April 2009 Trip to Oil Creek State Park

I think the time has come to begin posting on line what the troop is doing. Over the years we have taken many memorable trips and this seems like a good forum to share some of the things we do.


In April, we visited Oil Creek State Park and stayed at the Cow Run shelter. In the above picture you see Bryce Goettman, Justin Petrosky, Keith Neeley, Matt Biernesser, Dan Sadler, Tyler Weeks and Brett Peacock.

The Park is in the Western half of PA near Oil City. For us the driving time was about 2 hours. The hike from the parking lot to the shelter area is about a mile, so that trip was not hard. In fact, because the trip was short we took in some luxuries such as a large camp stove and an iron griddle. In planning the food for this trip they chose grilled cheese sandwiches and pancakes - two items requiring a grill. I normally would not take such heavy things on a backpacking trip, but they wanted to.

The Cow Run shelter area has six Adirondack shelters. We reserved two of the shelters ahead of time. Our trip was the weekend before Easter, hiking in on Friday and out on Saturday. On Friday, after arriving at the shelter area, the scouts went on an addition hike of four miles. Afterward we played a game of "Settlers of Catan," one of the troop's favorite. Saturday we worked for another hour stacking firewood underneath a wood shelter for future campers.