The Pennsylvania Laurel Highlands is an area of the Southwestern corner of Pennsylvania which contains a portion of the Appalachian Mountains. You’ll find dramatic mountains, including the tallest in Pennsylvania. The streams, rivers, and lakes are a something-for-everyone collection of glassy ponds and lakes, clear, easy-flowing streams, majestic rivers, and the most challenging white water in the East.
The Great Allegheny Passage, an award-winning 150-mile unpaved rail trail for hiking and biking, runs south/southeast through, over, around and even under some of our most beautiful mountains, forests and rivers, offering spectacular vistas all along the way. It’s nearly flat, with no grades greater than 2%. And just below the Mason-Dixon Line, in Cumberland, Maryland, it links up with the C&O Canal Towpath, extending the total distance to 320 miles and effectively connecting Pittsburgh and Washington, DC. Check out my video about it here—> The 2012 RTTC Greenway Sojourn – DC-Pittsburgh
The region also contains a network of 9 Pennsylvania state parks, all offering free access and use of basic facilities. Keystone state park, Koosier state park, Laurel Hill state park, Laurel Ridge state park, Laurel Mountain State Park, Laurel Summit state park, Forbes state park, Linn run state park, and Ohiopyle state park.
There are also numerous national parks or monuments. The Johnstown Flood National Memorial, The Flight 93 National Memorial, Fort Necessity, Friendship Hill national historic site, Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic site. And ten local parks administered by a variety of municipal organizations offering a wide variety of events and facilities. 
So when the Aliner’s Owners Club said they were going down to that area for a Rally I jumped to the occasion and marked the calendar for an extended stay. We just unfortunately choose a fairly wet week. I hope they choose a dryer week next time. The Laurel Highlands is a particularly pretty area. It has the temperate weather that I like in New York, yet winter doesn’t stay around quite as long. And snow rarely accumulates in the 3-4ft range as it does where I am (actually 6-8 ft). Because the area is a littler higher and mostly forested hills and mountains, the temperatures are cooler than the city, though Pittsburgh is really just over 55 miles away. So I would consider living there, if only there were jobs available. Alas, it seems to be an inconvenient truth, great job openings don’t usually occur in great places ! But that is what vacations and time OFF work is all about. Finding the places that re-new and energize the soul to allow you to slog through another few months or years of your regular 8-5 routine.
Anyways, so we had out of Syracuse on Tuesday evening and when approximately 3 hours down to Corning New York and the Camp Bell campground where we had our Aliner rally a year ago. I just figured we get a head start on getting out of town so that I didn’t sleep late and slog on down to the Leonard Harrison State Park at some late time. We do so much camping in early spring and late fall, we forget that the sun stays up until 9 o’clock in the summer. We also forgot how hot it gets in the middle of the day during July and August. I was so glad we had picked electrical campsites to camp at and had repaired/replaced the air conditioner in the Aliner. The only place we camped without electricity was the Ohiopyle State Park (Kentuck campground) and there we were completely buried in the trees. Also we got on the road from the park by 11 o’clock so it did not have a chance to get very hot. It’s my belief that it’s a good idea to travel during the middle of the day with air-conditioning in the car running on full. Especially the boys sitting way in the back need to get all the cold air that they can get. They really prefer it to be around 50.I wasn’t really to impressed with Ohiopyle campground. It had simple things that were broken and not fixed like drinking fountains and toilets. It also had very few bathrooms for the number of people that they serve. On my count it was roughly one bathhouse to around 25 or 30 campsites.I prefer a 1 to 15 ratio.
From Ohiopyle campground we visited the Laurel Hills campground and did that video. Then we went down to our final destination at the Confluence – Army Corps of Engineers Outflow campground. We set up pretty quick and then went up to the rally to check in and say hi and get the schedule of events. That RV park they were in was quite a shock. I sent the drone up and got less than 1/10 of the actual RV park on film because it is so huge. I’ll bet the population of the town they are in triples when that RV Park is full. Hell, I’ll bet it more than 10 times as many people in that RV Park is in this whole town. It was a very nice RV park, however I just can’t have that many people zipping around in golf carts and be in that close to me when I’m out to enjoy the wilds. I know a lot of people get into that type of culture where there at a place where everybody has the same attitude of “I’m on vacation and I’m happy”. But for me it’s more peace and quiet and communing with nature. Not that our campsite in the Confluence COE campground was so much more in the woods, but we could walk to a beautiful lake or a number of secluded trails in pretty short order from our campsite. Also it was $13 a night cheaper. I just wish I had brought my bike !
But from the outflow campground site we were able to visit a whole lot of different attractions in the area and just under an hour’s drive. I won’t talk too much about them here because they will be future videos. And so I will save that for a future blog. But just to give you an idea of all the attractions in this Laurel Highlands area, there is: the flight 93 Memorial, Fort necessity built by George Washington, the National Rd., Laurel Caverns, several breweries and wineries, hundreds of miles of fishing stream, hundreds of miles of hiking trails, and hundreds of miles of biking trails, horse riding trails, hunting areas.
So if you get the timing you want to see some lush greenery and great weather, but you don’t want all the headaches of going into New England, check out the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania. I think you’ll be very pleasantly surprised.
Rick, Caesar, Dakota