Cody’s blog

Green Lakes State Park
7900 Green Lakes Road
Fayetteville, NY 13066

(315) 637-6111

June 8 – 13, 2025

Our late spring/early summer camping trip was to three parks in upstate New York, beginning with Green Lakes State Park in Fayetteville, New York. We arrived at around 1:30 PM on Sunday afternoon after an easy one and a half hour drive. I was in site 61, a nice level electric-only site, a few sites down from my brother and sister-in-law’s trailer. The sites were a bit close together, which caused me some annoyance, especially later on. The site to my driver’s side was occupied by a family with kids when I arrived. Their fire ring was only a few feet from my van, and they had a fire going all afternoon and evening. They left early the next morning but I could still smell the smoke in the van the next afternoon.

On my passenger side, a group arrived around 8 pm on my first night, and they were quite a bunch. Large trailer with several pickup trucks and tons of people. Most of the time, they were gone, so it was nice and quiet, but when they were all at the site, they liked to party, and the music and loud voices were bothersome. Plus, they had lots of guests with more cars parked all over the place, at the side of the road and on the grass and they took up quite a bit more than their allotted space. I put up with them for most of the trip but ended up moving sites for my last night in the park because they were partying all afternoon and evening and I couldn’t stand them any longer.

(more…)

Hickory Run State Park
3 Family Camp Rd
White Haven, PA 18661-9712

272-808-6192

May 12 – 16, 2025

This was the second park of our May trip. We headed out from the previous park at 10 AM and arrived at Hickory Run around 1 PM, after a smooth, easy drive. I checked in, found out where my site was, and went to fill my water tank. There was supposed to be a water fill at the dump site (which I didn’t see at the time, but on my way out at the end of the trip, I did see it there, oops!) So I went back into the park, circled one of the loops and found an empty site with a water hookup, so I snuck in and filled my tank there, before locating my site, which was almost completely level! Yay!

After resting a bit, I went out to check out the bathhouse. The nice, new bathhouse almost directly behind my site turned out to be under construction and closed. Bummer. Beyond that was a waterless restroom with vault toilets. Figured I’d just use the facilities in the van. There was also a water spigot between the two sites to my left, both of which appeared to be closed, so I figured if I needed more water, I could drive over there. And roll my cassette over to the vault toilets to dump. But neither of those contingencies turned out to be necessary.

My brother and sister-in-law stopped by at around 4:30 to check out my site, and then we drove around the campground. Their site was about a mile from mine, so no walking between sites! The campground appeared to be mostly tent sites with a few electric loops and even fewer full hookups.

(more…)

Caledonia State Park
101 Pine Grove Road
Fayetteville, PA 17222-8224

717-352-2161

May 9 – 12, 2025

My first camping trip of the year! I visited two state parks in Pennsylvania, meeting up with my brother and sister-in-law on their last stops on their way home from a winter of snowbirding. My first stop was Caledonia State Park in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania.

The drive down was… not fun. Maps told me it would be about a four-hour drive, more than I usually like to spend on the road, but doable, and I thought I could handle it without a stopover. I headed out around 10:30 AM, hoping to arrive around 3:00 PM, with a rest stop along the way. But somehow I fat-fingered my route in the map app while I was putting my phone in its slot, or something, because it started out taking me waaaaaay out of my way (had me en route to go north on 81 instead of south), then offered me a faster route by way of 81-S, which was certainly better than going north, so I switched to that. I’d originally planned to take a different route which would have been slightly faster, but I didn’t want to stop and recalculate so I just went with it. It still should have gotten me there around 2:30, with no stops along the way, but between the heavy rain, road construction, and getting stuck in Friday afternoon rush hour stop-and-go traffic in Harrisburg, it was nearly 4 PM by the time I got to the campground.

Caledonia State Park has two separate campgrounds, about a mile apart. The larger campground, Chinpaquin, was where my brother and SIL were staying, didn’t allow pets, so I chose a site in the Hosack Run campground. I’d seen reviews saying that the sites were very cramped and close together, so I carefully chose what appeared to be a site with some space around it near the far end of the loop. Turned out I’d made a pretty good choice as far as space was concerned — my site was on the outside of three small, bunched together sites, but the site itself had plenty of room for my little van, and my sliding door was facing out to the small wooded area between me and the next site up. There was a couple tent camping in the middle site, and a truck with a small teardrop trailer on the other side. I definitely got the best site as far as space and view is concerned, but it was sloped pretty badly, both front to back and side to side. I tried to level it with my new curved leveling blocks, but the ground was soft from all the rain, and the blocks just sunk into the ground when I drove on them. After moving the van around at least three or four times and being unable to make any headway, I gave up and just parked the van without levelers and decided to live with it.

Since our sites were too far apart to visit each other walking, my brother and I decided to meet up in the morning, and just take the evening to settle in. I was exhausted after the long day of traveling and setting up, so I was happy to call it good and spend the rest of the evening with my kitty in the van.

(more…)