11 Ideal Destinations For A 3-Day Weekend In Pennsylvania

A three-day weekend in Pennsylvania can have you skiing Seven Springs, touring Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, or paddling the Loyalsock through Worlds End. No two of those trips feel the same. Some lean hard into history. Others trade on mountain lodges and championship golf. The rest just hand over a river or a forest. Here is where to spend the next long weekend.

River House at Odette's, New Hope

River House at Odette's stands on the banks of the Delaware River in New Hope. It counts as one of the most acclaimed boutique hotels in the state. There are 38 rooms and a French-inspired restaurant called The Roost. The hotel took over the site of the old Odette's cabaret. Actress and former Folies Bergère performer Odette Myrtil kept a restaurant here from 1961 until her death in 1978. River views come standard, and the piano lounge books live music several nights a week.

Downtown New Hope holds galleries and antique shops within a short walk of the hotel. The New Hope Arts Center fills out the block. The Bucks County Playhouse occupies a converted 1790 gristmill on Main Street and has hosted touring Broadway productions since 1939. Cross the bridge into Lambertville and you hit more antique shops and restaurants. The Salt House on Mechanic Street serves pub fare inside an 18th-century stone tavern. The building once worked as a mule barn for the Delaware Canal.

The Lodge at Glendorn, Bradford

Oil-and-gas magnate Clayton G. Dorn built The Lodge at Glendorn in 1929 as a private family retreat. It spreads across a 1,500-acre forested estate in the Allegheny Mountains. The property opened to guests in 1995 and now carries a Relais & Châteaux flag with 16 cabins and suites plus a Big House for groups. The chef-led kitchen turns out three meals a day. You take them in the main hall or back in your own cabin.

Guests get orientation-style activities across the estate. Fly-fishing covers three private trout lakes. The rest takes in sporting clays, 18 miles of marked trails, mountain biking, and guided ATV tours. Winter swaps in cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. The Forest Spa builds its treatment menus around the seasons. Glendorn lands about three miles outside Bradford. That is the largest city in the McKean County oil region and home to the Zippo manufacturing plant.

Seven Springs Mountain Resort, Champion

Seven Springs climbs to 2,994 feet of summit elevation in the Laurel Highlands. The resort holds 33 trails across 285 acres and 10 lifts to reach them. It joined the Vail Resorts portfolio in 2021 and now sells the Epic Pass. Winter brings skiing, snowboarding, and snowtubing across seven terrain parks. The mountain averages 135 inches of natural snow. A snowmaking system fills the gaps, and that system dates to 1960 and helped pioneer the practice.

Summer opens the Foggy Goggle bar's expanded patio. The slate adds zipline tours, the 24-foot Adventure Climbing Wall, equestrian trails, an alpine slide, and disc golf. The Trillium Spa stays open year-round. Helen's Restaurant in the main lodge handles fine dining, and Slopeside Restaurant covers the casual menu. Champion itself is a small village in Somerset County, about an hour east of Pittsburgh.

Gettysburg

July 1 through 3, 1863. Those three days at Gettysburg turned the Civil War, and a weekend here walks you through all of it. The Gettysburg National Military Park covers about 6,000 acres of preserved battlefield. You get marked stops, observation towers, and licensed guides for hire by the carload. The Museum and Visitor Center holds the restored Cyclorama. Paul Philippoteaux finished that 377-foot painting of Pickett's Charge in 1884.

The Eisenhower National Historic Site occupies the 34th president's working cattle farm next to the battlefield. Guided tours cover his retirement home. The Dobbin House Tavern on Steinwehr Avenue dates to 1776 and serves period and contemporary dishes by candlelight. The Federal Pointe Inn fills a former 1897 schoolhouse two blocks from Lincoln Square. The wartime Wills House on the square holds the room where President Lincoln finished the Gettysburg Address the night before he delivered it.

Altoona

The Horseshoe Curve outside Altoona is the railroad engineering marvel that put the town on the map. The Pennsylvania Railroad completed it in 1854. To beat the climb up the Allegheny Front, engineers wrapped the track around a mountain in a 220-degree bend. Freight trains still use it every day. Visitors ride a funicular up to a viewing platform inside the curve and watch them pass. The Curve carries National Historic Landmark status, and it drew a thwarted Nazi sabotage plot during World War II.

Downtown, the Railroaders Memorial Museum holds the Pennsylvania Railroad's K4s Pacific steam locomotive No. 1361. The engine first went on display at the Horseshoe Curve in 1957. Peoples Natural Gas Field hosts the Altoona Curve, the Double-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Home runs to right field splash into a pond by design. Tom & Joe's Restaurant on 11th Avenue has fried breakfast and served pie since 1933. The Courtyard by Marriott downtown gives you a practical bed within walking distance of the museum.

Jim Thorpe

The town took the name Jim Thorpe in 1954, after the Sac and Fox Olympic athlete. His widow offered the combined boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk his name in exchange for his burial site. Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan finished the Asa Packer Mansion in 1861 in Italianate villa style. Daily tours cover the 18-room home of the Lehigh Valley Railroad magnate and Lehigh University founder. Next door, the Harry Packer Mansion gave Disney the architectural inspiration for the Haunted Mansion.

The Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway makes a 70-minute round-trip into Lehigh Gorge State Park, with foliage peaking in mid-October. The Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center on West Broadway walks through the town's coal-and-canal history. The Inn at Jim Thorpe keeps a Victorian-era hotel on Broadway with a restaurant downstairs. The Harry Packer Mansion takes overnight guests if you want to sleep inside the actual blueprint for the ride. Mauch Chunk Lake Park, three miles out, adds swimming, fishing, and biking trails.

Allegheny National Forest

Allegheny National Forest covers more than 500,000 acres across northwestern Pennsylvania. It is the only national forest in the state. The trail network tops 200 miles for hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding. Another 88 miles of Allegheny River shoreline open up for kayaking and canoeing. Kinzua Bridge State Park holds the eastern edge of the forest and preserves the dramatic ruins of the Kinzua Viaduct. The bridge ranked as the tallest railroad viaduct in the world when it went up in 1882. It held that record about two years. Crews rebuilt it in steel in 1900. A tornado tore most of it down in 2003. A 624-foot Sky Walk now reaches out from the surviving towers.

The Allegheny Reservoir formed behind Kinzua Dam in 1965 and draws fishing and boating crowds along the New York border. Cook Forest State Park holds one of the largest stands of old-growth white pine and hemlock east of the Mississippi. Some trees reach 200 feet. Hearts Content Scenic Area loops a half-mile through similar old-growth. Outfitters in Warren and Kane handle gear rentals and shuttle service for the river.

Hershey

Milton S. Hershey opened Hersheypark in 1906 as a leisure ground for chocolate factory workers. The park now covers 121 acres with more than 70 rides and 15 roller coasters. Candymonium arrived in 2020 as the park's tallest, fastest, and longest coaster. Wildcat's Revenge debuted in 2023 as a wood-and-steel hybrid with four inversions, including the world's largest underflip. The Boardwalk water park adds slides, a lazy river, and a wavepool. ZooAmerica, an 11-acre walk-through zoo, opens on the same admission ticket.

Hershey's Chocolate World, just outside the park, charges nothing for the factory-themed tour ride. It also offers build-your-own candy bar workshops and a 4D theater. The Hershey Trolley Works rolls a sightseeing tour through town, stopping at Milton Hershey's mansion and the Hershey Story museum. The Hotel Hershey opened in 1933, built during the Depression to keep locals working, and its spa pours cocoa massages and whipped cocoa baths. Daily summer hours hold through Labor Day, then weekends carry the park into the Christmas Candylane season.

Laurel Highlands, Farmington

Frank Lloyd Wright designed two houses within a short drive of Farmington. The Laurel Highlands around them hold some of the best scenery and recreation in western Pennsylvania. Fallingwater, his 1937 masterpiece, stands directly over a waterfall on Bear Run. Guided tours go from March through November and reservations fill fast. Kentuck Knob, a second Wright house from 1956, opens tours nearby. Fort Necessity National Battlefield just outside Farmington preserves the site of George Washington's first military engagement in 1754. That clash set off the French and Indian War.

Nemacolin Woodlands Resort holds the upscale end of the region. It packs in two championship golf courses, a luxury spa, winter dogsledding, and the Lady Luck Casino. Ohiopyle State Park covers more than 20,000 acres along the Youghiogheny River. Outfitters like Wilderness Voyageurs and White Water Adventurers put you into class III and IV whitewater. Laurel Caverns opens guided tours through Pennsylvania's largest cave system, plus rappelling and spelunking for anyone who wants them.

Worlds End State Park, Forksville

Worlds End State Park (no apostrophe, whatever the maps tell you) covers 780 acres in an S-shaped valley along Loyalsock Creek. Loyalsock State Forest wraps another 114,000 acres around it. Governor Gifford Pinchot established the park in 1932. The original Civilian Conservation Corps cabins went up between 1933 and 1941 and still serve as the Family Cabin District. Loyalsock Canyon Vista and High Knob Vista both deliver outstanding overlooks across the Endless Mountains. Short drives along Mineral Spring and Cold Run roads get you there.

The Loyalsock Trail, the region's signature 59-mile route, passes through the park on its way across the state forest. Shorter options include the Canyon Vista Trail and the Double Run Nature Trail, which loops past several waterfalls. Loyalsock Creek churns class III and IV whitewater in spring. It draws trout anglers all season and opens swimming holes in summer. The Forksville General Store on Route 154 fills a 150-year-old building and serves diner-style breakfast and a long list of sandwiches.

Marietta

Marietta stretches along the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County. About 2,600 people live in this river town, and a National Register historic district covers much of the borough. Anderson and Cook chartered the place in 1812 by joining two older riverside settlements. Rows of Federal-style row houses from the early 19th century still line the streets. It makes a quieter pick than the busier corners of Pennsylvania Dutch Country a few miles east.

Chickies Rock County Park, on the river just north of town, climbs hiking trails to a 200-foot quartzite cliff over the Susquehanna. The Northwest River Trail follows the water for 14 miles between Falmouth and Columbia. Shank's Tavern on Walnut Street ranks among the longest continuously operating taverns in Pennsylvania. The Railroad House Inn and Restaurant on Front Street keeps a B&B and farm-to-table dining inside an 1820s former hotel. The place was built to serve travelers waiting on the Susquehanna ferry.

Pick A Lane For Three Days

Pennsylvania hands a three-day weekend more directions than you can take in one trip. Altoona and the Horseshoe Curve put working freight trains a few yards from your face. Hershey turns chocolate into roller coasters and cocoa spa treatments. Gettysburg walks you across the ground that turned the Civil War. Marietta keeps its Federal row houses quiet along the Susquehanna. New Hope packs galleries and a riverside hotel into a handful of walkable blocks. Pick one this weekend. The rest will keep.