Getting back into Pennsylvania we camped at Buckaloons in the Allegheny National Forest near Warren, Pennsylvania which is the only national forest in Pennsylvania.
Our primary purpose in visiting the northeast this fall was photography of the fall colors and as you can see there ain't none. Unfortunately this was to become a surprising pattern. We expected to start in the north and follow the color changes as they moved south. As it actually turned out the best colors would occur further south and mostly at higher elevations.
One of the major features dominating the area is the Kinzua Dam and the huge lake impounded behind it which has been a mixed blessing. Authorized as a result of the very destructive 1935 flood it now covers a lot of very productive farm land including about a third of the Seneca Reservation in southern New York. As I write this I am listening to Johnny Cash sing As Long As The Grass Shall Grow commemorating the broken Seneca Treaty originally signed by George Washington. The gorge could actually support a much larger dam and create another Great Lake. They sort of fake it by pumping water to the top of the gorge during off peak periods to have higher pressure water for peak generating.
Wandering over hill and dale we tried to climb to most of the overlooks in the forest with the big rocks and waterfalls along the way. The trails are mostly very good but boots or good shoes are definitely recommended.
This area is also the birthplace of the petroleum industry. The very shallow wells were dug either by hand or simple hammer drills. This was also prior to electricity or gasoline so they created very unique pumping systems. Sorry about the funky photographs but I had to work through a dusty window. They could only collect liquids so the large hit-skip engine used waste gas from the well and a leather belt to rotate the large horizontal wheel with a crank system moving solid rods sometimes several hundred feet long to operate several well pumps. I think this powerhouse operated five wells. Today we would call this a rube goldberg but you do what you gotta do.
Another very nice attraction is the Kinzua Bridge State Park preserving this engineering marvel you can read more about at this link. Originally crossing the entire gorge it deteriorated to the point a tornado in 2003 knocked down the central towers. When we visited they were making a skybridge observation point of the remaining portion but it did not open until 2011.
Finally closing out this visit is a field of ragweed with our campground in the trees in the background. A little excitement was packing up to leave on Sunday and discovering a slow leak in a tire. Warren is a small town with very limited facilities open on Sunday. We finally discovered poor alignment had caused the inside of the tire to wear into the steel belts and no compatible tires were available locally. The spare was also rather marginal but driving carefully we made it to Altoona and the serious expense of tire replacement.