Nearest Airport
: Lehigh Valley Airport
at 35
Miles
Nearest Motorway
: Pennsylvania Turnpike Extention, I-476
at 6
Miles
Nearest Beach
: Mauch Chunk Lake
at 5
Miles
Nearest Barpub
: Broadway Grille and Pub
at 0.4
Miles
Nearest Ski
: Blue Mountain Ski Area
at 18
Miles
Nearest Golf
: Mahoning Valley Country Club
at 10
Miles
Nearest Restaurant
: Broadway Grille & Pub
at 0.3
Miles
Our cozy townhouse is conveniently located near the center of town. You can easily walk to nearby restaurants, antique and novelty shops, art galleries, live theater (the Opera House), a quaint museum, a beautiful library (with a great little playroom for small children), and old churches. There are guided tours of the Old Jail and a Victorian mansion (Asa Packer Mansion) as well as a scenic train ride through the Lehigh Gorge. One mile away across the river is the grocery store, bakery, laundromat, salon, dry cleaner, and liquor store.
One of our favorite restaurants is just up the street called Flow. The menu is ever-changing and inventive because it is a farm-to-table restaurant that works with 14 Acre farm which is 6 miles up the road. A really cool feature of the restaurant is a window in which you can view Mauch Chunk Creek that runs under Broadway.
The great outdoors are so near you may decide to leave your car parked. A half mile walk downtown brings you to bicycle rentals and whitewater rafting. If you climb up Hill St. behind the Opera House, you can walk or ride the Switchback trail for five miles to Mauch Chunk Lake. The lake offers boat rentals, fishing, and swimming, in season, or, in winter, ice skating (provided the ice is thick enough).
One of our favorite nearby attractions is a tour of No. 9 coal mine (not open in the winter) in Lansford, PA. A small train carries you horizontally into a mountain where an easy 45 minute walking tour helps you appreciate the working conditions of coal miners (bring a jacket, wear old shoes, and expect water to drip on your head every so often - don't worry, it's clean).
The Lehigh Gorge State Park has a rails-to-trails path on crushed gravel that has a 2% downhill grade. The bicycle and rafting companies in town will drop you off at White Haven (25 miles from Jim Thorpe) or Rockport (13 miles from Jim Thorpe) so that you can enjoy a comfortable, downhill ride. Or ride your bike across the river yourself and begin your ride at Glen Onoko. Glen Onoko Falls offers a steep hike to view two waterfalls, but it is advisable to where good hiking shoes or sneakers and it is not suitable for young children.
From our house, you can climb the steep grade to the top of Mt. Pisgah for an impressive view (there is also a less steep service road), or drive to the top of Flagstaff, also an impressive view.
There are so many hiking and mountain biking trails in the area it would be hard to list them all, but we keep a book of hiking trails in our house for your convenience.
Other nearby attractions include the newly renovated Mahoning Valley Country Club; Blue Mountain Ski Area, which has the highest vertical in Pennsylvania (also offers tubing); local wineries (Big Creek has a store front on Race St., downtown); Penn's Peak (a concert venue); Pocono Raceway; Pennsylvania State Game Lands (an audio tour available at the library can provide you with information about the route that Audubon took while painting some of his most famous birds); the Appalachian Trail (runs along the southern boarder of Carbon County), and Hickory Run State Park.
