Camping at Pennsylvania’s Little Pine State Park (Location)
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May 5, 2012: We had arrived at Little Pine State Park early enough the day before to have time to set up our tent and then hop back in the car and drive down to Woolrich, PA where my wife wanted to take a look at what the Woolrich outlet store had to offer. While we were away from the campground, a really nasty storm moved up the valley with lots of thunder and lightning and lots of rain. Everyone we met in the morning wondered how we had weathered the storm. Since we had been in Woolrich, where the storm wasn’t too bad, all we could say was, “Sorry, missed it!” 🙂
The campground is located below the Little Pine Creek dam. Image above shows the retaining wall of the dam on the left and the campground on the right. The tenting sites were located among the pines seen higher up the hillside. Most of the spots offer electricity and those were reasonably full with an assortment of campers, fifth wheelers and motorhomes. Up in the tenting area, we had the place pretty much to ourselves.
I had purchased another 4-season tent (a North Face Mountain 25) in October, but, due to my father’s deteriorating health at the time, didn’t get to use it. This was, therefore, its maiden voyage and it survived the big storm and downpour all by itself.
Although the North Face Mountain 25 is billed as four season tent, it is really designed for use in the winter and cooler months. For us, in Pennsylvania on this occasion, it was a bit too warm on the first night despite its great ventilation system. In fairness, with the temperature hovering in the 80’s and with a near 100% humidity level on that first night, I expect that we would have felt a bit warm even in one of our three season tents.
We didn’t bring any cooking gear with us on this trip, so breakfast was at the local restaurant which is located just outside the park gate. Our waitress for breakfast was new on the job so, somehow, my order of eggs with sausage and rye toast ended up being eggs with ham and bacon and a side order of sausage and brown toast and a side order of rye toast and a copious quantity of hash browns – a bit more than even I planned on eating for one meal! :-). Food was tasty though so I did my best!
After breakfast, it was our intention to take a walk along the Lake Shore Trail which hugs the east side of the man-made lake above the dam structure. The heavy rains of the night before had eroded some of the hillside beside the road. It was interesting to see how the erosion pattern resembled mini-landslides of flakes of the shale rather than as chunks of shale or rock tumbling down the hillside.
 
All along the roadside, the wild Columbine were blooming and numerous Tiger Swallowtail butterflies (Papillio glaucus) fluttered by us. The moisture had also allowed the polypores to expand in size. (Tech: Nikon D300 with vintage Nippon Kogaku Micro-Nikkor manual focus 55mm f3.5 lens)
 
Although there was plenty to photograph along the roadside, our plan was to walk along the Lake Shore Trail, and off we went to follow that plan.
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