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This week, it started feeling hot enough for corn to pop on the cob, for chocolate bars to be drinkable, for eggs to poach in the pool. It’s been the kind of weather that makes one of Pennsylvania’s most valuable assets nearly priceless, if you just remember it exists: The state park system.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources manages 300,000 acres set aside for hiking, picnicking, camping, fishing, boating and, most importantly as thermometers soar, swimming. That’s 469 square miles, more than a third the size of the state of Rhode Island, all at your disposal.
Four of those parks are in Luzerne County’s boundaries: Frances Slocum, Nescopeck, Ricketts Glen and Lehigh Gorge. All of them provide plenty of shade from the state’s remarkable mixed forests, sporting the fascinating collection of fir trees and the hardwoods that make our autumns among the most colorful in the world. Right now, they offer a canopy of relaxing green shielding you from the sun.
All four, of course, feature cool waterways: Lakes at Nescopeck, Ricketts Glen and Frances Slocum; the Lehigh River through the gorge. And two offer swimming: Ricketts Glen has an inviting, 600-foot beach with a swimming area carved out of Lake Jean, while Frances Slocum sports 165-acre lake for boating and a pool for swimming (for a fee). Ricketts Glen also offers challenging, scenic waterfall trails, and yes, there are places you can dip your hot feet into the water and feel the spray from the cascade.
Nescopeck’s much smaller Lake Frances, only 9-acres, is generally for sightseeing and fishing from the shore only, but still offers respite. Trails weave around and over creeks and past smaller ponds. Rafting trips abound down the Lehigh Gorge, and if that’s a little too much of an adrenalin rush for you, take a bike (or rent one) for a leisurely ride along the old railroad bed.
State Parks offer history lessons as well, if you like. Frances Slocum, of course, is named after a women captured at the age of five and raised among Native Americans. The Lehigh Gorge still sports the remains of a remarkable system of locks built by Josiah White and the Lehigh Coal Navigation Company for freight transportation before the Iron Horse made the whole system suddenly obsolete.
You can find out anything you want to know about opportunities at area state parks — or explore options beyond the county boundaries, including Tuscarora park south of Hazleton and Hickory Run on the other side of the river from the Lehigh Gorge state park — by going online to the DCNR website, dcnr.pa.gov.
There are other options as well in the area, of course, including Moon Lake State Forest Recreation Area off Route 29 on the way to Route 118, and Seven Tubs Nature Area on your right as you head out of Wilkes-Barre on 115 toward Bear Creek.
So, sure, stay in the cocoon of air-conditioning if the heat really bothers you, but consider getting outdoors and enjoying the woods and waterways so generously preserved for your use in our region.