A guide written by people who live here.

Two things, in one place. There's what you want to do: the cafe worth the drive, the bookshop, the trail nobody told you about. And there's what you need sometimes: a plumber at seven in the morning, a vet on a Sunday, somewhere that does state inspection without a three-week wait. Most guides do the first badly and ignore the second. A phone book does the second and has no opinions. This is meant to be the hub that ties both together for the people who live here.

Named for what everyone here calls the river. Started because people land in the valley for work or school every year and nobody hands them a map. Every year a wave of people relocate to the Susquehanna Valley to work or study: the hospital, the three universities, a contract, a transfer. They land in a region where the good restaurants, the real events, and the things worth driving to are almost entirely word-of-mouth. Google will show you a chain on Route 11. It will not tell you about the fire hall chicken barbecue, the free concert at Bucknell, or which of the four towns you should actually live in.

How we work

• Recommendations are earned, not bought. A place appears as a recommendation because somebody here went and formed an opinion about it. Paying changes how a listing looks and where it sits, never whether we vouch for it.
• Basic listings are free. A business never has to pay to appear here.
• Paid placements will be labeled. Not open yet, and won't buy a better review when they are. Every sponsored slot will say so, plainly.
• We don't publish details we haven't checked. If we don't know a phone number or this year's festival dates, the field stays blank. A blank is honest; a guess is how a local guide loses people's trust.
• We fix things fast. Closed, moved, wrong hours: tell us and we'll correct it.

Not affiliated with anyone

This site is independent. It isn't run by, endorsed by, or connected to Geisinger, any of the universities, any municipality, chamber of commerce, or tourism bureau. We mention them because they're why a lot of our readers are here, not because we speak for any of them.