I love green hills and forests full of varied species and mushrooms and lots or little plants. There is so much green areas now in Pennsylvania.  When I was in my teens and hitch hiking around the Northeast Pennsylvania, it was a desert of mine waste and scraped earth.  I never wanted to go into the state for any length of time.  But the state has done a fantastic job preserving its remaining natural areas and reclaiming prior mining and drilling sites.  The Allegheny mountains and highlands are so wonderful to play in.

Pennsylvania has 308 Game Lands, covering over 1.5 million acres. There are 124 State Parks in Pa, ranging from cheeky Resorts to Primitive boondocking. But all are in great natural areas.  And this does not include protected or special conservation areas owned by private groups like the Audubon, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, etc.

In our visit to the Highland Hills State Park during the Aliner National Rally we spent many mornings touring the trails and forests. The Birds, deer, and many little squirrels and chipmunks were always entertaining and interesting.  The state park itself was adjacent to another State park, a Summer Sleep over Scout scamp, and game lands.  There were also many preserved remnants of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) from 1933-1942.  There is a entire “Tree Army” camp in near perfect condition with just a few plumbing upgrades. 

As an overall review of the camp, it is pretty nice. Pennsylvania requires you to stay in a “Dog Loop” if you bring your traveling companion. And while that isn’t a problem for us really, it puts a lot of other dogs in one area and a lot of dogs walking past in the early morning and late at night.  While Akela is well behaved and generally ignores them, they tend to bark at him and behave poorly.  This is disturbing to all the other campers in the area and suddenly you hear a lot of “Shut Up!” to dogs barking in other trailers and motor homes in the early morning.  The nice thing is they do have doggy bags placed around the loop and so people have no excuse to not pick up after their dogs.

The Camping area is a side road off the main road.  The Main Road continues to some hiking trail areas and the beach and boat launch area. This particular week near the end of June the parking lots were 1/3 full in the early morning (Fisherman?)  and about 3/4 full around 2pm (Swimmers?).  And I am just speaking about on large parking area. There are three other areas for more parking, so the water facilities have a lot of capacity.  See my earlier video for a tour of that water front park place.  (2017 Tour of Laurel Hill SP)

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Beyond the waterfront is the group camp areas.  I believe there is at least 3 large separate group camps.  They look completely set up for a large church group of Alumni group to take over and camp.  Then the road continues beyond that for 2-3 miles passing by the historic “Tree Army” Camp and a number of other Boy Scout camps and Hiking trails.  Many places to stop and park and take a long or short hike through the beautiful forest.  And just across the road is more picnic areas and a very neat “Viewing tower” a short walk off a parking area at the top of a hill.  Make sure you stop at the visitor center and get a map and find out about all the fun places to go.  Their parking is just before the booth to the camping area.

We had a good time at this park. Even though we spent a lot of time at the Aliner rally while camped here, we always got up early and explored the park and enjoyed chatting with rangers and workers. Hope this makes you want to visit the park. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, if the price is within your budget.

Rick & Akela

P.S. –  My shopping page is undergoing a reconstruction (https://goingnowherefastrv.com/shopping/).  Amazon tossed me from their Affiliates program so I need to remove their links.  I will have new vendors and places soon.  Some cheaper and better than Amazon, though when Amazon is still the best place, they will be listed.