Three-bedroom houses in Arrowhead Lake for a hiking trip
If you want three bedrooms in Pocono Lake and you plan to spend your days on trails, start with five of our houses: Treehouse Escape, Broken Oar Cottage, Lakefront Retreat, LiWay Lakeside and Lake Hideaway. All five sit inside the gated Arrowhead Lake community, all five have a fire pit and a grill, and the differences between them come down to how many people you're bringing, whether you want water at the bottom of the lawn, and how much house you need when it rains.
The thing worth knowing before you book anything here: Arrowhead Lake backs onto Brady's Lake State Gamelands, a 21,000-acre preserve with its own lake, open for walking and fishing. You don't have to drive to find woods. The driving is for the state parks, and there are several of those within reach, which is a different proposition from a cabin that is merely surrounded by trees.
Start with the headcount, because it eliminates three of the five
Three bedrooms in this portfolio does not mean a fixed number of people. Across these five houses the capacity runs from six to nine, and the gap is made up by lofts, bunks and trundles rather than by bedrooms.
Treehouse Escape sleeps nine across three levels, with two and a half baths and a loft that takes two more.
Broken Oar Cottage sleeps seven, with two full baths and a loft holding a single twin.
Lakefront Retreat sleeps seven, but on one bathroom.
LiWay Lakeside sleeps six, two baths.
Lake Hideaway sleeps six, one and a half baths.
For a group of six, which is what most three-bedroom searches actually mean, all five work on paper. The bathroom count is what sorts them. Six people getting out the door for a morning hike with one bathroom between them is a slow start, and that's the trade at Lakefront Retreat. LiWay Lakeside gives six people two bathrooms, one of them en suite off the king room on the second floor, and that is the quiet reason it's the easy pick for a group of adults who want to be walking by nine.
Push to seven or eight and Broken Oar Cottage takes over: two full bathrooms, a dining area that seats eight, and at 1,824 square feet the largest of the five by a wide margin. At nine, Treehouse Escape is the only one in this group that works, and it's also the only one that takes dogs.
What the boots-and-weather details actually look like
A hiking trip puts different demands on a house than a pool-and-beach trip does. You come back wet, muddy and hungry, usually in that order, and you want somewhere to dry out and something to do if the forecast turns.
Treehouse Escape handles that better than anything else on this list. Two wood-burning fireplaces on separate levels and a wood stove, two living rooms, a washer and dryer, and a foosball table on the lower level for the afternoon the rain doesn't lift. Spread over three levels, it means a group of nine isn't all in one room at six in the evening. The kitchen comes stocked down to salt, pepper and oil, which matters more than it sounds when you arrive after dark and don't want to shop before you cook.
Broken Oar Cottage is the cleaner, more contemporary version of the same idea: central air and heating, an electric fireplace in the living room, a chef's kitchen with granite counters, a laundry room, and a loft set up as a workspace if someone in the group is stretching a long weekend into a working week. There's a firepit with chairs in the backyard and a grill and table on the deck. Parking for three cars in the private driveway, which is worth checking when a group arrives in separate vehicles.
Lake Hideaway is the smallest of the five at 760 square feet, and it's an honest little cabin rather than a showpiece: queen in one room, a full in another, a twin with a trundle in the third, a 60-inch smart TV, a firepit with chairs outside, and games and books for the evenings. It has more reviews behind it than any of the others here, which tells you something about how it holds up to repeat use. The community lodge, with its fitness room, billiards room and library, is part of what you get, and the house sits close enough to beach #3 for a short walk.
The two with water at the bottom of the lawn
Hiking and lake time aren't competing plans in Arrowhead Lake, they're the same weekend in Poconos. If you want to come off a trail and get on the water without driving anywhere, two of the five put the lake in front of you and kayaks on the property.
LiWay Lakeside has a private dock a few steps from the house, two single kayaks and a double, and a secluded wooded lot. Fire pit, deck for meals, lake and forest out the windows. For a group of six who want fishing in the morning and a trail in the afternoon, this is the one I'd book first.
Lakefront Retreat keeps two kayaks and a canoe on site, has a fire pit down by the water and air conditioning in the master bedroom and the sunroom. Seven people, 800 square feet, one bathroom: it's a cabin, not a lodge, and it rates perfectly across every review it has. If your group is close enough not to mind the single bathroom, the lakeside fire pit in the evening is the payoff.
Neither of these is a hiking house in the sense of being near a trailhead. They're lake houses you can hike from, and that's a meaningful difference when you're planning a week.
Where you'll actually hike
Four parks do most of the work from a base in Arrowhead Lake, and they ask for different amounts of your day.
Tobyhanna State Park is the one to do first. The Lakeside Trail circles Tobyhanna Lake in about five miles, partly paved, and it works year-round for walking or biking. It's the hike that suits a mixed group with a range of legs, and it's an easy drive north.
Hickory Run State Park, southwest of here, is the most varied park in the region and holds Hawk Falls, a short walk to a waterfall that gets photographed more than anything else in the Poconos. Allow a half day, not an afternoon.
Gouldsboro State Park sits next door to Tobyhanna with a 250-acre lake of its own, and the two are joined by the Frank Gantz Trail: 3.75 miles through plateau forest, two to two and a half hours one way. Leave a car at each end and you have a proper day.
Big Pocono State Park, on Camelback, carries about seven miles of interconnecting trails. The Camelback Mountain Loop runs 3.2 miles with views off the eastern cliffs, roughly an hour and a half at a steady pace.
Closer in, Lehigh Gorge State Park is worth the longer drive for the river and the trail mileage, and the Austin T. Blakeslee Natural Area is close enough to be a before-dinner walk. For something short and local, the loop built from Brian's Trail and the coloured trails off Stoney Hollow Road runs under two miles, and the Lost Lakes Trail from the same parking area is a little over two miles out to a string of ponds. If you're walking those in autumn, wear blaze orange: it's hunting country.
The gate, and what it gets you
Arrowhead Lake is private and gated, which shapes the trip more than the brochure version of that word suggests. Inside the gate there are two lakes, four beaches, three heated outdoor pools that run from Memorial Day to Labor Day, playgrounds, and courts for tennis, basketball and beach volleyball. The lodge stays open year-round with a fitness room, a library and a billiards room, and there's a family game room with ping pong, a pool table and air hockey. The Rental Shack puts out kayaks, boats and bikes in season.
Two practical consequences. First, the community is remote by design, so you'll need a car and you'll want to shop on the way in. Ahart's Market in Blakeslee is the closest real grocery stop, with Weis, Walmart, CVS and ALDI in the wider orbit, and the Pinewood Deli sits just outside the main gate. Second, short-term guests have to be registered with the community association before arrival, and the association sets fees of its own on top of the booking. That registration takes guest names, vehicle details and drivers, and it has to be submitted in advance, so send us the details as soon as you've booked rather than the night before.
Trash goes with you when you leave, to the Trash Center inside the community. That's a bear-country rule, not housekeeping fussiness.
How I'd choose, in one paragraph
Six adults who want the lake and the trails in the same day: LiWay Lakeside, for the dock, the kayaks and the second bathroom. Seven or eight who want to cook properly and spread out: Broken Oar Cottage. Nine, or a group bringing a dog: Treehouse Escape, with its two fireplaces and three levels. Six on a budget who'll be out of the house all day anyway: Lake Hideaway. And if the point of the trip is a fire by the water after a long walk, Lakefront Retreat, as long as everyone has made peace with one bathroom.
Before you book
Check the bed layout against your group rather than the headline number, because the difference between six and nine in these houses is lofts and bunks. Confirm the registration details with us early so nothing stalls at the gate. If you're coming outside summer, know that the pools and the Rental Shack are seasonal while the lodge isn't, so a November trip is a trail trip with a fireplace at the end of it, not a beach one.
We rent these houses directly, without a platform in between, so if you tell us the dates and the number of people we can tell you which of the five is free and which one actually suits you. That second answer is usually the more useful one.