Desperate for a quick adventure in the NY/NJ/PA area? Feel the wanderlust kicking into overdrive? Well, check out this killer 2-4 day road trip through Pennsylvania, which can definitely be done on the cheap! We’ll start out with an up close and personal encounter with some alpacas, and a comfy base for the night. From there, we’ve got some of the darkest dark skies in the country, a (heart stopping, if you’re in any way affected by heights) view from 300 feet above the forest, complete with a glass bottom floor, and some hiking, or history, if you’d like. It need only cost you about $200 more than you’d have spent to survive normal life, and around 5.5 hours of driving, each way, but, it’s worth every second! If that sounds like a long time to be stuck in the car, you should check out some of our other blog posts for travel survival advice.
Our Alpaca encounter was pretty awesome. At a total price of just over $110, we got a one bedroom apartment, above a barn, on airbnb.com. The owner reached out to us and asked if our kids would be interested in “walking” an Alpaca. Uh, yes please! Needless to say, the kids loved the experience. The stay was what we were looking for: a place to cook food for that evening and the next day – because eating every meal at a restaurant is expensive and time consuming. Fair warning: while the unit is in the mountains, and about 30 degrees cooler than the Philadelphia suburbs, it can still get warm, and, there’s no AC in the unit. If that’s a deal breaker, you’ll have to visit Alpacas somewhere else. Since we weren’t planning on spending any more time in the unit than was required to prepare food, and sleep, we didn’t care. It’s a brand new unit, built specifically for use as an airbnb rental, and the hosts are extremely welcoming and friendly.
Cherry Springs State Park
Cost: Free
If you’ve never seen the milky way light up the night sky, or watched meteors shoot across the sky long enough to point them out to the most oblivious member of your family, then you need to get to Cherry Springs. First, you need to do some planning, because, dark sky parks are anything but dark when the moon is shining like a spotlight. Clouds will put a damper on the stargazing, as well. However, it is worth the effort. You’ll want to bring lots of blankets, because, when the dew settles on the top layer, you’ll either have some reserve blankets to fall back on, or, you’ll be cold and wet. We’ve gone at the end of June and in the early part of August and the temperature dropped into the low 50’s, both times. You’ll need blankets. Also, be aware that it doesn’t actually get “dark,” until well after sunset. In late June, the last vestiges of sunlight came at about 10:30. While the views at 10pm, as the sun’s light fades, were amazing, the real show doesn’t start until about 11pm. Again – worth it.
If you plan ahead, or, if you’re just plain lucky, you can score a spot at the campground at Cherry Springs State Park. With plenty of room to spread out, and the bonus of being in the location you plan to sleep, while being at a dark sky park, landing a campsite here is a definite win. There is also lodging in the area. Otherwise, you’re in for a long drive, late at night – by definition, dark sky parks are going to be in the middle of nowhere. If there was civilization close by, there would be light pollution, and, therefore, no dark skies.
Kinzua Bridge State Park
Cost: Free
Rising over 300 feet above the forest floor below, you walk out to the end of the bridge, which happens to be the middle of a valley, and used to be the middle of the bridge. In 2003, a tornado ripped through the valley, shredding the middle portion of the bridge, and littering the valley with massive chunks of steel. It was reopened in its current form, several years ago. You could literally fit all of the Statue of Liberty – from the bas, up tp just about the top of the torch, under the bridge. It’s pretty intense up there. There are also a number of beautiful hiking trails through the valley below. Still, Kinzua Bridge State Park felt like one of those places that you sort of need to tie in as part of a larger trip in my mind. It could be my wicked ADHD that feels the need to ping-pong from one experience to the next… or, it could just be that it’s over five hours away from me, in the middle of nowhere. Either way, this was one that we had wanted to get to for several years now, but, being in the middle of nowhere, had not had the occasion to get there. Even on this trip, we almost didn’t make it happen, as the first day’s plans were derailed by… well, by the Alpaca thing. Now, with the kids still talking nonstop about Kinzua, I can safely say that the decision to make the 90 minute trip the next morning, from our airbnb to Kinzua, was well worth it. I expected the glass bottom floor at the end of the bridge to be show (and heart) stopper. While that was very cool, it was not the nearly unexplainable adrenaline rush of walking over the train tracks which run down the middle of the bridge. There are gaps between the planks of about an inch and a half, and, for whatever reason, walking over them, and putting one foot in front of the other is freaking terrifying. The terror is totally worth the rush!
Family Road Trip 