I was undecided what I wanted to do for my birthday weekend this year.  The weather hasn’t been the greatest lately so that took out camping.  I really wanted to go see some waterfalls, but a lot of places I looked up were either closed for the season or the trails were washed out due to all the rain we have been having.  Then something made me think about the bike train in Jim Thorpe.  After a quick search, I found out it was the last weekend for the year.  I gave Pocono Biking a call with serious doubts I would get any tickets.  They are a company we have used NUMEROUS times before for the shuttle, but never had a chance to take the train.  Either way, you park in Jim Thorpe and take the train (which runs about once a month spring – fall) or take a shuttle (which runs daily May – Oct and weekends only in April & November) to White Haven, PA.  Then you hop on your bike and cycle about 25 miles along the Lehigh Gorge Trail back to Jim Thorpe.

To my surprise there were a fed tickets available for the train!  I claimed tickets for as many family members as I could put in a car.  Bikes, trains, and waterfalls – what better way to spend a day?!

When we arrived Sunday morning the town of Jim Thorpe was already packed.  We were directed to a parking spot, gathered everything we needed for the day and headed to get our tickets.  We handed over our bikes to the people loading them on the train and then snagged some seats together on the train.  We started our one hour journey to White Haven at 9:30am.  There were still a surprising amount of leaves on the trees so we were able to enjoy the fall colors as the train chugged along the tracks.

When we arrived at White Haven we stepped off the train to our waiting bikes – although there were tons of people who were starting the trail with us, it wasn’t very hard to find them.  We hopped on and headed down the trail towards Jim Thorpe.

It was pretty chilly and there were some flooded spots due to the rain Friday, but to me this just meant that the waterfalls would really be flowing!  It didn’t take long to come across the first one.  I excitedly jumped off my bike to take some pictures.  This was pretty much how the entire day went – cycle a bit, jump off and ohh and ahh over a waterfall as I took pictures.

The trail was absolutely lovely – I enjoyed taking in all the fall colors of the leaves that were still on the trees and listening to the crunching of my bike tires of the leaves that had fallen onto the trail.  For the most part the trail is pretty shaded which is much appreciated on hot summer days, but on this trip we looked forward to the scattered rays of sunshine that broke through which warmed us up.  We stopped at the first empty picnic table we came across, which unfortunately was in the shade, and enjoyed our lunch of PBJs and the yummy pumpkin chocolate chip cookies my mom made.  Of COURSE as we started back on the trail after lunch we came across a picnic table in full sun – OH WELL!

We continued down the trail admiring the waterfalls and trains all the way back to Jim Thorpe.  I HIGHLY recommend this trail – especially if you can get a spot on the bike train!

HAPPY TRAILS!