This awesome recreation area is located east of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania near Bernsville, PA off route 183 (Bernsville Road). There are several roads that lead to the lake’s many trails and launches. A very well known city nearby would be Hershey Pennsylvania.
The directions I mentioned are to a nice truck parking area lakeside along one of the hiking trails. Mile marker 19 on the Blue Marsh Lake Hiking Trail Map.
Here is a google map with the exact location I parked at with plenty of room for both Semi’s and RV’s. It looks like a great place to boondock for a couple of days. I only spent about a half day hiking both directions on the lakeside trail close to roadside pull off. Here are the google maps coordinates you can feed into your phone or GPS unit to find the pull off spot. 40.418085,-76.103612
I saved this location on my trucker GPS so I can easily navigate back to this exact truck parking spot on Blue Marsh Lake.
There are about 36 miles of hiking trails so if you like to hike you could easily spend a few days here enjoying the outdoors.
There are also kayak rental outfits that operate on some of the lakes boat launches. If you like to fish the area near the dam where the water in moving is touted as one of the best trout fishing spots in Pennsylvania.
I actually though it was a river when I pulled up and saw the body of water on my GPS and even while I was walking alone the trail.
It is a man made lake created by the army core of engineer’s in the early 1970’s you can read more about that here. It’s was created by a dam built on the Tulpehocken Creek to control flooding in the area.
I took lots of photos and some video while hiking alongside the lake. Here is a map of the hiking trails I found for you to download or view online as a PDF.
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