Fishing at Rocky Gap State Park

Life is too short to stay at home all the time.  I had visiting Rocky Gap State Park on my bucket list and  I decided to take my son there to go fishing this year.

Rocky Gap is about 2 hours west of Baltimore, about 10 minutes east of Cumberland just off of I-68.  Nestled between the mountains in Pleasant Valley, the state-owned hotel, golf course, casino, and camp grounds are very nice.

On the way there, you pass through the burgeoning metropolis of Flintstone.  In Flintstone, I-68 passes through Sideling Hill.  This is a man-made cut in the Appalachian Mountains that exposes the synclinal rock strata.  It's really interesting.

Note the downward folded (synclinal rock).  

This is the visitor center at Sideling Hill.  Martin O'Malley closed it in 2009 when he cut the budget, despite the budget being higher than the year before.  The visitor center has been closed for 4 years.  Closing this visitor center saves Martin O'Malley hundreds of dollars per year.  However, he has raised taxes a lot so that we can invest in our future.  But apparently not the future of visitor centers.

My son is a fishing aficionado, so we like to fish as many different places as possible.  We did a little research and found that the lake at Rocky Gap, Lake Habeeb, is stocked with trout and the bass, blue gill, and catfish are plentiful.  To boot, the trout are stocked year-round.  Neither of us have ever caught a trout, so it sounded like the perfect plan.

In addition to the fishing, it was a great opportunity for photographing nature.  Not sure what this is, but it sure is purty!

This is Lake Habeeb looking south.  My son caught about 40 fish.  I caught 2.  He said I caught a warmouth.  I caught 2 of them.  He caught a boat load of blue gill, green sunfish, large-mouth bass, and warmouth.  No trout.  No catfish.

This is looking north toward Pennsyltucky, which is just a couple of miles from Rocky Gap.

This is one of the trails that we walked to get to a fishing pier.  How do trees grow in straight lines like this???

Isn't this a pretty state-owned hotel?  Nothing like the government competing with public and private companies.  My tax dollars at work!

I think this is my favorite picture.

We tried fishing at night.  We got skunked.  I'm assuming we didn't really know what we are doing.  There aren't too many opportunities around Eldersburg to legally fish at night.  So we left with no catfish.  No trout.  But we had fun.

Though we didn't utilize all of the amenities, I think it'd be worth taking a family.  There was a beach for swimming, boating, trails for hiking, the campgrounds were nice, the bathrooms were clean and not creepy, which is always a plus.  The cabins were decent.  I think my only regret, other than not catching a trout or a catfish, is that we forgot to get a t-shirt or some other souvenir before we left.  Maybe next time.

Rocky Gap - check it out.  Martin O'Malley wants you to visit it!  Oh, and spend all of your money at the casino.