Abandoned Kunes Camp in Quehanna

My husband and I had been talking about going on another backpacking trip, but at the last minute, he noticed that Sunday morning's forecast was calling for rain in some places. Packing up wet gear and hauling it out on your back is no fun, so we decided to spend the entire day in the woods and come back late, but not actually spend the night out.

We would leave early, do several day hikes in the Quehanna Wild Area, and see some things we don't usually get to see. On a backpack trip, you dig deep. You go one place and stay there. On shorter day hikes, you can see multiple things in different places. There is a spot in Quehanna I've been reading about - the remains of the abandoned Kunes Camp - that I really wanted to see. And so we did that one first.

We parked the car along the road and walked back the mile or so into the camp's ruins, amid one of the best foliage shows we've ever seen in Quehanna. The hike, I'd characterize as pretty easy, and soon we were at the ruins, and I took many, many pictures. More info about these ruins can be found here, along with directions on how to get there if you are so inclined.

The camp was built in the early 1900s as a hunting camp for the Kunes family. It was abandoned in the 1950s when Curtiss-Wright purchased the land to do testing for peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The most amazing thing about it - besides the fact that it's a cool abandoned site, which people like me adore - is how it was constructed between several huge boulders.

So we spent some time there, enjoying the scenery and the camp ruins. And then we went back to our car and headed to the Marion Brooks Natural Area, which has the largest stand of white birch in the state of Pennsylvania, and indeed one of the largest in the Northeast.

Our third hike of the day was to one of the abandoned nuclear jet bunkers in the wild area. There are two of them, a north one (slightly longer walk, with bunker above ground - it used to be open so you could go inside, but it is locked up now), and a south one (shorter walk, with bunker mostly underground). We went to the south one, and I found a small pond not far away, with fine reflections. You may see that shot in the extras.

Our last woodsy stop of the day was to visit our favorite car camp spot just outside the wild area. The foliage colors were fantastic, and we watched the light begin to leave the sky, and wondered whether we'd made a mistake in not bringing our gear along.

But eventually, we made our way home, stopping at Jim's in Bellefonte for take-out (a hoagie for my husband, a chef salad for me), and we arrived home, tired but happy, just in time to eat our treats as the Penn State football game started. Pretty good timing, indeed! (And yes, the next morning, we awoke to a cold rain, so we DID make the right choice!)

The soundtrack for this posting is for the photo above, of abandoned Kunes Camp, with its walls of rock but its ceiling open to the blue, blue October sky: Martin Page, with In the House of Stone and Light.