Around Greenwood Lake.

120 acres of orchard and garden pouring Doc’s Draft hard cider, Black Dirt spirits, and estate wines. The tasting room runs seven days a week, all but a few days a year, which makes it the dependable midweek option when the smaller places are shut.

A farm winery known for small-batch ciders, meads, and wines, with outdoor seating and weekend live music among the trees. Weekend-leaning: open Friday through Sunday, shut the rest of the week.

A hilltop cidery on a working farm, pouring dozens of house-made hard ciders over sweeping Warwick Valley sunsets. Thursday to Sunday, with the schedule stretching in season.

Founded in 1839, and pouring above the largest underground cellars in the country — hand-excavated vaults holding more than two hundred oak barrels. A tasting room with the cellars still under it.

Four wineries and no brewery was an oversight. This one took the F.X. Matt Cup for best brewery in New York State two years after opening, and pours alongside farm-to-table food, natural wines and live music.

A multi-generation dairy farm scooping homemade ice cream over valley views — the local ritual on any warm afternoon, April to October.

Fifty-plus acres of pick-your-own apples in fall, a year-round market, and one of Orange County’s favorite harvest stops.

A family orchard with pick-your-own strawberries, apples, and a wide spread of produce in an unhurried setting. Closed Mondays, and the picking tracks the season closely enough that they ask you to call before driving over.

A century of family apple-growing — drive right up to the trees and pick from more than a dozen varieties. It opens for the picking season only, early September into November.

A walkable 19th-century Main Street of independent boutiques, farm-to-table restaurants, galleries, and antique shops.

Thirty-plus regional farms, bakers and artisans in the heart of the village. Sundays nine until two, from Mother’s Day through November.

The valley’s biggest day, held on the first Sunday in October since 1989 and now drawing thirty thousand people to one village: a hundred and fifty craft stalls, four music stages and a great deal of pie. Go early or park a long way out.

A hamlet of working artists in 18th-century barns: pottery, jewelry, glass, sculpture, and a beloved little theater.

An immersive LEGO theme park with fifty-plus rides, miniature LEGO cities, and a resort hotel — the closest big park to the lake. It runs a season rather than a calendar: open from late March to early January, and shut through the depth of winter.

New Jersey’s largest ski mountain in winter, and a zipline and waterpark destination once summer arrives — just over the border.

The answer to a wet day, and unlike anything else here: an underground zinc mine you walk into, held at a constant 56 degrees, and a fluorescent-mineral collection that is the best in the world. Ninety-one of the minerals found on the site glow, thirty-five of them found nowhere else on earth. Everyone leaves with a specimen.

A hundred acres, five hundred animals and nine buildings of accumulated Americana — antique cars, farm machinery, oddities. Family-run for very nearly a century and completely unlike a modern zoo, which is most of the charm. Seasonal, roughly late March to early November.

One of the Northeast’s last drive-in theaters, family-run since 1950 and still showing double features across three outdoor screens from spring through fall.

Tandem jumps from fourteen and a half thousand feet, which the drop zone claims as the highest in the Northeast, out of a Grand Caravan — about a minute of freefall, and the New York skyline on the horizon when the air is clear. Roughly $260, and seasonal, running spring to late autumn.

Ten aerial ropes courses and more than a hundred and fifty elements strung through the trees at Mountain Creek, plus a zip line running better than a thousand feet. Night climbs in season. The warm-weather answer for anyone who has outgrown a playground and not a treehouse.

Go-karts, two mini-golf courses, laser tag, bowling, roller skating, an arcade and a climbing wall under one roof — the most complete wet-afternoon answer in range when the children have run out of patience with scenery.

The closest skiing to the house, and one of the oldest continuously operating ski areas in the country — running since 1936. A family hill that lights every trail for night skiing, with a six-hundred-foot tubing lane beside it.

The bigger mountain: four peaks, a thousand feet of vertical — the most in the region — forty-six trails with all but one lit for night skiing, and thirty lanes of tubing when the legs give out.

The same trails you would walk in October, transformed and almost entirely empty — long sightlines through bare hardwood, and nobody on them.

In a hard winter the lake draws skaters and ice fishermen. Conditions vary enormously along its length, so always check locally before anyone steps out.

The village does the season properly. Its Home for the Holidays program runs weekends from late November, opening the shops for the afternoon with the Warwick Valley Chorale caroling in the street and free horse-and-buggy rides looping the village — Christmas buying as a pleasure rather than a chore.

Twenty-two thousand acres bordering the lake itself — ridge walking, the Sterling Lake loop and a fire tower. Some trails in the fire zone have been closed since the November 2024 Jennings Creek Fire and had not reopened at the last official notice — check the park’s alerts before you set out.

Two hundred miles of marked trails through New York’s second-largest park, including the boulder cave at Claudius Smith’s Den.

Forty-two hundred wooded acres around scenic Ramapo Lake, with rocky overlooks and easy Highlands trailheads.

The Highlands are steep, which makes for good walking and hard cycling. The old railway beds are the answer: the Sussex Branch runs about twenty miles and the Paulinskill Valley twenty-seven, both flat by construction and connecting into longer loops, while Orange County’s Heritage Trail is paved for nineteen. Bring bikes — rental nearby is thin.

Guided trail rides through wooded country, year-round, along with pony rides and hayrides — the nearest riding to the house, and it keeps going through the winter, which most places do not.

The furthest thing we will send you to, and worth it: believed to be the oldest operating glider airport in the country, flying since 1927. Scenic soaring flights over the Shawangunks with no engine running — fifteen minutes, half an hour, or towed to a mile up.

New Jersey’s highest summit at 1,803 feet. The 220-foot obelisk on top is the draw: climb the internal stairs and you are standing on the highest point in the state, looking into three of them at once — the Poconos west, the Catskills north, the Wallkill valley below. The monument keeps its own opening hours and shuts in winter, so check before you drive out.