Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area

The Water Gap is the big, wild backyard of the Poconos — a national recreation area wrapped around 40 miles of the Delaware River, and completely free to enter. The signature hike is Mount Tammany: 3.5 steep miles that pay off with the definitive Water Gap view, the river making its dramatic S-curve a thousand feet below. Not up for a climb? Raymondskill Falls (Pennsylvania’s tallest waterfall) is a ten-minute walk from its parking lot, and Dingmans Falls has an accessible boardwalk the whole family can manage. Summer is for river time — canoe and tube liveries in the area will float you downstream for a lazy afternoon and shuttle you back. Cell service disappears out here, which we consider a feature. Pack water, download your maps ahead of time, and arrive before 10am on weekends since the popular trailhead lots genuinely fill up. Most of our East Stroudsburg and Stroudsburg Pads are within 20 minutes of an entrance.