up and suggested sites 11 and 12.  There was nothing to photograph at Reeds Gap State Park either--which for some reason had an enormous number of parking lots and very little else.  At least its pleasant, woodsy little campground was filling up.  And at Whipple Dam, the fourth state park that I added to my collection, there was little besides a beach that closes at dusk.  Plenty of people.  Because the romantic myth of Penn Roosevelt's wilderness acclaim was a little dissipated by an actual visit to the place, I decided not to push on to discover the equally mystical Poe Valley and Poe Paddy state parks.  Some illusions are best when they're maintained.  However, I did go to the Outer Banks again last month--a place that I'm only just starting at last to appreciate.  Photos from the North Carolina coast can be found here and here.  Photos of various places around the state, including the mountains near Asheville, are here.