Gray Towers & Milford, PA

Gray Towers

We discovered our first unexpected gem of an experience today as we were traveling in the Poconos and on our way toward the NY State line.  We drove through the very quaint town of Milford, PA and noticed a Forest Service sign for Grey Towers.  I spent the next 20 minutes looking that up, thinking werwolves, Rapunzel or some Grimm Bros. tale, but dissevered that it was Gifford Pinochet's family summer home.  He was the first to push nature conservancy into the government prevue and a leading figure of my undergraduate wildlife management studies at Humboldt State.  Had no idea where he was from or much about his life story, just his accomplishments in creating the US Forest Service and the idea of managing natural resources.  Turns out that he was also 2 time governor of Pennsylvania and that his parents built (to which he later took over) an estate constructed in the French style (PA Gray Stone Towers) that was donated by his family after his passing to the US Forest Service and the continued education and development of conservation.  The grounds were amazing and inspirational, all the way down to the heritage apples that Cornelia Pinochet planted around the property and were fully ripe and amazingly perfect eating (I gathered a handful).  After Gray Towers we made our way on a zig-zag over the Delaware River and into New York.  The landscape was truly surprising.  Felt like a combination of Washington State (was a constant rain or drizzle for 3 days) and Maine.  If a moose walked across the road, we wouldn't have been surprised.  Everything was lush to the extreme.  Ferns, moss, giant trees of all types and lots of

Mike at Gifford's Man Cave

wilderness.  We ended up for the night in the Kittatinny Mountains on the Delaware River at a wilderness adventure camp that apparently hosted over 1200 people attending a big canoe related festival the night before.  The instructions we were given by the night watch for how to find an RV friendly site was a little complicated so we ended up way too deep in the wilderness for an RV and doing a bit of off-roading.  We had to disconnect to get the rig turned around and found ourselves face-to-face with a really fun, thoughtful, caring and sincere Native American Woman who was clearly hired to clean the camp toilets.  She said that she heard there was a big fancy RV up in the woods and she just had to see for herself before starting her work shift.  She was actually very helpful and fun to chat with.  We finally found the one single site with 30 amp electricity out of more than 300 spaces.  The fun NY State Warning that all water from the area spigots "MUST BE BOILED BEFORE USE," kept us on our own water system for the night.  The river had some nice rapids and we noticed people flying through the air on a zip line from the mountain above us as we were departing the camp...fun things to go back and experience on a more targeted trip...hopefully without 1200 partying New York kids.