Allegheny National Forest
Last weekend was a long weekend for the folks in the US. One final mad push before the summer officially ends. For the long weekend I had the pleasure of disconnecting for an extended period, and hung out in Allegheny National Forest. This was my first extended visit to the park. The area that I stayed in is close to the Kinzua Dam and Kinzua Lake. Got up there late friday night, never fails that i’m setting up my tent in the dark. Saturday was spent lazily around the campsite. I wasn’t feeling to well, but by late afternoon, I was ready to explore. Destination for the evening was Rimrock Overlook and Trail. The trail is an 8-mile trail looping down toward the beach and back up to Rimrock. It’s also known as Morrison trail. I didn’t do the entire loop, actually only did a half of a mile at best. The coolest, literally, feature of Rimrock are the massive cool air vents. They collect so much cold air over the winter, that in the summer, the vents are natural air conditioners. They are strong too, you don’t have to stand very close to feel the cold air. If you do climb up into one, as I did, it will make condensation appear on your glasses. Super cool. After exploring that area for a while, I headed back to camp for some dinner. After dinner, back up to Rimrock to catch sunset. It wasn’t much of a sunset, actually as I was pulling into the lot I saw the sun setting. It was large and red. So beautiful. I knew I was there in plenty of time to setup and catch a wonderful show. Accept … I wasn’t. Though local time pegged sunset at 7:55pm and I showed up at 7:30pm. It wasn’t enough. By the time I hiked over to the outlook, the sun had disappeared into the clouds. Good lesson here, stay no matter what. Light and clouds always do interesting things. Staying for over two hours. I captured the last of the light, and watched the clouds move over Kinzua Bay. Below me there were people bringing in their boats for the night, and some cabin lights coming on. It was peaceful. Even though the sun disappeared the rays through the clouds put on a show!