Poconos 2026, Day 3, An amble and a lake

 My family and I are on a week-long trip to the Poconos which I am recording parts of here. Follow along here, if you'd like. 

In these beautiful mountains, we are very much in coal country. It reminds me of parts of West Virginia.

This morning, we went back to Jim Thorpe to take a walking tour to complement the trolley tour we did yesterday. First up was to be a tour of a historic mansion, but they had canceled all of the morning tours to the public. We were disappointed but found a tucked away hillside park that we enjoyed probably as much as we would have the mansion tour. (How many times can I use the word "tour" in one paragraph?)

A picture of changing the name of the town from Mauch Chunk to Jim Thorpe we saw in one of the shops.

Next, we ambled a couple of miles through the town enjoying the Victorian architecture and interesting shops. As the town got more and more crowded with tourists, we decided that we had reached our people limit and went to the the nearby town of Lehighton for a late lunch.

We enjoyed the rest of the beautiful day around Beltzville Lake before heading back to our Vrbo.

I'll share some pictures of our day, but I had a hard time doing Jim Thorpe justice with them. The town is surrounded on all sides by steep mountains and has narrow streets where it is difficult to get back far enough to get good perspective of the buildings. But here it goes anyway.

This is the mansion we didn't get in. Asa Packer was a key developer of the coal mines and railroads in the area. He founded Lehigh University and provided free tuition for all students for 20 years.

We did get to walk around his son'ts mansion next door. This was a wedding present to his son. It is now a hotel.

The mansions sit high on a hill overlooking the town. Below them, we found a lovely park tucked into the hillside with trails, picnic areas and playgrounds.  We had the whole park to ourselves.

Asa Packer built these stone townhouses for his engineers and foreman of the railroad. Now they are shops and private residences.

One of the shops sold Mabacol shoes (shoes made from recycled materials) and had an interesting outdoor advertisement for them.

This building has been operating as a hotel since 1833.

And this building has been operating as some kind of a bank since 1829.

Even the private residences honored their Victorian details.

Look at the detail on that flower box!

After lunch, we went to the local Walmart to get a couple of things we needed back at our Vrbo. The Walmart sat on top of a hill where we had beautiful views.

We finished the afternoon at Beltzville State Park...

where we enjoyed the peacefulness of Beltzville Lake.

Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy, so we are considering our options for indoor activities. We'll see where we end up.

Until next time...

Poconos, 2026, Day 2, Jim Thorpe rides

My family and I are on a week-long trip to the Poconos which I am recording parts of here. Follow along, if you want. 

Today, we went into the town of Jim Thorpe for train and trolley rides. Yesterday, I said that we like to visit a garden of some kind when we travel. We also like to take scenic train trips if they are available. So that's what we did.

Jim Thorpe is a small tourist town in the Poconos that is especially popular during the fall leaf season. So the real trick is finding a place to park. Luckily, we got one of the last spaces. 

Here are some pictures from our day. (I'll try not to include the many blurry ones we took from moving cars.)

This is an open air train car, but we rode in a closed one because I have been cold one too many times in an open air car. 🥶

We rode through some beautiful scenery with interesting commentary.

The train trip was followed by sandwiches in the car and then a hike on a rail trail that goes through town while waiting for our trolley tour.

We took a detour off the trail to the Lehigh River.

The trolley tour gave a good overview of the area with many interesting facts.

We saw lots of interesting Victorian architecture.

We learned that Jim Thorpe was built as a coal and railroad town. When the coal industry had a downturn in the early 1900s, some enterprising person, sold rides down the mountain at 40-60 mph in a converted coal car. At one point, these wild rides were the second most visited tourist attraction in the US after Niagara Falls.

The town of Jim Thorpe* was called Mauch Chunk until the mid 1950s. Jim Thorpe's widow wanted a memorial for Jim after he died, but none of the places that he was associated with could come up for the money, so she asked for bids. With the promise of tourism and great things to come, the town of Mauch Chunk won. Of course, that decision was not without controversy and went through several court cases.

After we filled our heads with Jim Thorpe knowledge, we filled out bellies with ice cream.

Then it was back to our house for puzzles and leftovers.

Until next time...

*From Wikipedia

James Francis Thorpe (Meskwaki: Wa-Tho-Huk; May 22 or 28,^[4] 1887 – March 28, 1953) was an American athlete who won Olympic gold medals and played professional football, baseball, and basketball. A citizen of the Sac and Fox Nation, he was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics. Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, Thorpe won two Olympic gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics (one in classic pentathlon and the other in decathlon).