We made a quick trip to Boyd Big Tree Conservation Area at the beginning of July, 2023 for a nature hike. My husband and one of my sons had recently visited that natural area with a group of kids and their parents. I had never been there before and wanted to try it out. I found this trail to be a fairly easy walk, with light traffic for the duration of time that we were there. Most of the trail itself was packed dirt, small rocks and some grassy spots. The larger wet rocks were slippery to walk on, especially for my kiddos, as they were not as careful to avoid the wet rocks. We did not go to the end of the trail, but turned around part way through. This is also a good location to take a binocular to do some birding, as I heard several forest birds.

Noxious weeds

We also saw and identified several Noxious Weeds on our trip. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, “Noxious weeds are identified as a plant that is determined to be injurious to public health, crops, livestock, agricultural land or other property and cannot be sold, transported, planted, or otherwise propagated in Pennsylvania.”

This nature hike is on the east side of Blue Mountain Parkway, north of Parkway west, just north of Linglestown, PA.

Below you will see some highlights of what we saw:

To find out more about this Conservation area, please visit: https://www.dcnr.pa.gov/StateParks/FindAPark/BoydBigTreePreserveConservationArea/Pages/default.aspx