This is an odd park – it is huge: 9
picnic areas, a big lake, 293 campsites, hiking and biking trails,
hunting, fishing, and more. While the sites are mostly open with high
shade, sites aren't particularly large or level, campers with pets
are segregated from the rest, there are only about five restrooms all
the camping areas, and while they have flush toilets, the showers are
push button and no water temperature adjustment :( .
The campground is near the small town
of Schellsburg which has many beautiful, old homes and is a friendly
little town with a small cafe/grocery store which serves great frozen
custard. While there we visited the Flight 93 Memorial, saw some
covered bridges, and visited the Old Bedford Village.
The Flight 93 National Memorial is
located in the field where the fourth of the highjacked flights on
911 crashed after the passengers struggled to keep the plane from
reaching its target, believed to be the Capitol or perhaps the White
House. There is a huge amount of information in the visitor center
and the grounds are a good mix of information, memorial wall, the
crash site, and a path one can walk beneath newly planted trees,
across a creek and up to the visitor center. The memorial is a
beautiful monument to the heartbreak and heroism that was Flight 93.
P
There are 14 covered bridges within
about an hour and a half drive. We saw two – it was a nasty, rainy
day – one was Colvin Bridge, a multiple kingpost design built in
1866 and the second the Claycomb Bridge, a burr truss design built in
1880, at the Old Bedford Village.
The Old Bedford Village is a collection
of 40 buildings – some original and others replicas – of homes
and businesses from the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. Most
buildings had period furnishings or artifacts and some had a
volunteer who demonstrated skills needed in every day life of the
period. One visitor likened it to a “non-commercialized
Williamsburg”. There was ample opportunity for visitors interacting
– in the whitesmith shop, tin squares with patterns taped on top
were available for punching,
there were props available for kids to
borrow from the visitor's center while they visited the village, and
more. Several times throughout the year there are special programs
with reenactments of historical times. The day we visited, we were
“met” General Robert E. Lee, and two other Confederate generals
and they told us their stories. There was a drummer and fife player
who played several tunes and several other folks who demonstrated
military weaponry. All-in-all, it was a delightful way to spend the
day.
A side note about the Claycomb covered
bridge – it was moved to the Old Bedford Village in 1975. The
expected cost of moving the bridge was over $100,000, however, after
the bridge was disassembled, it was found that in order to support
the busloads of schoolchildren that would visit, it needed to be
reinforced with steel beams, which increased the cost to more than
$600,000. This unexpected expense, coupled with a county or city
upgrade to the water system has eaten up the funds expected to be
used for maintenance and improvements at the site. This is an under
visited but eminently worthwhile living history village. If you're
ever in the area, plan on a visit and take a few extra bucks to leave
as a donation to their maintenance fund. I think you'll find it's
well worth it.
The weather here has been typical of
the rest of this year's – rainy. About 6:30 in the evening after
visiting the old village we got emergency weather alerts on our
phones that we were under a flood watch and a tornado warning. A few
moments later a park ranger came by and told us to be prepared to
move to the restrooms if he came by with his siren and lights going.
Happily, that didn't happen, but we've had more flood/tornado scares
this year than during any previous trips. Of course, we went west in
previous years and stayed south until we were west of Texas, so
stayed a little more out of the way. Hopefully we'll be able to
continue to miss any really bad weather. Our flood experience in
Louisiana was quite enough for me!
On our return from one of our day
trips, we noticed an off-road type RV – the one in the photo is
actually one we saw in Jasper, Texas in 2014, since I didn't get a
photo of this one – and spent some time talking with the couple who
lived in it. They've been to Israel, Japan, China, Switzerland,
Australia, New Zealand, Africa, coming to the US from South and
Central America!
One of the first days at the
campground, we noticed that the top of the dumpster in our loop had
collapsed into the unit. We wondered what had caused it and the
morning we left, we saw a bear trap had been put in place near the
dumpster. Guess there was a hungry bear around!
We leave for Thompkins Campground,
Cowanesque Lake in the morning.
