Enjoying Western Pennsylvania

Over the past two months, we were busy working at the campground getting the RV ready to be our home and organizing our stuff for storage at our daughter’s house. In between that and me working during the week, we found some time to have fun and enjoy the Pennsylvania countryside. I thought I would share some of our favorites places with you today.

Over the years, our camping experience has not taken us too far and we spent most of our time in Pennsylvania, especially western PA. If you have never been here, you will find beautiful countryside, farms, rolling hills, streams, and forests with many small towns scattered in between. We chose a campground near Cook Forest State Park as our seasonal site a few years back. I spent many happy times at Cook Forest as a child and wanted to share it with my children. Walking through the woods here, especially among the ancient pines and hemlocks, you get such a sense of peace and tranquility. Tim and I have a few favorite trails that we hike in the forest and while it isn’t on the same scale as I saw in Sequoia National Park, these trees are pretty impressive.

This log cabin is at the start of Longfellow trail, inside you can learn about logging in the area and how this land was preserved for us to enjoy.

Some of the trees here are quite old.

Start of the trail; it gets steep as it goes up. Well worth the hike. the Ancient forest levels off at the top.

Facts about the forest.

A peaceful forest

One of our favorite places to eat while here in Cook Forest is the Forest Nook. It is a cute little place with mostly outdoor seating in a wonderful setting with great food and friendly staff.

Dessert to go.

We took a long weekend a few weeks ago and traveled over to Somerset County to meet some fellow RVers and bloggers, Bill and Kelly. They were busy the first day so we filled our time touring around the Somerset area. We spent the morning at the Flight 93 Memorial which was a humbling experience. We were overwhelmed and emotional, so didn’t take many pictures there. Afterwards, we found covered bridges and other interesting sites as we drove through the countryside.

View of the crash site

A covered bridge nearby

The American Legion near one of the covered bridges had a nice memorial.

Unexpected find when we stopped to eat.

The stream above was behind this restaurant. it had just changed hands and the dining room was closed but the deck out back was open. Made for a relaxing evening.

The next few weekends were spent in Clarion County at the campground. We found time to visit a local winery as well as many drives around the countryside and many deer on every drive.

country side views

Enjoying some local wine. A bit sweet for me but tim liked a few of their wines.

seeing many fawns this year.

This area in Western PA will always be home to us but we are looking forward to our travel adventure to see the rest of the country. Just waiting for some repairs to be done on the trailer and then we will be on our way.