Bald Eagle State Forest With Main Line Overland

The weekend before Thanksgiving Matt and Pete Henwood over at Main Line Overland invited the DirtRoadTrip crew up to their family cabin for a weekend of wheeling and exploring in Bald Eagle State Forest.  
Bald Eagle State Forest is located just minutes outside of State College, Pennsylvania encompassing almost 200,000 acres of land and over 100 miles of fire roads and trails.  We left DC (Ben, Alex, Tony) just before rush hour on Friday afternoon for the 4-hour drive up to the Henwood property, stopping off at Boxer’s Cafe in Huntingdon for dinner and meeting up with Pete.  Something to note is that Matt and Pete have grown up around cars and have a taste for the eclectic – which is why we weren’t surprised when Pete rolled up in a 1950’s chevy coupe – lowered, painted with primer, and looking straight out of the bootlegging days of NASCAR.

The crew assembling in the morning on the trail

 

We arrived at the property late that evening and met up with Matt and friend/shop sharer Marcus, enjoyed some cold beverages, and slept in the comfort of the heated log cabin (this was not to be a camping weekend, although dispersed camping is abundant in Bald Eagle State Forest).  We headed out early on Saturday to Bald Eagle, stopping off in Millheim for some coffee and breakfast sandwiches (delicious).  We spent the better part of daylight out on the trail.  Besides some very wet and flooded/sloppy sections of the trail, the difficulty was quite easy and passable for stock trucks high-clearance 4x4s with all-terrain tires.

Alex prepares for a flooded section of trail in the Land Cruiser

In fact, we saw plenty of regular, non-modified trucks out in the forest  as we were in  the thick of bear hunting season.  We tried to travel as quietly as possible on the trails to avoid spooking hunters and hopefully avoid scaring off any bears (although the huge amount of hunters had probably already accomplished that).

Matt Henwood’s impressive Main Line Overland Jeep JK Rubicon

We were in 4-hi for the majority of the trip, and the highlights were not big obstacles we needed to conquer on the trail, but the views from some of the mountain ridges.  We spent hours on the two-tracks, and still left Bald Eagle that afternoon still having only driven a portion of the available trails.

Shots from the Trail

We capped the evening off with a delicious local dinner, enjoying a short, but intense snowstorm (which lead to a town wide blackout) from the restaurant before heading back to the Henwood property for libations and some rest.  We will definitely be back to Bald Eagle to check out the rest of the trails and maybe camp when the weather warms up a little bit!

The crew near the end of the day – snow flurries beginning to fly!

Special thanks to Matt and Pete Henwood for hosting us for the weekend at their amazing property. Also a big thanks to Marcus Congdon for playing photographer for us throughout the trip.