8 Parks in 8 Hours

I was asked to put together a Gangwer family reunion for 2018 in the eastern part of PA.  As part of the plan, we wanted to have it held at a park.  Tammy spent several months researching on the internet many parks in that area and narrowed the possibilities down to a list of 8.

Tammy and I decided to take the weekend of January 21 to visit each of the 8 parks to check them out for ourselves.  We left on a rainy Friday night after work to get a head start on our travels making it to Matamoras, NY.  We ate for the first time at a Perkins Restaurant.

On Saturday, we left around 8am in a snowstorm for our first park of the day with the rain from the last evening having turned everything to ice.   I could have done a Subaru commercial and was thankful I had purchased snow tires for the year as we drove the back ice and snow covered roads up and down hills and around sharp curves to Hickory Run State Park which upon our arrival was a frozen wonderland.

As we headed south on I476 toward park number 2 Beltzville State Park, the weather and roads improved, we still had a freezing, blustery wind to contend with though.  Betlzville did make the short list of choices for the reunion with nice facilities and a swimming lake.

We then headed to Nockamixon State Park only to find it was closed due removal of trees being killed by a beetle invasion.  So on to the next park, Tyler State Park, which did not offer much of what we were looking for.

Central Park in Doylestown was next on the list to visit.  It was a nice park with a great playground, well-kept grounds and pavilions.  It was on the expensive-side of rental but made the cut.

Neshaminy State Park did not really impress us much so we moved on to Fort Washington State Park.  The park was very clean and seemed to have newly built pavilions.  It was added to the list of choices for the reunion.

We arrrived at our last park, Ridley Creek State Park, a little after 3pm.  It seemed run down and was without question nixed from the list.

We ended the day in Bensalem having dinner at Outback Steakhouse and staying at the family favorite hotel in the area Hampton Inn and Suites.  Sunday morning found us back on the road home to CT to report our findings and allow the family to vote on their choice of the 3 chosen parks for the reunion.