They turned a tired Poconos motel into a travel hot spot. Now they’re going glamping.

GREENTOWN, Pa. — They went looking for a rural getaway, a small cabin, perhaps, somewhere to shed the stress of living in crowded Philadelphia during a global pandemic.

But Brian and Joanna Linton, cofounders of the outdoor brand United by Blue, didn’t leave their business acumen behind. That’s how the couple wound up buying an old, drive-up motel a decade or two past its prime in an area of the Poconos known as “Promised Land.”

“This is an area of the Poconos, up here at this elevation, that started to remind me of all the outdoor places I’ve loved,” Brian Linton said recently on his property there.

Escaping the cities for rural areas was common during the pandemic. A Manhattan family decamped to Eagles Mere, population 143, in Sullivan County. A cartoonist from Brooklyn liked Williamsport so much, she bought a home there and turned it into a comedy writer’s residence. The Lintons have chronicled their own ventures in the Poconos on an Instagram channel that’s garnered over 32,000 followers.

The family lived in the office of the former Tauschman’s Motel in 2020 while tearing the place down to its bones. They built up The Rex in its place. There was a bit of culture shock and, at, 1,500 feet, a lot of snow.

“For those wondering, we had not seen the show Schitt’s Creek at the time,” Joanna Linton said in a YouTube video about the experience.

The 10-room boutique, micro-hotel, which cost $240,000, is decked out in natural woods and black trim, with modern interiors and amenities like hot tubs and a sauna overlooking the forest.

On a recent spring morning, guests were walking dogs and sipping coffee around The Rex’s grassy courtyard.

Brian Linton said The Rex, which opened in 2021, regularly books guests from Philly, Brooklyn, and in-between. That doesn’t mean he and Joanna are simply sitting back to live the rural life now. Every old, seemingly empty bungalow or shuttered eatery near the motel gives them ideas. They recently bought an old, 10-acre campground nearby that they’ve transformed into “Camp Ferncrest.”

Known as Camp Wilson for decades, the campground had 67 sites, Linton said, many of them home to tarp-covered shacks. Linton said he cut the number of sites down to 32, to give campers more room. Some of the sites will have geodesic domes, tents, and yurts to sleep in this summer.

“It’s going to be more glamping than camping,” he said.

The Lintons, who met while studying in China, aren’t merely opening a glampground, however. Brian is planning a common area at Camp Ferncrest that will include RV food trailers, picnic tables, and fire pits that both guests and locals in the Promised Land community can use.

Reservations for Camp Ferncrest open on Sunday at campferncrest.com for stays starting on June 30. Most of the camping gear, Linton said, will be provided to guests.

“It’s really looking to expand on the clientele we know what to get into the outdoors but don’t necessarily have the gear or the knowledge to do it themselves,” he said. “We’ll provide all that.”

Brian Linton said he grew up in the outdoors and the passions for hiking and camping stayed with him, both personally and professionally. In 2010, Linton cofounded United by Blue, an eco-friendly outdoor-lifestyle company that aimed to help clean the world’s oceans and waterways through retail sales and their unique cafés. Linton, along with a partner, sold the company last year. The new owner recently announced it was closing the company’s last two cafés in Philadelphia.

The Rex, with overnight stays ranging from $200 to $500 depending on the size of the room or cabin, is not rustic but its setting, on the edges of Promised Land State Park and a vast state forest system, make it the equivalent of a Grand Canyon Lodge in the Poconos. The state park is one of Pennsylvania’s best, with several lakes, miles of trails, and a museum dedicated to the young men of the Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps that helped build it all.

Linton said he’s been drawn to Promised Land State Park in the years he’s been traveling back and forth to The Rex and, after viewing a map, realized he could connect the motel’s land directly to the park’s trails.

“We’re literally on the border of the park,” he said. “It’s about a 10 minute walk to the beach from here.”

Linton isn’t sure if he, Joanna, and their three children will ever move to the Poconos, permanently. They’re back and forth weekly to their home in Washington Square West and whatever room is empty at The Rex.

“We’ll be up here all summer,” he said. “It’s perfect in the summer.”

The Lintons are still searching for that cabin, in case their motel’s all booked up.