The Poconos are a mountain range in Northeastern Pennsylvania covering 2,400 sq miles. The name Pocono came from the Munsee word Pokawachne, which means "Creek Between Two Hills". The area is littered with waterfalls, some public and some private. We visited 3 of the locations while we were there.
Raymondskill Falls
Raymondskill Falls are located in the Northern Poconos and claim to be the tallest falls in Pennsylvania. They are a series of 3 cascading falls that have a total height of 150ft.
The park is publicly owned and has a few different hiking trails available. We decided on the Raymondskill Creek hike that was only 0.3 miles.
The upper falls consisted of a few small falls that some kids were swimming in. It flowed out into a large pond area. Keep an eye on that big tree across the falls. You'll see it again from below.
A short hike and a ton of stairs we found ourselves at the base of the Central Falls. This was the most impressive part of the hike. If you look close at the top of the falls, you'll see that tree I was talking about earlier.
I'm not sure if this is considered part of the same falls. It was downstream from the main falls and flowed a decent amount of water. I was able to catch this picture from the trail
We wrapped up this short hike and headed off to our next destination.
Dingmans Falls
Dingmans Falls is touted as the most famous of the falls in the area. It's the second tallest falls with a plunge of 130ft. The visitor center was closed when we were there and the paths were under construction.
The hike was 0.5 miles and after a short walking path detour we got back to the falls. It was worth the walk to get back to these. Would have been nice to see it from above.
We even had time to squeeze in a selfie. LOL
Bushkill Falls
Bushkill Falls is known as the Niagara of Pennsylvania. It's privately owned and does charge an admission fee. They have everything you could imagine onsite.
They had an Ice Cream Parlor, several places to eat, activities of all kinds for the family and a small museum.
The park is over 300 acres and has 8 different sets of falls to view.
The hiking trails ranged from .25 miles to 2 miles for the full park tour. We made our way down to the main falls to check them out.
On our way back up the trail I snapped a couple cool pics with a rainbow in the falls. It looked way brighter in real life.
After all this walking our legs were shot. We had just spent 10hrs on the road and all these stairs put us over the top. :)
Old Stone Fences
All over the countryside and forests were these old stone fences. They were literally everywhere. We did a little research and were shocked by what we found.
This area has been farmed for the last 350yrs until recently (last 100yrs). It started out as thick forest and was cleared for farming. The soil was filled with rocks that the farmers couldn't work.
They ended up pulling the rocks and stacking them into fence rows. There are said to be over 250,000 miles of the fences covering the New England area. Here are some in the yard where we were staying that lead out into the National Forest.
We hope you enjoyed our trip to the Poconos. We'd like to head back there to check out more of the waterfalls. I'll have a video of this trip done soon and will make a post for it. Be sure to check us out on social media for more updates.
