Summer is the obvious season here, which makes it the easiest one to plan badly.
The plan itself is not complicated. Be in the water. Arrange everything else around not having to leave it. In July you should barely need the car after Friday night, and that is the point of the place.
What people get wrong is the hours. This lake is glass at seven in the morning and a wake-filled highway by eleven, and the difference between those two lakes is larger than the difference between any two seasons. Everything below is about that.
Pick your weekend on purpose
Midweek and late August are the quiet windows. The lake is busiest on high-summer weekends and around the Independence Day fireworks, which are very good and also the one night the entire valley is here at once. Either is fine. Choosing by accident is not.
If you are trailering a boat or a jet ski, sort the launch before you come. There is no public ramp on Greenwood Lake — boats go in through the marinas, most for a fee, and several have stopped taking day launches at all. Tell us what you are bringing and we will make sure the dock space fits it.
Leave the city late and swim the same evening
Let the rush drain out, drive up, and you will be in the water before the light goes. That is the entire argument for this lake over somewhere three hours further north.
Do not cook on Friday. D’Boathaus is on the water a few minutes away and is the natural arrival dinner; the Greenwood Tavern is closer still.
Then the hot tub, which is better in summer than people expect, because the air is warm enough that getting out of it is not a decision.
Start before the lake wakes up
Seven in the morning is the best hour this lake has. Take coffee out. Paddle before anything with an engine on it is moving.
Fox, Storms and Chapel are the three islands, and each one reads differently from the water. All three are private, with houses on them — there is nowhere to land and picnic, whatever you may have heard. Paddle around them and eat on the shore.
Everything in the boathouse is yours: the kayaks, the canoe, the paddleboards, the tube. If you want an engine behind you, Greenwood Lake Water Sports run driven wake and ski sessions out of the marina, and Jersey Paddle Boards rent and teach out of Willow Point.
For the middle of the day, when this lake is at its worst, Monksville Reservoir is ten minutes down the same road and capped at ten horsepower. That cap is the whole reason it stays quiet, and it makes Monksville the better paddle between eleven and four.
Cook on Saturday, outside, late
The kitchen is set up for feeding a crowd and both the grill and the pizza oven are outdoors, which means nobody has to be inside cooking while everyone else is on the deck.
Eating out there as the light drops behind the far ridge is the thing people actually describe afterward. Not the boat, not the tube. Dinner.
Swim first, pack second
In that order, and not the other way round on a Sunday. Then Bellvale Farms Creamery on the way out — a hilltop view over the Warwick Valley, homemade ice cream, open April to October, and not optional in July.
If you have the afternoon, the Warwick Valley wineries and Pennings Farm Cidery are fifteen minutes further and make the drive home considerably more civilized.
One practical note for anyone with children. Vests on the dock, not just in the boat. The lake shelves quickly off the end of it, and that is exactly where children are.
The last thing most people do is stand on the dock with the car already packed, working out whether there is time for one more swim. There usually is.
