Abandoned PA sites in God's Country

Potter County PA is known as God's Country. Even the police cars state it proudly! We made it a camping destination for night sky viewing hoping that we would get at least one clear night out of four (which we did!) I have never done night sky photography and I will need to work on those skills more. Even with a tripod, I have some blur in the final images.

We hiked to some abandoned/destroyed/interesting places! First was Austin Dam, built to supply a paper mill and  which broke just two years after building , and flooded a town, killing 78 people.

From the dam site, we hiked to the ruined paper mill, a hike that ended up involving some bushwhacking and me doing a face plant (but I saved the camera!)

Keeping on the destruction theme, we visited Kinzua Bridge next. This train bridge was destroyed by a tornado in 2003.

In its day it was an engineering marvel, built in 1900 spanning a gorge. You can walk out to a viewing platform that was not as scary as it looked (I hate heights!) and see the twisted metal of the bridge at the bottom of the gorge. We then hiked down to the bottom, which then required hiking back up and realized how steep the trail really was.

And, Natalie was celebrating her Sweet Sixteenth birthday!

Put these abandoned PA places on your list of weekend adventures!

~Jen