Half of what this valley is known for is shut in spring.
That is the honest opening, and it is also the whole argument. The orchards are not picking. The lake is too cold to swim. Plenty of the summer places have not turned the lights on yet. If you want the full menu, come in September and we will tell you so.
What you get instead is the version almost nobody books. The waterfalls are the loudest they will be all year. The leaves are not up, so the ridges give you views that disappear entirely by June. You can walk a Saturday in April and meet four people. That is the trade. Whether it is a good one depends on what you were coming for.
March is mud, and May is the point
The Highlands hold water. Trails stay soft well into April, which means a March weekend should be built around the waterfalls and the fire rather than around long walks.
Late April and May are the window. The ground firms up. The wildflowers come through before the canopy closes over them. The orchards and cideries reopen. Bellvale Farms Creamery opens somewhere around April, which is as good a marker as any for the valley waking up.
One thing worth stating flatly: the lake is cold. Properly cold, well into May. People swim, and people also badly misjudge it. Use the hot tub until the water has had a month of sun on it.
The drive is better now than it will be all year
Drive up on a Friday in April and there is no weekend traffic and no orchard line on the Warwick Turnpike. The light lasts longer every week you wait.
Stop at the Warwick Valley farm markets on the way through if you are cooking, which in spring you probably are, because fewer places are open.
Then get the fire going. Spring evenings drop hard here once the sun is off the water, and the deck at nine o’clock is a completely different room from the deck at six.
This is the one weekend of the year for the waterfalls
Give Saturday to moving water. Ringwood and Long Pond Ironworks both run along water that is moving in spring rather than trickling. Long Pond is flat and historic enough to work in whatever the weather is doing, which in April matters.
If the ground has dried, take the Bearfort ridge in Abram S. Hewitt. The leaves are not up, so you get long views through the trees that are gone by June. Terrace Pond is spectacular right now and genuinely slippery on the scrambles — leave that one for a dry week.
For the afternoon, the New Jersey Botanical Garden at Skylands is the thing spring does better here than any other season. Twenty minutes away, inside Ringwood State Park, and the most cultivated ground within reach of a lake surrounded by wild country. The contrast is the pleasure.
Warwick is at its best when nobody is in it
Sunday is the day for it. Main Street without the Applefest crowds, the wineries open and empty. The black dirt farms starting to move. Warwick Valley Winery and Pennings are both good calls before the drive back.
If the weather has turned on you completely, the drive-in opens for the season around now, and it is the rare thing that is better in questionable weather than in perfect weather.
Leave later than you think. Sunday evening traffic back toward the bridge is nothing like the autumn version, and the last hour of light on the water is worth staying for.
