We lived on the New Jersey side of Philadelphia for over a decade and saw much of the east. Kayaking took us into the southwest but we had not spent much time in the middle of the state. This year we were chasing fall colors starting in the Allegheny National Forest up near my parents old stomping grounds of Warren, Pennsylvania, wandering southeast to Altoona, Pennsylvania to see a lot about trains, and then into Maryland and Virginia possibly ending up in the Carolinas if the colors were good. Unfortunately we were very disappointed with this year's colors and called it quits in the middle of Virginia but that story will unfold as we move along.
After our stay at Delaware State Park north of Columbus, Ohio we took a short trip into western Pennsylvania to show Lori some of my old Kayak haunts. Our camping experience at Shenango Recreation Area was somewhat less than ideal especially on the weekends with drunk adults and screaming kids. We were starting to realize most campers have RVs so they can close the door, turn up the TV, and ignore the outside.
One of the fun whitewater streams is Slippery Rock Creek as it passes through McConnells Mill State Park. Since there is no upstream dam it is only usable during spring runoff, typically late March, cold, ice in the eddies along the shore, and a real blast. My only opportunity to run the creek was wonderful until about half way down to the mill pond a lens popped out of my new $600 prescription goggles and I was the one eyed man on a raging river. Oops! Try to imagine this placid June stream with another two to three feet of water boiling through the rocks. WOW!
Despite having to stay off the whitewater now we traveled the length of the park to see the parts I had missed. This is a very nice park with several of these overlooks showing basically what the pioneers saw when they first moved into the area and started farming which required the mill to grind grain.
A little boring for photographs we also visited Pymatuning Reservoir north of the campground where I had taken a Sea Kayak Seminar and then back to Columbus.