This is the first huge trail I've been able to find. It's great! I love how easy it is to walk. I usually start where the parking lot is on pawlings or on station and I walk towards oaks near mill road. I'm just starting out walking and it's great for a beginner.

Oct 11, 2021. Parked in Glen Onoko parking lot. Lots of parking, but we could not find any toilets anywhere. Seems like with all that parking for visitors, the town or park should at least provide some porta-potties. We rode north for about 15 miles. Almost all of the trail was in great condition. There were a few spots near Glen Onoko with very loose fill that required walking (32 mm wide tires). Very nice scenery, and not crowded on a holiday Monday. Nice facilities at the Rockport trailhead. Overall a great ride!

I rode the trail today near the nuclear power plant and it was poorly maintained. The gravel was very loose, a lot of fallen tree debris and quite muddy. I traveled on the trail north about 2.5 miles and gave up. I traveled back along US11 and then rode around the trails at the river flatlands which were a bit better. I guess I am spoiled with my local trails (York Heritage and NW Lancaster Co Rail Trail)

1st time on trail. Very beautiful and calming. Beautiful scenery. Trails are flat with some incline. Only suggestion I would like to see is some extra Porta John's. Lots of benches. Needs more Porta pots. All else is great.

This is one of the most secluded rides in a pristine natural setting I have been on in PA. Absolutely quiet with no crowds or traffic to contend with. Rode a couple weeks after tropical storm Ida came through. There was a great deal of flood erosion damage at the Rausch Creek bridge (Appalachian Trail crossing). Considering this, the entire tail bed was in surprising good condition. No standing water anywhere and very few flies or mosquitoes. Only encountered a couple washouts over its entire length. These were easily navigated around though with little effort. The trail is indeed a little rougher at the western Ellendale end but it was evident that many repairs were recently done. Only a matter of time where these coarse gravel fill-ins will eventually smooth out. Used a hard tail hybrid with 29” x 2.25” knobby tires filled to 50#. Ride tolerable for 90% of the time although I did tire of the coarser stone sections at the conclusion of my ride. Due to its isolation and cellphone signal dead zone, I recommend starting at The Coldspring Road access. Although a very steep dirt road, Coldspring Road is in very good condition and accessible to most cars. I highly recommend this as the ultimate “get away from it all” ride.

Trail is nice however it's all broken up..they need to connect all this trail together to make it a nice trail

Lewisburg end start at the Miller Center/YMCA. First mile in Lewisburg is confusing and crossing Highway 15 is not at a crosswalk and the trail is not well marked. Mifflinburg end is just beyond the Rusty Rail restaurant. Lots of parking in that area. Lewisburg end first 2 miles are asphalt, many road crossings. Mifflinburg end is 1.5 miles asphalt. Middle is through cornfields and farm fields with several farm access road crossings. Could be a 5 star except for Lewisburg end and a couple of Highway crossings should be more visibly marked - cars don’t stop for bikes.

Overall a good trail but there are some irritations. The missing section between Lincoln Drive in Wissahickon and Lock Street in Manayunk is very annoying. You have a choice of dealing with the usually heavy traffic on Main street, or bumps, driveways, pedestrians and dogs on the sidewalk. This makes accessing Philadelphia from the north using this trail unsuitable, (or at least very intimidating) for novice/casual riders. Immediately north of that section there is a section on planks that will rattle your teeth loose, then there is a gravel/dirt section that tends to be muddy. This renders the trail undesirable as a commuting route. North of Shawmont Ave. it's good for a long stretch out to Oaks. Parking is not reliably available at Spring Mill or Conshohocken, which also makes the trail much less useful for commuting into Philly, especially on weekdays. The trail tends to get very heavy use, (increasingly so as one approaches Philly) and a considerable fraction of riders go faster than is appropriate.

My brother, my wife and I transported our hybrid bikes from Chicago, IL to eastern Pennsylvania to bike on the D&L trail from from White Haven, PA to Morrisville, PA on July 26-30, 2021. We carried our clothes and minimal supplies on the 132 mile trip, spending one night in each of these PA towns along the way: Jim Thorpe, Bethlehem, Frenchtown (NJ), New Hope and Morrisville. We are experienced bikers, and have taken similar multi-day trips on the GAP trail (Pittsburgh to Cumberland, MD) and Paul Bunyan Trail in MN. This is an account of our experiences along the way — both good and bad.

Day One: White Haven (mile 130) to Jim Thorpe. A driver ferried us up to White Haven from our home base in Morrisville. We biked 25 miles that afternoon to Jim Thorpe (mile 105). The trail was well marked, had mile markers, crushed stone trail conditions were good, and the scenery along the Lehigh River was beautiful.

Day Two: Leaving Jim Thorpe toward Bethlehem, the trail was good to Northampton (mile 82), but a little less graded (w more stones on path) and less even. There were a few very narrow bridges going over small creeks with steep ramps. These bridges should be improved, or at a minimum need warning signs like “Walk Your Bikes”.

We were aware from the D&L trail maps that the trail was under construction from Northampton to Allentown. When we got to North Catasauqua (mile 80) the trail abruptly ended, with a jersey barrier. There were portions of the trail under construction, but no signage. We had expected a detour in this portion with a map to give us directions on how to proceed to the next section of finished D&L trail. No maps or directions were to be found. This was very frustrating! We finally turned on our phones and used Google Maps to route us on roads suitable for biking for the last 10 miles that day to get to our hotel in Bethlehem (mile 70).

Day Three: From Bethlehem, we crossed the river and picked up the trail along the Lehigh River. There were no more mile markers along the way. The ten miles into Easton (mile 60) were paved and in very good condition. Signage was good in this section.

From Easton south, where the Lehigh meets the Delaware River, we pick up the towpath trail along the canal. Here the trail was loose and rocky, not well graded and had several washouts and ponded water. It was very hard to ride this portion of the trail. Then the trail narrowed to two gravelly rutted lanes, with grass in the middle (see pic). There were no mile or trail markers. We left the trail (approx. near mile 55) to ride on River Road to Riegelsville (mile 50). Then we rejoined the trail, still mostly gravelly and rutted, to Delaware Canal State Park (mile 40) and crossed the Delaware River to get to our next lodging place in Frenchtown, NJ. It should be noted that Frenchtown is shown in the wrong place on the D&L trail overview map, but we had figured that out before leaving for the trip!

Day Four: While on the NJ side, we decided to take the D&R Canal trail south, and then cross the river at our next destination, New Hope, PA. Most of this ride was on a rails-to-trails path. The NJ trail was in good condition, well marked, and very scenic. The condition of the D&L trail from mile 40 to 25 was unknown to us, since we rode this day on the NJ side. We crossed back over the Delaware to New Hope (mile 25).

Day Five: We bike south from New Hope to Morrisville (mile 9) on the D&L trail on our last day.The crushed stone trail was in good shape, but still no mile markers. There were town directional signs along the way. Some of the bridge underpasses were very low, and the trail was slippery and narrow under the bridge. There were signs to “Walk Your Bike” at some of the underpasses, but these signs should probably be at all underpasses. The trail narrowed to a small gravel path the last mile of our trip (at mile 9), where we got off the trail again to reach our final destination.

I am writing this review to let others know about the current condition of the D&L trail. I have read several 5 star reviews of this trail. The section from White Haven to Jim Thorpe deserves this rating, but the rest of the trail does not measure up to this standard. I would not recommend this trail to others for an end-to-end multi-day trip, under it’s current conditions. Portions of the trail are good to very good for day-bikers.

—Ray Ames

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