You have found your next adventure! Thank you for joining us for the “Visit Centre County” GeoTour as we show you some of our most favorite caching locations to include state parks, beautiful vistas, and historical points of interest! Our team of GeoTour planners have worked very hard to put together various cache types to keep the GeoTour interesting and challenging; however, no geocache should be beyond a 3/3.5 for terrain or difficulty! We are pleased to show you around our County and hope that you will enjoy the GeoTour and complete your passport to collect your custom GeoTour Geocoin (there is a minimum number of caches required to receive the coin)!
If you will caching with some young ‘uns, we have a Jr. Geocaching Passport available for children, 12 yrs. And under, with special prize for their hard work too! Caches will be marked as “family-friendly” and should correlate to the Jr. Geocaching Passport.
Download your “Visit Centre County” GeoTour passport and/or you Jr. Geocaching Passport or pick-up paper copies at the following coordinates: N40° 48.879; W 077° 51.274 (Happy Valley Adventure Bureau). You’ll return your passport to the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau when complete and collect your prize if you meet the minimum requirements!
The “Visit Centre County” GeoTour is brought to you by Centre Region Parks and Recreation, the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau, and Groudspeak, Inc. We are pleased that you’ll be joining us in Happy Valley soon! Bring on the Adventures!
Penns View is a large clearing on the summit of Poe Mountain, which according to Paul Dubbs in his 1961 book “Where to Go and Place-Names of Centre County” called it “perhaps the finest mountain view to be seen in Centre County.”
Penns View provides an approximately 135° panoramic northerly view of Penns Valley and Penns Creek about 700 feet below. A portion of the village of Coburn is visible through the gaps in the mountains with Millheim and Penns Valley in the background.
Penns Creek is Pennsylvania’s largest and longest limestone stream, flowing easterly from its headwaters at Penn’s Cave until it flows into the Susquehanna River at Selinsgrove, PA. This particular section, as well as continuing to the east, offer some of the best trout flyfishing in the Northeast mainly due to the Green Drake mayfly hatch in late May and early June which is one of the largest hatches in the world.
The Lewisburg and Tyrone Railroad used to pass through the village of Coburn and continue following Penns Creek through the mountains to Lewisburg until the tracks were finally removed in 1971. The original steel train bridge is still in place and can easily be seen spanning Penns Creek below. For those who are interested, there is also a railroad tunnel just to the left of bridge that cuts through Tunnel Mountain which is still walkable.
The mountain roads within Bald Eagle State Forest are not maintained during winter. I highly recommend not attempting this cache during the winter months as the roads get quite treacherous and getting to the vista requires about 9 miles of driving on these roads up and down mountain ridges.
There are a couple other drive-up vistas of note in the immediate area to Penns View:
- Bells’ Majestic View is on the drive in along the Siglerville-Millheim Pike
- Ingleby View is approximately 0.75 miles past Penns View on Poe Paddy Road
- Raven’s Knob is approximately 1.25 miles past Penns View on Poe Paddy Road
DO NOT go any further on Poe Paddy Road than Raven’s Knob unless you are in a high-clearance 4-wheeled drive vehicle. The sign clearly states that the road is not maintained past this point.
This cache has been placed with DCNR permission
