His 'n Hers Tenting in Sproul State Forest

When we woke up on Thursday morning, the temperatures were in the mid-40s F in central PA. Hooray! Autumn is here and the Big Change we've been waiting for has come! Farewell to the too-hot days of summer, at least for now. Hello to the cooler, bright-blue-sky, sunny wonders of late September and early October.

My husband had seen it coming and so we planned another backpack trip: this time into the woods of Sproul to a site we call Pine Glen. It's more than an hour to drive to the spot where we park the car and then make the short walk in.

Since the walking distance is not so great, we take along our bag chairs, which stay in the car when we do our Quehanna or Moshannon State Forest backpacks. What a wonderful thing an actual chair is! If you don't think so, try going for two days without one.

Above is our campsite at Pine Glen, with my husband's tent on the left and mine on the right. His backpack is in the middle, on this side of that tree. Mine, a boxy blue Kelty retro jobby from the 80s, is on the other side.

We didn't arrive to our campsite until after 2 p.m., and as soon as we got there, I put up my tent and put all of my gear inside to air out. Then we became sun seekers, sitting in our chairs reading and listening to music at the edge of camp for as long as the sun was present, and then heading back in when dusk began to fall.

And as dusk fell, such a hullaballoo: suddenly, there were lots of loud, snarly animal noises not more than 100 yards from our campsite. I thought I detected the high shrill squeal of an elk here and there, but the bulk of the sounds - growling, snarling, howling, and yipping - were being made by the coyote pack chasing and attacking!

Yikes!!! For once in a very long time, I was actually worried about our situation, and I wondered what we should do. Take cover? Run? But where? And how? And what about the gear?

Tune in tomorrow for part 2 of our story that takes place deep in the backwoods of Sproul! For now, here's a soundtrack song for this cliff-hanging moment in our adventure: Warren Zevon, with Werewolves of London.

Bonus: our first backpack of the fall 2022 season, into Moshannon State Forest, day 1 and day 2.