Leonard Harrison State Park a nature lovers and hikers dream
Written: Jul 18 '09
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Pros: Wonerful view, Challenging hikes, nature is great, friendly staff.
Cons: Couldn't find any Cons
The Bottom Line: This is a wonderful place to visit even if it's just for a day. The views are so spectacular that you will have to smile.
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| klueger's Full Review: Leonard Harrison State Park |
Leonard Harrison State Park is a wonderful park located in Wellsboro PA. This park is part of the area known as the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon. This park is for the hiker and nature lover. We camped there for a few days and enjoyed it very much. The actual Pennsylvania Grand Canyon is actually Pine Creek Gorge which is flanked by Leonard Harrison State Park, Colton St. Park and Tioga State Forest. Having three areas that preserve natural area’s is why this is a wonderful place for the nature lover.
The park offers hiking, camping, picnicking, hunting, fishing, and wildlife watching. We don’t hunt and only certain areas are available to hunt. You also must have a Pennsylvania hunting license to hunt in PA. We didn’t fish on this trip however; according to the website pine creek offers trout, pan fish, and smallmouth bass.
The park has picnic tables and little shelters with picnic tables and also three larger pavilion picnic areas. The larger pavilion areas can be reserved I am not sure if there is a fee or not. The picnic areas also have grills people can use for their picnics. The picnic areas are kept clean and are surrounded by trees and nature abounds.
The hiking trails I would say are of moderate difficulty but can be done slowly if you have troubles walking. The trails have spots for rest with wonderful views of the canyon. Overlook Trail is 1 mile long and would be the easiest trail in the park. It is a dirt path but does not offer many challenges one really steep hill is part of the trail. It loops so when you start out if you take the higher root you will go down the steep part rather than climbing it. You do go uphill to get back but it is not as steep of a climb. Turkey Path Trail is 2 miles long and fairly steep and curving. It goes to Pine Creek. The trail then continues and is called Little Four Mile Run. This goes down to the gorge and hooks up with Pine Creek Trail which is 57 miles long. Pine Creek Trail is used for biking, hiking, cross country skiing, and horse riding. We only hiked on Pine Creek Trail for about ½ mile because we had already done Turkey Path Trail and Little Four Mile Run and we knew we had to hike back up to the top of these paths. Pine Creek Trail is the easiest to walk on but certainly the longest.
Along these trails God’s creation blares out in its beauty. We enjoyed seeing various trees, birds, fungus, plants, and of course water falls in pine creek. The combination Turkey Path and Little Four Mile Run took us about 3 hours to do. The sign at the park tells you it is 1 ½ but don’t believe it. As I mentioned before though most people stop and enjoy the views offered along these trails of the creek. Overlook trail also offers sights along it, but it probably only takes about ½ hour long to hike. On this trail we did get to see what we believe to be a flicker woodpecker. We have never seen these in Western PA so it was a joy discovering this bird.
The campground had both sites for tents without electric hook-up and sites for trailers that do have electric. We camp in a tent so we opted for the less expensive tent site. The ground is rather rocky and provided some hardship in finding a good spot to set our tent up, but once we did get the tent up the site was nice. We had some concerns about finding wood, but we managed without having to buy wood. The campsites have metal fire rings with a pull over grill to cook on. Some sites actually had stand up grills like the ones you find in the picnic areas. I am not sure if the fire rings contained a grill also or not. I didn’t not want to walk into other people’s site. The sites are a nice size you have room between them so you do not feel like your sharing in on your neighbor’s conversations. They also are shaded and provide more for the nature lover. Plenty of birds abound such as wrens, sparrows, eagles, ravens, osprey and robins. We got to see all these from our campsite. Though the eagles and osprey only flew over we did not get an up close view of these birds. We also encountered a deer one morning as well as a salamander which we discovered while breaking camp. It must have been under our tent, I am glad none of crushed it while we moving around in the tent.
The bathrooms in the campground provided one warm shower in each bathroom. They had three rooms one for women, one for men, and one which was called the family sharing bathroom. The showers provided warm water and while not extremely forceful had enough water pressure to clean yourself well. The showers also had a pull down seat for handicapped individuals. This was easy to manipulate and provided a good base and enough curvature to use a transfer board to get onto it. The bathrooms also where kept very clean and for the most part people helped keep them nice. We have found that many times the bathrooms are not the cleanest bathrooms in campgrounds; however these receive high marks for cleanliness.
The park does have an education area though it was closed most of the time we camped there because they are installing a big screen television to broadcast the education videos. The videos are about the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon. I found this to be a little disconcerting seeing as that our wonderful PA state legislatures and fabulous Governor are saying our state has no money and we’ll have to close state parks, but they have money for a big screen T.V. Use the old small TV. and put the money towards better things like continuing to preserve our parks.
The park does have an area with just an overlook which is well maintained and the views are phenomenal. We had been to this area in the fall a couple of years ago for a Faith Alive weekend and got to go to this area for a brief period of time. The view of the trees in the fall with the colors changing was astonishing. You also can see the birds flying overhead. They have some educational stands which tell about different things you may encounter in the park. For instance we learned how to tell the difference between turkey vultures, eagles, and osprey while they are in flight. They have other education platforms also about snakes and the history of the area.
The park has a gift shop with your normal souvenirs. The staff was friendly and helpful. The store also was very clean and inviting. The prices at the store are within normal prices. We bought a sweatshirt for $30 and a T-Shirt for $12.
The rangers made themselves visible especially at night and seemed friendly. They offered help and did not seem to have an attitude problem which we have seen in some parks.
Overall Leonard Harrison St. Park is a great park to visit and camp at. If you don’t like to camp but enjoy trees and nature it is still a great park to visit. I highly recommend it.
Thank you for reading my review and I hope you have found it helpful in some way.
Recommended:
Yes
Best time to go: Anytime
Recommended for: Familes
Review Topic: Overview
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Epinions.com ID:
klueger
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Location: Somewhere east of the missippi
Reviews written: 173
Trusted by: 181 members
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Trying to serve God and not my earthly desires. Know that I love you all
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