Tomlinson Run State Park sprawls across nearly 1,400 acres of heavily forested hills in the far northern panhandle of West Virginia, a green, well-equipped park squeezed into the narrow neck of the state between Ohio and Pennsylvania. For disc golfers it's a genuine destination, but the course is only one piece of a park that also offers a 30-acre lake, a swimming pool with a serious water slide, camping and miles of quiet woods.

The 18-hole disc golf course is the reason many players make the drive, and it has a memorable start: the first hole tees off right at the park's swimming pool. The front nine is easy, pleasant walking and playing, a friendly introduction, while the back nine turns genuinely challenging, so the course rewards a full round with a real change of gear. Best of all, there's no fee to play.

The water features anchor the rest of the park. The 30-acre Tomlinson Run Lake and the park's smaller streams are stocked with trout in early spring, and the lake also holds bass, bluegill, catfish and sunfish, making for easygoing family fishing. The swimming pool complex is a highlight in its own right, centered on a 182-foot figure-eight water slide, with a bathhouse and snack bar, open from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day.

Camping makes it a proper overnight destination. The campground offers 55 sites, 39 of them with electric hookups, plus bath houses, showers and laundry, and yurts are available to rent for anyone who wants a roof without hauling a tent. That range suits everyone from RV travelers to first-time campers.

The setting is classic Appalachian panhandle: rolling, densely wooded hills laced with hiking trails and small waterways, quiet and green through the warm months and colorful in fall. It's an easy escape for the Pittsburgh and eastern Ohio populations just across the state lines.

The pool and its water slide run only during the summer season, and the back-nine disc golf holes involve real terrain, so proper footwear helps on the wooded, hillier stretches. Trout fishing is best right after the early-spring stockings.

Come with discs, a swimsuit for the slide, fishing gear and a license, and camping reservations for a summer weekend. Between free disc golf that starts at the pool, a stocked lake, a figure-eight water slide and a wooded campground, Tomlinson Run packs a lot of West Virginia into one park.