When the weather turns in the mountains, drive twenty-five minutes south to Jim Thorpe. It is a Victorian railway town wedged into the Lehigh Gorge, all steep streets, iron balconies and stone mansions, and it was built for grey weather. The Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway is the thing to do when it rains.
The train leaves from the old station on the main square and runs sixteen miles up the gorge and back along the river, in restored 1920s coaches with big windows and open-air platforms for anyone who does not mind getting wet. It takes about seventy minutes. In light rain the gorge is misty and the river is up, and it is arguably better than on a clear day. On October weekends, when the leaves turn, tickets sell out well in advance.
Back in town, the Old Jail Museum is a proper rainy-day hour: a nineteenth-century county jail where the Molly Maguires were held and hanged, with a guided tour and a supposed handprint on a cell wall. The Asa Packer Mansion next door is a preserved Gilded Age house museum. Broadway, the main street, has coffee shops, a bookshop and enough gift shops to fill the gaps.
Trains run most days from spring to autumn and at weekends in winter; check the timetable. Park in the big lot by the station.
