Pennsylvania RV Parks: The RV parks in Pennsylvania You Want to Visit!

RV parks in Pennsylvania tend to reflect the East Coast mindset; they overwhelmingly identify themselves as “campgrounds” rather than “RV resorts.” Nevertheless, many Pennsylvania RV parks provide nice accommodations, and a few even offer things such as organized activities, music festivals and city and historical tours which leave from the campground.

My wife and I spent more than a week in eastern Pennsylvania as part of a 30,000-mile adventure that we undertook in search of our country and of ourselves. The trip had started in the Pacific Northwest the year before, and is recounted in my book, In Search of America’s Heartbeat: Twelve Months on the Road.

We had come to Pennsylvania looking for my own immigrant roots, and found the Pennsylvania portion of the Appalachian Mountains to be a fascinating part of America. Here’s an excerpt from the book that describes a trip Karen and I made one day over the mountains from Ravine, where we were camped, to Shamokin, the town where my grandmother had spent a part of her childhood:

“We come to a narrow, fertile valley that lies astride our route, and cross it, then climb a steep and narrow ridge. Directly on the other side is yet another narrow valley. We roll from ridge to ridge, valley to valley, as we work our way north across the landscape toward Shamokin. Everything is narrow here, including the highway, which takes us through orchards and cornfields and meadows and right through tiny farmsteads, often squeezing directly between the house and the barn. We cross what must be the last ridge before Shamokin, and a sign informs us that we’re entering Coal Township.

“Coming down the final hill, past a big, open-pit coal mine, into the valley where Shamokin lies, everything seems black. Piles of coal slag pepper the hillsides and, in the bottom of the valley, the soil is black.

“Here’s the city of Shamokin, population about 8,000, built right in the bottom of the gulch. Narrow streets run along the bottom of the gulch and across it and straight up its steep sides. Narrow sidewalks extend right to the curb, and the homes -- virtually all wooden multiplexes that look as though they date from the 1800s -- extend to the edge of the sidewalks, crowding the streets. On Shamokin’s main street, many storefronts lie empty, and on the ridge tops at the edges of town, just behind the last houses as you climb the hills, millions of tons of mine tailings have painted the mountainsides black.”

The Pennsylvania RV park where we stayed in Ravine was called:

Echo Valley Campground. It provided gravel interior roads and 45 gravel sites for travelers, 13 of them pull-throughs, 37 with full hookups and the rest with water and electric. It also provided cable TV, laundry room, pool, hot tub, a pond for fishing, recreation hall and restaurant. And it provided an occasional glimpse of wildlife. Early one morning, a black bear climbed into dumpster only a few feet from our trailer.

Another Pennsylvania RV park at which we stayed was:

Mountain Vista Campground near East Stroudsburg. This was a beautiful RV park tucked away on a forested hillside in the Poconos. This RV park provided paved and gravel interior roads, 80 gravel sites for travelers, 18 of them pull-throughs, 75 with full hookups and the others with water and electric, wireless internet access, cable TV, groceries, RV supplies, pool, tennis court, a pond for fishing and recreation hall. It also offered planned activities. This Pennsylvania RV park was convenient to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

If you’re considering exploring any Pennsylvania RV parks, I hope you’ve found these observations helpful. If you know of any other RV parks in Pennsylvania that I should add to this list, e-mail me at searchforamerica@msn.com

To read a great book about life on the road, including my travels through some of the great RV parks of the Northeast, grab your copy of In Search of America’s Heartbeat: Twelve Months on the Road.