Oil City - return to the beginning

We bug out of work early on a Friday and head for "home" - Oil City, PA.

By supper time, we were in Dubois, PA, and found a Hoss's Steakhouse - a staple of our early courtship.  We pulled in for what I remember being much better food. 

After dinner, we fill the camper's water tank from a carwash, paying $1.50 for about 5 gallons of soapy water.  Alas, we now have indoor plumbing.

A few miles out of Dubois, we stop at a rest stop on Rt 80 and call it a night. 

Up and on the road early, we make it Clarion, then Franklin/ Cranberry.  The Sheetz is still here - the location of "the lighter incident."  We get some MTO and have second breakfast.

Massive development has occurred at this little interchange in the past 14 years.  Across from the mall is now a super Walmart, a bus stop, and a cluster of typical stripmall fair: retail shops, auto repair, fast food, chains...

We press on the Allegheny and Melissa spots "the house".  Soon we are deploying bikes and on the trail.

The last stop before heading out is an ice cream shop, which has brilliantly installed a menu on the bike trail and mowed a ramp leading up to the store.  Steve "hydrates".

Oil Creek State Park turns out to be a camping lie.  The bridge to the park won't even clear (or bear) Truckzilla and the camper.  An incredibly helpful DCNR ranger hooks us up with options, and we're soon off to Cook Forest.

Camp at cook forest is in the most remote loop, directly across from bathrooms, on an accessible (entirely paved) site.  We have a hot dog dinner and set up tikis for fire.  Nearby a young couple with a small child has dad trying desperately to make fire in the dying light.  We set out for an evening of feeding birds and chipmunks popcorn.
Tikis are deployed to amazing effect.

It's practically tradition to park the camper at a casino on each trip, so we route to Mohegan Sun in Scranton, unable to remember if this is the place we like.  It's not.