Exploring Kinzua

With the world being in a global outbreak of the Coronavirus, and the governor of Pennsylvania calling for a two week self quarantine, the options of new places to explore became limited. Luckily, before the self quarantine was called I was able to explore a local landmark, Kinzua. Kinzua is an area in the Alleghany National Forest that is home to the Kinzua Dam which was built in 1965 to protect the city of Pittsburgh from flooding. Although unfortunately, in building the Kinzua Dam 10,000 acres of Seneca land was flooded and 600 people were forced to relocate. Now, the Kinzua area is littered with hiking trails, water falls, camp grounds, snowmobile trails and more. The Kinzua dam is heavily used during the summer months for boating, jet skiing, and fishing. 

Although I, as many others from the area, have already been to parts of Kinzua, the Alleghany National Forest is so large that there are many places within it that I have never been. One of these places was Jakes Rocks. Jakes Rocks is mainly a biking trail, but if you are willing to hike through the forest, you will find a beautiful overlook of the Kinzua dam. A couple friends and I decided to take this hike in order to get to this overlook. Along the way we stopped and climbed on the tall rocks. Which is not exactly my favorite thing to do, especially the getting back down aspect of it. We even ventured off the laid-out trials, and down a hill to do some exploring of our own. I recently purchased the new iPhone 11 Pro so I got to test out the camera on it here as well, something that I always enjoy. Once we got to the overlook we stopped and admired it for a few minutes before heading back on the trails towards the car. As we were leaving I wanted to stop at Kinzua Beach, which is a small area where people can go to swim. Swimming was not my reasoning though, Kinzua Beach has a great view of a bridge and I wanted to stop and get a picture of it. We stopped, but I could not get a good picture because the lighting was off. Therefore, we got back into the car and began driving back home. Kinzua is a great area to explore if you are looking to get into the outdoors.