Ohiopyle State Park

Ohiopyle state park is located right outside the city limits of Pittsburgh, PA. It is a great place for rafting, fishing, hiking and sight seeing. Laurel highlands are one of the most beautiful part of the state offering amazing sceneries for the onlookers. I would like to write a lot more than this, but in my last visit, I did not roam around much, but just went to the Cucumber falls, which is very easy to access by all. Like I said in my previous post, in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, fall might be a great season for photographing colors, but the waterfalls are really thin at this time of the year. However, the heart of the park is the Youghiogheny [yaw-ki-gay-nee] River Gorge which rushes through the park in a way that some people call it the Niagara of Pennsylvania. 

People usually park their car outside cucumber falls and start walking around the river till they reach the bridge and then cross the river and walk in the other direction, completing a loop. We however, took our car to drive around. The drive was just way too beautiful that day, with mild breeze and amazing colors all around us, it was easy to get lost. On the other side of the road, one can find some nice small eateries  rentals for cycles and other shops, making the trip last a whole day. 

Photography tip - Go out there when it is cloudy, I did it and the resultant rainbows and other scenes were just out of the world. More on that towards the end of blog. 

 

 

 

Photos  - Drive enroute the Laurel Highlands, to the Ohiopyle State Park (Cucumber falls precisely). 

Photos - The Cucumber falls in Ohiopyle State Park

 

 

   

Photos of the beautiful Youghiogheny river gorge 

While heading back to the city, it started raining in the hill top and we started turning our heads around to check which direction could show us any hit of rainbows. And after driving for a while, the sky covered with clouds bursted open in to sunlight. While the clouds played with the sun, a rainbow started forming, which in my life, was nothing like I ever saw. A fully formed rainbow, on the clouds and with such saturated colors, that I was afraid to even touch those photographs in my computer. It was worth the 20 minutes we spent on a field nearby, running and chasing around the rainbow, forgetting the age and surroundings. I hope to go the park many more times to develop this post in to a full fledged Ohiopyle post. 

 

 

 

 

Photographs of the rainbow over the laurel highlands after a brief rain.