Not So Brilliant

Our plan for Pennsylvania was to do some leaf peeping.  PA is known for their leaves and last year was supposed to have been pretty stunning.  I had planned our destination weeks out so we knew we might have to go North or South to see the peak.  I had been watching the state and media reports for the last 2 weeks and it looked like we nailed the timing.  "Nailed it" may have been the proper description.

Flying in we only saw a smattering of color but the report said it was there, we would just need to drive a bit.  We have the official report above.  In the end I think today was more about the journey than the destination.   We headed towards State College with the plan to continue to Black Moshannon state park about 30 miles North if required.

As we drove we saw more and more splashes of color but we also noticed that we had a quarter color, a quarter no leaves and half green.  State college was nice but not there so we headed to the Park.  Again, nice views but not stunning.

We enjoyed the park for a while and decided we might do better heading a bit North East. This would also give us new views on the way back and take us through Amish country.  We headed towards Lewisburg and stopped at two other parks on the way, RB Winter and Sandbridge.  Again just splashes, we would occasionally see some really nice trees and a few by themselves were vibrant but the forest was not.

Our journey into Amish country was fun, we started to see more watch for buggy signs.  We had seen a lot of watch for deer signs and as many deer on the roadside that obviously did not see the watch for car signs.  Thankfully the only Buggies we saw were moving and safe.

We may not have gotten the perfect leaves but we did find a neat place for ice cream on the way back.  We enjoyed sitting in the shade on a nice autumn day.  We made it back to the hotel before sunset and had some local Stromboli for dinner.  I looked over my flight plans a few times seeing if I could optimize the route any way but there were not better altitudes or routes for what nature had planned for us.