The JournalMost people plan their Pocono trip around overlooks and trailheads. They never look up.
Most people plan their Pocono trip around overlooks and trailheads. They never look up.
It's an understandable habit. The region's reputation is built on ground-level adventure — ridge hikes, whitewater, ziplines through the trees. Every itinerary tends to funnel toward the same handful of lookouts, the same trail-end photo. There's nothing wrong with that view. It's just not the only one, and it's not the best one.
Balloon Chase Adventures launches out of Moscow, PA, near Gouldsboro Lake, and offers something that no trail in the region can replicate: sunrise and sunset hot air balloon flights that drift over the Poconos' ridgelines and lakes from roughly 1,000 feet up. Flights run about an hour, with two- and four-passenger balloon options, and they move at the pace of the wind — which is to say, slowly, quietly, without the adrenaline spike of whitewater or the vertigo of a zipline. This is a different kind of adventure. It asks less of your body and more of your attention.
There's a particular quality to seeing the Poconos this way. From a summit or an overlook, you're looking at one slice of the landscape — a valley, a lake, a ridge in the middle distance. From a balloon at sunrise or sunset, in the low, golden light that photographers wait all day for, the whole region opens up beneath you at once: ridgelines folding into each other, lakes going still and silver, the scale of the place made suddenly legible in a way that's impossible from the ground. It's a quieter kind of thrill — less about conquering something, more about simply being suspended above it, together, watching it unfold.
The flight ends with a traditional champagne toast on landing, which turns what could be just a scenic activity into something more occasion-worthy — a fitting close for couples looking for a romantic, unhurried counterpoint to the region's more obvious adventure activities.
One practical note: these flights are weather-dependent, and rescheduling isn't unusual. Because Balloon Chase Adventures isn't heavily marketed, it's the kind of experience that's easy to overlook when you're building a weekend itinerary around the usual landmarks — but that's exactly why it's worth planning the trip around, rather than squeezing in as an afterthought. Build in a flexible day or two around your planned flight window, and let the rest of the weekend bend around it rather than the other way around.
If you're weighing how to structure a Pocono weekend around something like this — timing it with sunrise or sunset, building in flexibility for weather, pairing it with the right home base near Moscow and Gouldsboro Lake — that's exactly the kind of planning Pocono Reserve exists for.