As much as I love pushing myself to hike long distance and climb large cliffs there is something to be said for just spending time in the woods, especially in a New England fall. Coming to Pennsylvania has continued to surprise me with the natural beauty of the state and Allegheny was absolutely no exception. Most of the time we spent in the woods unplugged from technology, responsibility and most of the outside world. My kind of vacation.
We stayed at the Tracy Ridge campground which was relatively secluded despite the surrounding campsites being occupied. According to my research on the various campgrounds in the forest, Tracy Ridge is mostly empty during the week, especially in the fall.
Before going on this trip I had researched a few different hikes, and there is really no shortage of beautiful views at Allegheny, but once we got there we had very little motivation to do much more than just sit in the campground and make a few trips in to town for supplies. We did however visit the Kinzua bridge which used to be a railway bridge until it was hit by a F1 tornado 2003. It was converted into a sky walk in 2011 where you can walk out about a third of the length of the bridge and look out at the rest of the destroyed bridge in the valley.
I would also recommend hiking down into the valley and getting a closer look. It is really an awesome experience and I am glad that we peeled ourselves away from the campground for this hike.
As for supplies we were sorely lacking for a fall camping excursion. At night the temperature got down to nearly freezing which none of us expected given the warm nature of this fall. We ended up having to run in to town to get more blankets which was a little tough since there aren’t a lot of large towns in the northern part of the park. The closest to Tracy Ridge is a small town called Bradford which did have a Walmart but it was a challenge to find a place for lunch there, so I would plan on bringing all of your own meals in to the park. A little bit further south there were some bigger towns but they are few and far between and the forest is so beautiful you won’t want to leave.
Mischief Managed 