Oil Creek State Park and Rural Venango County

This is my native country, Venango County.  The woods are dark hemlocks.  There's water everywhere, and ferns, and big rocks, and beeches.  There's also an occasional Biden sign in people's yards!

For some ridiculous reason, I did not think to bring my hiking boots with me and ended up doing a few miles of trails here in deck shoes.  Look at these steep hillsides.

Venango County--especially the Oil City area--is strangely eccentric.  Though the main hiking trail through Oil Creek State Park does a very long loop--something like 20 miles--I made a loop back to my car by taking some rural roads near the park.  This is an antique car museum that was closed...and looks like it's been closed for a long time.

Pleasant if unremarkable countryside.  I like the way the clouds cast passing shadows over the hills.

Oil Creek is a lazy stream that meanders between the hills and joins the Allegheny River at Oil City, my wildly eccentric hometown, where grand old houses sit abandoned and rotting into the hillsides, where businesses sit empty, where they've got a really good little independent coffee house and some very colorful characters.  I like to come up here to check on our house, which now sits empty and is no longer ours... Actually, back in Oil City's heyday, when Wolf's Head, Pennzoil, and Quaker State were all based here, Oil Creek once caught on fire.

This is the gated road that leads to the camping area inside Oil Creek State Park.  It's technically for backpackers, but locals come and set up camp, too.  

 This lovely old farm sits on White City Road, which is just a country lane.  The farmhouse had an old, worn picket fence around it, with the wire gate hanging open between the shrubs in a most inviting way.  A walkway  leads up to a shady porch with comfortable looking furniture.  What a beautiful place to live.