Asbury Woods in Erie, PA

My sister and I met in Erie, Pennsylvania for a weekend getaway. When we travel to each other's houses- mine in southwest Ohio and hers in southern Ontario (near Niagara Falls), we travel through northern PA on I-90. Erie is on I-90 so we are familiar with seeing signs for the various Erie exits. One of the exits is for Presque Isle. When we decided to meet in Erie, I knew I wanted to visit Presque Isle. I'd seen information on social media (a girl from our high school plays college basketball somewhere in the Erie area and I used to see her IG posts about day trips she and her friends took to Presque Isle) and online about Presque Isle and I knew I'd like to see it someday. In addition to visiting Presque Isle, I wanted to find other things to do in the area so I did some research and came up with a nature center called Asbury Woods. Asbury Woods is close to Presque Isle- we took the Presque Isle exit off of I90 to get to it. I'd read good reviews about it. Everyone mentioned how pretty it was. Everyone was right!! The last reviews that I'd read about it had been posted in the summer. I'm sure it's nice then but the beauty of the changing leaves was spectacular; I'm glad we visited in the fall. 

Goodness, if the drive in from the entrance to the parking lot was any indication (it was!!), we were in for a treat.

We bypassed the nature center in the beginning but went back to it later when we wanted some information. Asbury Woods is not large- none of the trails are super long so you're never far from the nature center.

This pumpkin's carving reads Asbury Woods. I love creatively carved pumpkins!

Just behind the nature center building was this area from which trails began. *Slightly* amazing!

The area just past the brick pavers had a boardwalk that led into the woods.

Though God provided the natural beauty, man provided whimsical fall touches at Asbury. Carved pumpkins adorned the boardwalk.

Then into the woods we went. We just kept exclaiming that we couldn't believe how pretty it was and we kept pointing out trees to each other saying, "Look at that one!"

We came to a pond and stopped to take some pictures and admire the view.

We off trailed it to get to this tree. I wanted to get some pictures from the vantage of the tree. The tree was slanted so we could sort of walk/ crawl up a portion of the trunk.

A few photos from my perch in the tree with my Nikon

We'd read about two really old trees that were in Asbury Woods. One was dubbed the grandmother tree and one was dubbed the grandfather tree. The map we had didn't identify them so when we finished one trail, we went into the welcome center to ask about how to find either the grandmother or grandfather tree. The inside of the nature center was informative and pretty.

Adjacent to the area with information about the flora and fauna of the area was this little living room type room.

A perfect place to consult a map and pretend that I know how to read/ understand them ✌

It had some features that a typical living room does not have ;).

We left the nature center after talking to a couple of friendly employees/ volunteers with some vague notion of where to find the trees. We ended up finding the grandmother tree. At least we think we did. The tree was not marked in any way but something about it was quite a bit different than the trees around it.

Unfortunately, I don't even know the type of tree it is. I'm sure there's information about it somewhere but I could not find any other than it's called the grandmother tree.

We attempted to take a selfie with the tree but it not go well. A woman walking near us asked if we would like for her to take a picture of us with the tree. Yes, please!

We couldn't have asked for a better time in Asbury Woods with the exception of having better weather conditions (it was windy, the sun was in and out, it sprinkled rain at one point, maybe a few degrees warmer would have been ideal, etc. (if we're picky and/ or honest!)). Thanks to Asbury Woods we were able to enjoy some incredible views of this amazing season. We loved our time in the woods.