CATSKILLS AND FINGER LAKES
A Fall 2022 trip to the Catskills and Finger Lakes left many impressions – the Catskills’ hamlets are more refined than the Poconos’ small towns (better dining and drinking scene; more culture), Dinosaur BBQ is as good as I remember, Watkins Glen gorge lived up to the high expectations I set in my mind, and I now have a cheese guy in up-state New York…but the most lasting impression and memory will be that this five day swing was Charlotte Hamill’s first family vacation.
Lunch in Honesdale, PA was our first stop. We have a relative employed as a state judge who lives in Honesdale so when he recommended Scarfallotos there was no point in looking for a second option. Everyone in town knows Raymond Hamill, he knows all the restaurants, and if he says this is where to eat…well Scarfallotos is where to eat. Honesdale is a county seat and thus has a little bit of “heft” that comes with having a county courthouse and other administrative services. There’s antique stores, coffee shops, microbreweries, parks with fountains, etc. that you won’t find in other small Pocono towns. The area’s proximity to New York City (two-and-a-half hours away) and small-town vibe attracted a lot of New Yorkers looking to escape the city during the pandemic. I can understand why. Other than the heavy traffic on Route 6, it’d be a great place to call home – quiet, peaceful, and just enough culture to keep life entertaining.
Bethel, NY. The name likely means nothing to many. But for three days in mid-August 1969, it held the greatest musical concert ever. If you want to quiz someone on whether they attended the original Woodstock Festival, simply ask them where it was held. If they answer Woodstock, you know they didn’t attend. The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts includes a museum dedicated to the 1969 Woodstock experience chronicling the buildup to the event and details on the musical acts that performed.
A half mile down the road from Bethel Woods is a plaque commemorating the 1969 Woodstock concert. The stage to the left sits in a natural bowl and the slightly rising hill to the right creates a nature-made amphitheater. We were fifty-three years too late but the landscape still contained a slight aura – in a weird and converse sense it was like looking at former battlefield.
Livingston Manor is thirty-minutes north of Bethel and similarly to Honesdale it’s seen a pandemic surge of New Yorkers looking to work from home in a mountain setting. While I assume home prices have jumped, the town overall retains its small hamlet vibe. On the way in we stopped for a beer at Upward Brewing, primarily to enjoy the mountain views. On a Wednesday night, there’s not many places open in Livingston Manor but fortunately The Kaatskeller can crank out decent pizzas relatively quick. The quietness on a Wednesday made me wonder how much more rocking this town could become on a weekend.

​From Livingston Manor it was a long and winding drive to our Airbnb in Andes – made longer and windier thanks to losing cell service. Fortunately, the midcentury modern Airbnb matched the photos in the listing.
For our full day in the Catskills, we made a loop to several destinations. We followed a quick breakfast at Arkville Bread and Breakfast with a coffee at Scribner’s Mountain House – this sort of fancy boutique hotel simply does not exist in the Poconos (if there is please, please, please let me know).
Kaaterskill Falls allowed Annie to get out and stretch her legs. The Falls are a short ten minute walk from the parking lot, assuming you are only heading to the lookout – the base of the falls are a half mile walk, which doesn’t sound too bad, but from the lookout you realize it’s quite the incline. Down may not be difficult but the uphill return could be brutal.
The town of Catskills is located on the Hudson and may be the largest of the Catskill mountain towns. While it may not be a hamlet it still has a old town charm to it with store fronts retaining their original façade from the town’s earlier boom days. There’s a few places for lunch, a few retail stores selling antiques and Catskills knick knacks, and of course, a coffee shop or two.
Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (KTD) is a Tibetan Monastery located about five minutes north of Woodstock, NY. As I mentioned at the top, the Catskills seems to have more culture than the Poconos and KTD epitomizes this. The monastery includes a living area, worship area, and a gift shop. While the living area is closed to the public, visitors are free to roam the rest of the grounds – just take off your shoes when entering the worship area. I’ve seen enough Buddhist monasteries to know that I don’t know much about Buddhism. There’s no organized church service making it a bit difficult to understand the nuances of what is occurring around you. I tend to sit back and enjoy the environment and intricacies of the worship area. When we were in KTD there was a woman prostrating (I had to Google that even though I’ve seen the movement hundreds of times). I’ve always view Buddhism as a very personal religion as opposed to Christianity which is a very community-oriented worship. Regardless, it’s a beautiful complex and worth a stop to/from Woodstock.
The town of Woodstock performs an admirable and effective job of balancing local commercialism with tourist commercialism, at least I think so. Sure, there’s a lot of stores that capitalize on the Woodstock “brand”. There’s probably a few restaurants that exist solely from tourists passing through. Otherwise the town seems to maintain a local and authentic vibe. My only question is why in the world isn’t there a three-way stop sign at the Tinker Street, Rock City Road, Mill Hill Road intersection? Major head scratcher. Still a nice town even if you have a sleeping baby in your carrier and a lease pulling dog in your hand. For dinner we ate at the Phoenicia Diner, an upscale diner featuring locally sourced ingredients.
​There was a little bit of sunlight left so I took a break and enjoyed a glass (and picked up a bottle) of cider at Wayside Cider in Andes. I always thought the term “hamlet” which is common used for New York State small towns was a bit pretentious – it’s a town, just call it a town. But you visit places like Andes and immediately recognize that Andes isn’t a town, it isn’t a village. It’s a hamlet. It has a slight New England town vibe but I don’t know how else to describe Andes as other than it’s a hamlet. The only drawback? Most of the stores are only open on weekends. Rosalino’s, arguably the greatest breakfast in the Catskills and beyond, is at least open Wednesday through Sunday. Their eggs, their breakfast potatoes, their chocolate milk – all freshness overload. The equivalents of eating corn on the cob straight from the farm.
In a past career life I spent a considerable amount of time in Rochester, NY. It’s a very underrated city with a dining scene punching waaaay above its class. One of those restaurants, albeit not necessarily fine dining, is Dinosaur BBQ. Although the original location is in Syracuse, the Rochester branch doesn’t miss a beat and was always a must stop or two (I believe after the first time eating here we came back the very next not but that could just be business travel lore at this point). I made a mental note that if I was ever in Syracuse, I’d need to check out the original location. Enter Fall 2022 road trip where Syracuse is on the route from the Catskills to the Finger Lakes. I don’t know what to say other than after fifteen years of building anticipation in my mind Dinosaur BBQ continued to live up to expectations. There was some shrinkflation with the chicken wings but my word, still the best chicken wings, I get them plain, no sauce, amazing chicken wing meat. No idea where they source their chicken wings from but I’ve never had any with meat that are as remotely close.
To the Finger Lakes!
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I’m going to go against conventional wisdom and opinion and state up front that I’m not a fan of Skaneateles. Skaneateles Bakery is good. Everything is…ugh. No restaurants with lake views. Seriously how is that possible. Eighteen-wheelers plowing down Route 20. Touristy. Ugh all the way around. Beautiful. Picturesque. But I’d take the photos and move on. And a stop at Anyela Vineyards.
I’ve been to Harriet Tubman’s birth site and hometown, Bucktown, but I never quite knew where she went after escaping slavery. The answer? Auburn, NY. If you are visiting, and I can’t recommend it enough if you are passing through the northern Finger Lake towns is that 1) you’ll want to time your visit when a tour is available because 2) you can’t enter the house. Private ownership and government bureaucracy has contributed to a long process of incorporating Harriet Tubman’s house into the U.S. National Parks system but hopefully that transition and home rehabilitation is completed within the next five years. The tour lasts an hour, and since you can’t enter her home, that means there’s a ton of information the tour guide dispenses.
What goes with wine? Cheese. The perfect stop? Muranda Cheese Company. I was just planning to hop in, buy some cheese, and hop out. The $7 cheese tasting was surprisingly and maybe, oddly, the highlight of the trip considering all the other places we saw and things we did. Tasting wine at a winery or drinking a flight of beers at a microbrewery gives you some differentiation on flavor and styles. But having a cheese monger explain each tasting as you go through ten difference cheeses in ten minutes and getting instant comparisons and feedbacks, wow. Good stuff. Phew. Red Buddy. I now have a go to cheese supplier in upstate New York.
The Micro Diner in Watkins Glen makes the perfect pitstop before trekking through the gorge – on the way, quick, close to the gorge, and there’s not many other options.
I’ve had Watkins Glen gorge circled since returning to the Philadelphia area. It’s the sort of natural beauty that you usually need to head west of the Rockies to see. The only fear? Would it live up to the hype? I think it did. I am partial to rock formations and water but I think this was a great geological site. There’s a couple of different hikes/approaches to the gorge but if you are short on time, have a baby in a carrier on your back, and a dog waiting in the car then the gorge trail that cuts right through the gorge is the best option. Dogs aren’t allowed on this trail although I saw a few exceptions. However, the trail is a bit steep, lots of stairs, and wet, which I didn’t anticipate but yeah, there’s waterfalls, there’s a river, so yeah it’s going to be wet. I’m glad we left the dog in the car because we would have had a mess on our hands. The highlight of the gorge trail is walking behind a waterfall although there’s great views at every turn.
Final stop was 3 Brothers Winery which is a winery, microbrewery, food hall, and all around crazy time. It can take a little while to navigate, there’s technically three wineries here, each with a slightly different offering, and unless you come through the main entrance, which if you arrive late in the day you won’t, you’ll miss the visitor center. Once you get your bearings, and some wine in you, it’s a chill place to relax. The wineries all close around six, so by five visitors are already heading for the exits presumably off to dinner reservations.
Breakfast the next day at The State Diner in Ithaca then the drive home. Ithaca was a bit of a headscratcher. I probably built it up in my head a bit thinking it’d be a beautiful college town, that it’d be similar to the other towns we passed through. It wasn’t. The visit was limited to driving along State Street, but I really struggled to find a good breakfast a place, a good place for coffee afterwards, and that should have been a sign. Those places are easy to find in good towns. Decent waffle at The State Diner though.
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Charlotte’s first vacation is in the books. She was well behaved and a great travel companion throughout. The Watkins Glen gorge and put her to sleep so maybe she didn’t like it as much as me, but she seemed to enjoy taking in all the sites and had no problem adjusting to sleeping in her travel crib/play yard. Looking forward to many, many more trips in the upcoming years. Hopefully we can reduce the amount of baby gear we bring on future trips.