Cody’s blog

Lackawanna State Park
1839 Abington Rd
North Abington Township, PA 18414

570-945-3239

May 11 — 15, 2026

Lackawanna State Park was about a three-hour drive from our last campground. I hit the road at 10 AM and arrived around 1 PM. Our loop, the Ledges Loop, was a new-ish full hookup loop, and pet friendly. Because it was new, there were no fully grown trees within the loop itself, given it a somewhat barren, parking-lot feel, with back-in sites around the outside and pull-throughs in the middle. There was no bathhouse or even a dumpster in our loop, which seemed a bit odd. Perhaps they’ll be added later. It was also numbered a little strangely — I had space 115, and my brother and sister-in-law were in 116, but they were at the far end of the pull-throughs, while I was at the near end of the outside of the loop. Fortunately, it was a small loop and not far to walk even though we were on opposite ends of the loop. My sister-in-law told me that I had the best site on the loop, being at the end with grass and trees behind and on the camping side of the van. It was also more convenient to walk to the bathhouse in the loop just up the hill from ours, since I could cut up the hill behind the van and walk the ridgeline back to the bathhouse. John and Jill’s site was closer, being at the back of the loop, but there was no path from their site to the next loop. They would have had to walk through people’s campsites and up a steep hill to get to it directly, or all the way to the front of our loop and back up the hill to the next loop. (But of course, with a nice bathroom in their trailer, they don’t need to use the campground bathhouse. I have a tiny wet bath in my van, but I find its shower too cramped and inconvenient, and use the bathhouse to shower instead.)

I got set up pretty easily. It was low in front so I used the curved levelers to raise the front end. It was still a bit low, but not bad. It ended up being perfectly level side-to-side. I had to go ask Jill how to make the water hookup work — there was a diverter on it that the water poured out of, and no directions on how to shut it off. Turned out you had to pull the cowl on the diverter down and hold it while you switched the faucet on. No problem once you knew the trick, but it wasn’t an obvious solution. Since I hadn’t filled my tank at the previous campground, I went ahead and did it then.

We’d arrived at the campground fairly early in the day, so we decided to go for a drive around the park in the afternoon.

The campground had four day use areas along the lake, across the road from the campground, starting with the Hot Air Balloon Launch Area and including picnic areas, boat launch and kayak landing areas, and fishing docks. Very pretty.

Then it was back to the campsite for a nap and dinner. It got pretty cold that night, so I left the furnace set to 50 F. I think it came on a couple of times, but I stayed warm under the covers with my cat snuggled next to me.

I put up the bed every day so I have a little hallway to the back of the van, which makes it easier to reach the cupboards. In the evening, I pull out the bed frame and make the bed. I always have help from Davey, who often lets me make the bed over top of him, leaving a cat-shaped lump under the covers. He does help keep me warm when it’s cold at night.

Day two at Lackawanna, I got up around 7:30 AM, and went for a walk after doing my morning chores. I walked up the road from our loop to the main road, where there was a small playground with swings on the corner. It didn’t seem very conveniently located for any of the loops, I never saw anyone else use it in the time I was there. I sat in one of the swings and enjoyed the fresh air for a while, remembering when I was in grade school and loved swings — I used to run for the swings every recess and tried to get the swing to go as high as I could. Sometimes I could get my swing higher than the top bar. Then when I was done, I would wait until it was a bit lower, maybe half the height of the top bar, and launch myself out of the seat and go flying! Would probably break my bones if I tried that now.

After lunch, I went with Jill on another ride around the park. We went back to the picnic areas we’d seen the day before so she could take some more pictures in sunnier weather.

This building is the Warming Hut, presumably a place for winter campers to get in out of the cold. We weren’t sure how effective it would be, being open in the front like that. We couldn’t see the chimney of the fireplace from the front and hadn’t noticed it was there, and the building was closed at the back so I’m still not sure how it works. Maybe there’s a panel at the back of the hut that can be removed to open to the fireplace? Anyway, it was kind of cool. I hadn’t seen anything like that at any other campgrounds.

Then we drove out to Bullshead Bay, a small bay at the upper end of Lackawanna Lake. This was a small fishing area with a dock and boat launch and a parking area where four pairs of Canada geese, one with goslings, were hanging out on the shore. I tried to get some good pictures of the geese but didn’t want to get too close and scare them off, or make them attack me, so you have to enlarge the photos to see them. But seeing so many geese so close was the highlight of my day!

That evening, we went out to dinner at Gin’s Tavern in nearby Factoryville. We had pierogies for appetizers, and I had Tomato Florentine soup and a Caesar salad with shrimp. The apps and soup were good, but I was a bit disappointed in my salad. The shrimp had tails on, and the lettuce pieces and croutons were huge, which made the whole thing a bit awkward to eat. I didn’t think it was real Caesar dressing, either. It wasn’t bad, just not great.

Factoryville, PA is the birthplace of baseball pitcher Christy Mathewson, and there were pictures of him in the restaurant. I looked him up on my phone on the way home. He played in the early 1900s and was one of the first five members to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The next day, we headed out around 11 am to visit the Anthracite Heritage Museum in McDade Park in nearby Scranton, PA. There is also a coal mine tour on the site (closed that day, so we didn’t get to go on it, but Scranton is only about an hour’s drive from where we live, so we can go back and see it some other time). The museum building is on the hilltop overlooking the Anthracite Heritage Complex, which includes the mine entrance, iron furnace, and other installations. In the plaza in front of the museum is a statue called “The Miner,” by George Papashvilv, representing a miner being crushed by the weight of the mine.

In front of the museum, there is a huge anthracite boulder.

The museum itself was really fun and interesting. There were lots of exhibits on different facets of coal mining and the community that grew up around the coal mines.

Displays included models of the mining town, art pieces carved from anthracite, and models and displays of equipment used in the mine.

There were also exhibits showing how the miners and their families lived, including a bar, delivery vehicles, a home and church.

It was a fun and fascinating museum, I really enjoyed visiting it. On my way out, I bought a souvenir chunk of anthracite coal. It’s very hard and black!

After the museum, we came back to the campground for the rest of the day. It got pretty cold that evening so I just went to bed early to stay warm.

There was a big thunderstorm that night, but the weather cleared up so the next day we planned to head out in the afternoon for a last few adventures.

First stop was Manning Farm Dairy for ice cream. They had about a million flavors of ice cream along with a very few other items, some tee-shirts and sweatshirts, bottled water and milk. I had a medium bowl of chocolate mint chip ice cream, and it was huge! Their “medium” bowl was four scoops of ice cream! More than I’d anticipated but I had no trouble eating it all. It was delicious, with plenty of chocolate pieces. The mint was cool and refreshing but not overly minty.

On the way back, we stopped at the Spring Hills Farm Sugar House, where they were selling maple syrup and a few related items. I bought a large jar of maple granola, which was very yummy.

At the campground, I hung out with John & Jill for a while in their trailer and watched the rest of the Mets game with them, then back to my van to cook my dinner (stir-fried tofu with cabbage and carrot, and half a toasted bagel with butter).

The next day, Friday, we packed up and went home. It was a strange day, full of little weirdnesses. First, I woke up at 5:30 AM to find the GoPower readout was flashing off and on. Didn’t want to deal with it then so I went back to bed, but when I got up at 7 AM it had stopped flashing. Then, when I turned the heat up for the morning, there was an error message on the Truma display. But the heat was working, and later the error message went away.

I packed up and unhooked the van and headed out around 9:30 AM, with a stop at the dump station to empty my tanks, and then hit the road.

Got about three quarters of the way home when I heard a sudden scraping, rattling noise in the van. As I continued to drive, it got less rattly but didn’t go away, so I pulled off at the next exit and stopped in a gas station to check around and under the van. Didn’t find any dents or scrapes or anything that looked broken or loose under the van, so I went ahead and drove the rest of the way home. Took Route 11 instead of getting back on 81, both because I felt better driving on the highway just in case of further problems, and because I’d gotten off at Hallstead/Great Bend where they’re still doing major road work and the entrance to get back on 81 N was closed in any case. It continued to rattle off and on (mostly on), but I didn’t get any error messages and the drive was otherwise fine, so I figured whatever it was, it wasn’t too big a problem.

Later, when I got home, I thoroughly checked the van inside and out, under the hood, in all the cupboards and drawers, and still couldn’t find anything wrong, so I concluded it was poltergeists.

(Finally, three weeks later, after consulting one of my Thor groups, I found that the plate behind the propane tank is loose and that’s what’s rattling. That’s a relief, to get that figured out. Now I just need to figure out how to fix it.)

Geezers on the Go — Lackawanna State Park