I guess this is a political blog now

This is Pymatuning State Park, on the Pennsylvania border, in July of 2026. The trip features a private beach, Boat Adventures, many frogs, giant fish, and an inland sea, along with car trouble and an encounter with a dishonest mechanic.

First, an orientation. Pymatuning consists primarily of a Very Large Lake. It's one of Pennsylvania's typical man-made lakes, created by damming a stream, in this case in the 1930's. As with most of PA's lakes, it's situated over land that was marginal for agriculture, and the lake was created as a regional water reservoir, a flood-control measure, and a recreation spot. It's pretty typical, except for being Frankly Enormous.

Here's the map! The purple dinosaur at the bottom is where the dam is, and the red dinosaur at the top is where my cabin was. The yellow dino is the spillway, and the blue one is the causeway to Ohio, both of which I'll be talking about later.

From the purple dino to the point at the top of the lake is about 16 miles, or 25 km, and the distance across the narrow way is about 1.5 to 2 miles (2.5 to 4.5 km.) So it's a big lake! (Although not the biggest we will encounter on this trip!) The areas of green surrounding the lake are the rest of the park; as you can see, there isn't a lot of it. The vertical line down the middle of the main part of the lake--look for it on either side of the blue dinosaur, is the Ohio border; Ohio also has a state park on their side.

An interesting fact about the lake is that if you are out on a boat, you can fish anywhere in the lake with a license from either state! If you're fishing from the shore, you must have a license for the state you are standing in. The sign didn't say about the causeway, but there were people fishing from it.

This park is also the furthest one in Pennsylvania from my house, that has camping or cabins! (There are two that are further, but they are day-use only.) The drive is about 300 miles (480 km), and per GPS, should take a little over 5 hours. On the way out, it was more like seven, and on the way back...I'll tell you later.

Arriving at the cabin! There is enough parking for at least five normal-size vehicles, because a lot of people bring boat trailers. There are five cabins up at this end of the lake, and some (10, I think? Maybe more) down at the other end, closer to the dam. The Ohio side also has cabins.

An interesting thing I learned is that this park is very popular with Amish families. There were two Amish families in my cabin area, and tons of them in the Ohio one. I didn't photograph them, because they don't like you to do that unless they are on duty at a tourist attraction, but people often wonder if the Amish go on vacation. They do! The men and boys spent a lot of time fishing, and one of the women was out in a kayak a lot, and the kids zipped around on kick scooters.

Pretty much like everyone else, except they didn't have a car (or their buggy; the park doesn't have overnight facilities for horses) so they were limited to where they could walk & get by boat. (Somebody with a truck came to collect them at the end of the week; they are generally allowed to ride in vehicles driven by a non-Amish person for special trips and emergencies. There are people in Amish areas that make a living "driving Amish.")

The cabin was a modern one, and they're all pretty similar, so I don't have a huge amount of pictures of it. Some of them have better porches than others; this one wasn't great.

It's a sort of great-room setup, with a living room area....

And a kitchen/dining area. The 5 cabins in this section are all ADA accessible, so they have the sink and stovetop that you can roll a wheelchair up to, and a separate wall-mounted oven. Also one of the drawers is actually an extra work surface that can be pulled out, so it's easier to reach from a chair.

One bedroom had a queen bed & a dresser,

And this cool built-in shelving; the other one had a set of bunk beds and a double bed.

Bathroom, with grab bars and the accessible sink.

The shower isn't a roll-in one, but there's a fold-down transfer bench in there.

But by far the best feature of the cabin is its little beach! There are many lilypads, and some little islands.

This is in the evening when we arrived.

Here's the morning!

Here it is at night on July 4th! The light on the far side is fireworks; they never photograph well, but there was actually a pretty good view of them in the distance over there. There are several communities around the lake, on both the PA and Ohio sides, so there were fireworks happening all around us.

This is looking to the right from the little beach; I'm pretty sure that this is one of the park boat launches, and was not an authorized fireworks display, but they had some good ones, too.

Here it is in a rainy time. (There were quite a few of those.) The lake ie very shallow here; we were actually able to wade the whole way around that closest island, that's in most of the pictures. The far side of it has a huge blueberry bush; unfortunately there were only a few ripe ones by the end of our stay, but I left a note for the next people to make sure they didn't miss them.

Because the lake is huge, and allows motor boats, it was too rough to take my craft out onto the main lake, but I took the paddleboard out around our little beach, and Willow had her own adventure later. Teddy got in some more paddleboard practice, but he liked wading best. And he figured out what his DFD (Dog Floatation Device) does. He likes swimming, but doesn't enjoy getting his ears wet, so he likes it! (He was swimming seconds before I took this photo; I wasn't fast enough with getting the phone out, so you will have to take my word for it.)

Another exciting feature was this truly unhinged July 4th decoration:

The cabins were right next to the campground, so we walked around them a lot, and this was one of our landmarks for finding our way back to the cabins.

This is, of course, Uncle Sam, but despite the name, there is no tradition of our national mascot having a child sidekick. He's also usually depicted as tall and thin, not short and round. In addition, for at least 70 years, there has been a general push toward discouraging amateurs, and especially children, from personally handling fireworks. So this inflatable decoration of Nephew Sam double-fisting fireworks while being carried piggyback by a fat Uncle Sam is baffling on many levels.

Eventually, I concluded that it must be a reskinned Santa Claus, with minor modifications to the hat and whatever toys the child (or perhaps Elf) was originally holding.

Other than that, there weren't any really over-the-top July 4th decorations. RV/camper people in the US like to decorate their campsites, so I was kind of expecting to see a lot, with the 250th, but this was the main one. There were a lot of sites that had a few flags, or some red, white, and blue bunting, but nothing major. On the drive across Pennsylvania, I did see some people spray-painting a giant flag onto their lawn overlooking the highway, but overall the whole "country's 250th anniversary" thing was pretty subdued.

Frogs! Another fun feature of this cabin area is all the frogs! There were two of about this size hanging out on the screen door. At first I thought they were some sort of beetle, but when I took a closer look: frogs! The other one was more colorful, but hopped away before I could take its picture.

We also saw them hanging out on the road a lot when we took walks around the campground. Here's a big one.

Foot for scale.

And another teeny one!

Several days later than planned; there were some issues, but overall we had a great time. I will post a full Trip Report later, but for now, here is a story in 3 pictures: