Chapter One of an Autumn Camping Adventure Across Pennsylvania

If It's Sunday, it Must Be Parker Dam State Park!

This series is dedicated to the memory of Joe "Spider' Warner, an AC Content Producer and Administrator of "Talk About Bradford," who led me to Associated Content.

The camping gear is stowed, the laundry is done, the photographs are albumed, and I can finally document the memories of our recent journey. Our travels encompassed the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, from Philadelphia, the southeastern-most point, to Erie, the northwestern-most point. We spent the first week at Parker Dam State Park in the Allegheny Wilds, half an hour from Benezette, the heart of the Pennsylvania elk range. We then headed for Erie, Pennsylvania, spending the weekend at the YMCA Camp Sherwin, with my daughter, her husband and my three grandchildren (and 300 boy scouts, as it turned out). Waving a tearful goodbye to the Erie residents, we would then head southeast, stopping in Bradford for lunch to meet my cousin and some friends from Bradford On-line, and continuing on for a week at World's End State Park in the Endless Mountains of Sullivan County.

We left Philadelphia around 9:00 a.m. (yes, we always say we're leaving at 7:00 a.m. -- that never happens) on an unseasonably warm Sunday, headed north on the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and had a quick breakfast at the Hickory Run rest stop right past the Lehigh Tunnel.