This past weekend I took a trip up to Cherry Springs State Park in Coudersport, Pennsylvania, to do some star gazing. Despite having attended college only sixty miles south of the park, I had never heard of it until recently.

Cherry Springs State Park is known as one of the darkest areas on the eastern seaboard, perfect for astronomers, photographers and anyone else interested in seeing an abundance of stars.

The park is located 2,300 feet above sea level and sits in the middle of almost entirely undeveloped forest, and as such is shielded from the bright lights of local homes and towns which are nested down in valleys.

Because of this, it is not exactly a cake walk to get to, and more so to leave in the dark. The hour and a half drive from Lock Haven was scenic with only two turns. From town, follow PA Route 120 also known as Susquehanna Avenue west for roughly 20 miles until you reach the town of Hyner, Pa. A little local tip, leave a few hours earlier than needed and drive up to Hyner’s View State Park for sweeping views of the Susquehanna River and valley below. If you are lucky, you may even catch some of the hang gliders taking flight off of the ramp next to the overlook.

Over summer, I took a trip with friends out to a very remote town in North Dakota called Medora, to participate in a trail half marathon. As some of you may know, I am currently participating in a challenge to run a half marathon in every state. North Dakota was state number eleven!

While there, we spent a few days hiking in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and per usual I photographed everything in sight.

The day after our race, we drove an hour up to what is called the North Unit of the park, as it has the most unique landscape compared to the other two units. It was also rumored to have the best chance of finding herds of bison.

I am almost certain, that I came out of the womb with a camera in my hand. Okay, it may not have been quite that early that the photography obsession started, but as evidenced by the below, it clearly wasn’t much later than that. When you come from a family of very artistic people, playing with film canisters and boxes instead of toys as a toddler isn’t all that weird.

One sock, an oversized hat and a film box. Welcome to my childhood! (1983)

I was roughly 7 or 8 years old when I got my first camera. Film of course, as digital cameras hadn’t quite made it out to the consumer world in 1988. I didn’t care though; I had a camera, and not just any boring old camera, a Kodak Mickey Mouse 110 film camera…that was of course pink! Much like my camera today, it went everywhere with me, though I couldn’t even tell you at this point what I took pictures of.

Hello and welcome to my blog, Into the Runknown, a little play on Into the Unknown…which is a REALLY expensive domain name, in case anyone was wondering!

I have been contemplating starting a travel blog for a couple of years now, but never got around to it, thanks in part to a full-time job, two side businesses and oh right, that pesky half and full marathon training schedule. It’s a little hard to write blog pieces when you are comatose on your couch after a 20+ mile run.

Friends and family are constantly asking for (okay, sometimes getting unsolicited) advice or tips on various placed I have travelled to. Up until 2017though, most of my trips have been to Europe. While still exciting, Europe already has a plethora of blog posts about it, so no real motivation to add to that. A weeklong trip to Cuba in January of 2017 changed that mindset though. Upon doing my own research pre-trip I was able to find some tips but not much. Being a foreign destination (literally and figuratively) to Americans, there wasn’t much out there so we had to sort of pave our own way.

With a small window of opportunity between presidential administrations, there was a mass tourism boom to the small Caribbean country, and people wanted info! How did you get there, where did you stay, how was the food, etc. For the most part, I just forwarded my trip notes to friends in an email to pass along to their friends. Getting this information online though may benefit even more travelers who are lucky enough to make their way to the little slice of paradise, mostly frozen in time.

Now that was over a year and a half ago, so what happened? Life. Life and a a little thing called the Noro Virus. You see, when you bring back the stomach bug as a souvenir from your Cuba trip, you tend you use up all of your vacation/sick days for the year, in the first two weeks of the year. If you are going to have a travel blog, it helps to actually travel places to have something to blog about.

Insert a cross country road trip this summer (2018) with college friends, a handful of destination races and other small trips, and a blog was finally born!

Feel free to check out the about me page which will give you a better idea of what to expect on here and of course feel free to reach out via the contact page with any questions or just to say hello!

Thanks, and Happy Travels!

-Katrina