Caledonia State Park
Caledonia State Park
101 Pine Grove Road
Fayetteville, PA 17222-8224
717-352-2161
May 9 – 12, 2025
My first camping trip of the year! I visited two state parks in Pennsylvania, meeting up with my brother and sister-in-law on their last stops on their way home from a winter of snowbirding. My first stop was Caledonia State Park in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania.
The drive down was… not fun. Maps told me it would be about a four-hour drive, more than I usually like to spend on the road, but doable, and I thought I could handle it without a stopover. I headed out around 10:30 AM, hoping to arrive around 3:00 PM, with a rest stop along the way. But somehow I fat-fingered my route in the map app while I was putting my phone in its slot, or something, because it started out taking me waaaaaay out of my way (had me en route to go north on 81 instead of south), then offered me a faster route by way of 81-S, which was certainly better than going north, so I switched to that. I’d originally planned to take a different route which would have been slightly faster, but I didn’t want to stop and recalculate so I just went with it. It still should have gotten me there around 2:30, with no stops along the way, but between the heavy rain, road construction, and getting stuck in Friday afternoon rush hour stop-and-go traffic in Harrisburg, it was nearly 4 PM by the time I got to the campground.
Caledonia State Park has two separate campgrounds, about a mile apart. The larger campground, Chinpaquin, was where my brother and SIL were staying, didn’t allow pets, so I chose a site in the Hosack Run campground. I’d seen reviews saying that the sites were very cramped and close together, so I carefully chose what appeared to be a site with some space around it near the far end of the loop. Turned out I’d made a pretty good choice as far as space was concerned — my site was on the outside of three small, bunched together sites, but the site itself had plenty of room for my little van, and my sliding door was facing out to the small wooded area between me and the next site up. There was a couple tent camping in the middle site, and a truck with a small teardrop trailer on the other side. I definitely got the best site as far as space and view is concerned, but it was sloped pretty badly, both front to back and side to side. I tried to level it with my new curved leveling blocks, but the ground was soft from all the rain, and the blocks just sunk into the ground when I drove on them. After moving the van around at least three or four times and being unable to make any headway, I gave up and just parked the van without levelers and decided to live with it.
Since our sites were too far apart to visit each other walking, my brother and I decided to meet up in the morning, and just take the evening to settle in. I was exhausted after the long day of traveling and setting up, so I was happy to call it good and spend the rest of the evening with my kitty in the van.
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