Our last visit to the lodge was Nov. 15th....too long, but long enough for us to forget how cold it was. We are still working on getting a good source of heat in the cabin. Right now we have a Colwood stove in the room we refer to as the "bunk room" and in the main room there is a kerosene stove and a brick fireplace, neither one of which is working....yet. Not one of these heat sources has what you would call "ambiance;" the Colwood is a beast of a thing with a door that opens from the top to feed the fire. Our experience with it so far is that it smokes to high heaven and releases sparks every time you open the door to feed it and really does nothing to heat that large space! The brick fireplace in the main room has been abused, adapted and neglected so much over the last 32 years in an effort to make it "more efficient" that it is an ugly eyesore that is unusable as it stands right now so our best hope right now is to get the kerosene furnace up and running so it's at least warm enough to work on everything else. Our plan is to remove all the ugly remants of the last "energy crisis" attempts from the fireplace and have an open firebox and solid chimney again. The former owners added an insert to the original firebox, then closed up the opening with bricks around it. Then they decided it still wasn't throwing enough heat so they added a woodburner to the front of the fireplace and hacked through the wall above the mantle to install the stove pipe, then at some point they removed the woodburner and covered the opening for the stove pipe with an old aluminum cooking pot. It's really quite lovely! Western PA chic for sure! So between the holidays and the cold and the early snows it's been several weeks since we've been to our haven and despite the lack of warmth and other creature comforts we are craving a weekend in the PA Wilds!
Welcome To Hemlock Haven Lodge! We are very new to this blogging thing but have been enjoying other blogs where folks are sharing their camp and cabin experiences and wanted to join in the fun! So please be patient with us while we learn. A little bit about our cabin....it is the realization of a dream for our family, we all have had different experiences with mountain cabins in the past but all have had the same dream...to own our own! And now it is a reality! For me (Debbie) it was the memory of Castle Lodge, owned by my grandparents and located in ANF (Allegheny National Forest) with deep genealogical roots but on National Forest land that was called back by the Gov. and had to be demolished in the 80's if I remember correctly....but Castle Lodge was the place where the family gathered week-ends and summers and where I learned to love God's creation so deeply it makes me cry to smell soil moistened by an ancient spring, to see thick ferns and princess pine and teaberry growing on the forest floor. For my husband(Dan) it was hunting trips with his dad and brother, uncles and assorted friends in a variety of settings from the ridiculous to the sublime! And for our daughter and son (now young adults) it was being toted around the woods on endless excursions looking for the perfect location and occasionally have the blessing of staying in a friends log cabin for a week-end now and then.
