WAYNE -- Frank Ammon is in campers' paradise.
He can lazily walk his dog here and there, chop a little wood for the stove when he feels like working, canoe and fish in Mahoning Creek Lake anytime he can and mostly just sit around his campsite enjoying the simple life. It's all about the peace and quiet, he says.
"This is your basic down-to-earth campground," Ammon of Saltsburg said in talking about his new home away from home, the Milton Loop Campground. "It's rustic. It's Amish country. I have my canoe, my camper, my dogs and I'm set."
The Milton Loop Campground overlooking the Mahoning Creek and boat launch along Route 839 near Dayton and Amish country, which Armstrong County leases from the Army Corps of Engineers, had been closed for a year.
Ron and Pam Thompson of Freeport are reopening the campground as a private business and sub-leasing it from the county. On Saturday they will be holding a grand opening and rededication ceremony.
The National Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers, county commissioners, township supervisors, state Sen. Don White, people planting trees and Boy Scouts setting up teepees and performing Indian dances will be there for the celebration, Pam Thompson said.
"We're hoping to get lots of people familiar that we're open," she said.
There are 50 sites at the campground to rent to campers. The cost is $18 per night, $3 extra for electricity; $350 a month; and $750 a season.
The camping season runs from the middle of April to the middle of October.
There are rest-room and shower facilities; picnic tables; tent campers and tents for rent; a boat launch; canoes for rent; a camp store with food, bait and supplies; hiking trails; playgrounds; and a pavilion.
Some of the sites have full hook-ups. Other sites have electricity and water and some have no utilities. Thompson said she is looking to add water and electricity to more of the sites.
Activities include movies; ping pong; roasting popcorn over an open fire; a meet-and-greet community campfire; and a "pickin and grinin" night for anyone who sings or plays an instrument.
"The camp is in a nice, quaint community with lots of attractions around it like good fishing, canoeing, boating, Amish, a winery and eating places," Thompson said. "It's a place where a husband goes fishing while the wife is off to Smicksburg for some shopping. We're three miles from the Dayton Fair and three miles from Smicksburg."
"It's a place where everyone takes the time to say hello to each other," she said.
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