Salt Springs State Park – first family hike! #visitPA #hiking

When we were in New York a couple of weeks ago, we had a morning that opened up. That was rare for our trip since we had family visits planned every single day, so we took advantage of the few free hours and headed across the state border into Pennsylvania for a short hike in Salt Springs State Park.

This was our first family hike and our son LOVED it. It’s funny that we live in the mountains of North Carolina – minutes from the Blue Ridge Parkway – and our first real hike was in Pennsylvania.

Such is life.

We started out on one trail and quickly turned back when we realized just how steep it was.

Once we got back to the start, we found the Hemlock trail and walked it. I estimate we walked about a mile in and back. The trail crosses another trail, which we ventured down for a little bit.

We made it to the waterfalls, but because it wasn’t as easy to navigate, the boys stayed higher up than I did – I walked down into the water to shoot some photos.

The park is well cared for, and I enjoy that there’s a boardwalk to walk on when you’re navigating the easier trails. (It made me feel better about letting our son walk between us. He wasn’t going to fall down the mountain easily when we had the railings!)

I love Salt Springs – I visited when I was a kid, and I remember going to penny rock and sticking pennies into the rock (it’s good luck!) My husband happened to have a penny on him that morning, so we let our son put a penny in the rock. (He really wanted a hammer, because some other people did have a hammer to put their pennies into the rock. We’ll remember that for our next trip up there.)

Our boy kept finding sticks he pretended were drills and hammers. Silly boy.

And WOW was everything so green! We haven’t seen a lot of rain in our area, so I was just so surprised.

Are you a fan of hiking? What are your favorite spots to hike?