Eddie and George Wake Up in Promised Land State Park

Eddie and George have been having trouble getting their RV groove back since we all took off 2020 for Covid.  However, now that we're on the road, they got very excited about exploring the Pickerel Point Campground when we arrived at Promised Land State Park in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, June 23, 2021.

Promised Land State Park was once the hunting grounds of the Minsi Tribe of the Wolf Clan of the Lenape Nation. Their land was part of the Province of Pennsylvania, established by King Charles II of England under a grant to William Penn. The Shakers, a religious sect from England, purchased some of the land in the Promised Land State Park area. They had anticipated good farmland, but when they arrived, they found nothing but stony, hilly land formed by the retreat of glaciers.  They sarcastically named the area, "Promised Land," and, deciding not to settle it, they sold off the land to lumbering operations, who clear-cut the forest and sent the timber to shipbuilding docks in Philadelphia. The area was clear-cut several times before being acquired by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1902, after which the Pennsylvania forestry department worked to re-establish the forests of the area. Promised Land State Park was opened to the public in 1905, becoming Pennsylvania's fourth state park.

Having learned all this history, and eager to see what this "promised land" promised them, our little bears woke up early and ran down to the main lake to catch the sunrise:

Turning north, they previewed the main part of the lake --

-- and the stones jutting out from Pickerel Point.

A couple families of geese that had apparently joined forces for mutual protection floated on the water not far from us.  Over the course the week, we saw from the geese's behavior that they had melded into a single social unit.

In 1933, to relieve the rampant unemployment of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  The young men in the CCC received food,clothes, and a small paycheck, in return for building roads, trails, recreational facilities, fighting fires, planting trees, and performing many other conservation activities. CCC camps were built throughout the United States. Pennsylvania’s 151 camps numbered second only to California. Promised Land’s Camp S-139 opened in May 1933 and closed in July 1941. It was located in what is now Deerfield and Pickerel Point campgrounds. The hard working young men transformed the land in and around Promised Land State Park. CCC boys built Pickerel Point Campground, the Bear Wallow Cabins, most of North Shore Road by hand, Egypt Meadow Dam, planted over one million trees, fought forest fires, and much more. Each August the park celebrates this legacy with a CCC festival.

One of the original CCC buildings at Pickerel Point houses the Masker Museum, which is dedicated to the history of the park and the CCC workers who built the park and its campgrounds.  In the photo below, Kathy poses at the entrance of the Masker Museum with a statue dedicated to the CCC workers:

One of the evenings later in our stay, we walked around North Shore Road to Burley Inlet Boat Ramp.  In the evening light, the lake looked magical:

The next morning dawned very foggy on the lake.  We walked out to the end of Pickerel Point and found this ghostly scene of a lone fisherman in his boat, in the grey air on the grey water beyond the swimming area:

Each morning was devoted to a coffee walk down to the point.  Our last visit was fittingly clear and bright, and we waved goodbye to the lake, hoping that we'll have a chance to visit again as we pass through Pennsylvania on our vagabond rambles: