New Paltz/ Visit to Mohonk

Father’s day, Sunday, June 15—New Paltz—Visit Mohonk

Walking toward the main entrance 

Mohonk Mountain House from the lake

After breakfast at the motel, we drove up to Mohonk about 8 o’clock. Quite a long wait at the entry gate as they cleared my credit card. Their computers were down. We drove slowly up the mountain, parked in the lower day -visitor’s lot, and climbed steps up past the men’s dorms to the “house.” We entered the house at the main door/valet’s station/portico and then explored this enormous hotel that I had worked in and loved in the early 1960s, wandered through the gift shop, and then walked past the day spa (voted the best in the nation by Conde Nast Traveler), mountain bike rental, and tennis courts to the trail to Cope’s Landing. Mohonk has over 85 miles of hiking trails and this plus its pristine location in the Shawangunk mountains caused the Nature Conservancy to name it one of Earth’s “Last Great Places.” There was a golf frisbee course in the woods on either side of the Cope’s Lookout trail, the disc baskets artfully hidden. Must have been a tough course.

After enjoying the view of the Catskills and the valley from Cope’s Lookout—my favorite place when I worked here—we hiked around the deep glacial lake taking many pix on this cool, sunny morning. Our trail ended at the gardens so we explored them, taking pix of flowers and bowers and fences. Then we relaxed on the front porch before the boat dock watching fathers and their families feed the rainbow trout, renting rowboats and paddleboats, fishing, and getting photos taken with dad. Sarah went down to the car to change into dressier dinner attire. While she was gone I became absorbed in the conversation of the two men sitting to my right. They were talking loudly and excitedly in New Yawk accents about sports, first covering football and discussing the players scornfully or lovingly depending on their ideas of the players’ skill; then moving to basketball, and finally moving to baseball. One would have thought each team member an intimate relative. The two with their deep accents and excitement sounded like a sketch out of a comic movie, and I could not help but smile.

  

When Sarah returned, it was nearly 11:30am so the two of us went up to the second floor dining room where I was seated on my old station near the window. A pine that had been opposite the window was gone, and a servers’ station had been added, but otherwise all was as I remembered it. Big buffet tables were spread with everything imaginable: roast beef, lamb, stuffed pork loin, clams, mussels, scallops, and an atrocious number of fantastic desserts. We both said, “To hell with our diets,” filled our plates, and after the main course circled the dessert buffet filling our plates with a bit of nearly every dessert. These sumptuous delectables we ate with coffee and enjoyed being part of this huge dining hall that once welcomed the likes of Strawbridges and Duponts.

I noticed that several of the wait staff were African Americans. One maitre de stopped at our table, and when I explained that I had worked at Mohonk in the early 60s and was sitting on my old station, he stopped to talk for a bit, explaining that Gerow Smiley, a member of the founding Quaker family, had been there just the week before. I was sorry to have missed Gerow, who was only about 15 years older than I and directed operations when I was there. I remembered him fondly and wondered if he would have remembered me among the hundreds of college and young people who worked at Mohonk in the dining room, gardens, and on the grounds crew over the years.

After lunch we had a heartwrenching experience in the ladies room. There were three stalls, the third occupied by a mother and her small daughter—whom we never saw. The daughter was terrified of the loud flushing of the pressure-assisted toilets and sobbingly pleaded with her mother: “ No! No! I don’t have to go! Please! Please! No! Don’t take my diaper off! Don’t take my diaper off!”
    Her mother told her: “It’s all right. It won’t happen again,” so Sarah and I were in a quandary. Should we flush, scare the child, and prove the mother a liar? Eventually, while the mother was still trying to coax her daughter to go, we flushed and left the women’s room, the child’s sobbing words echoing in our ears.

We stopped in the Mohonk gift shop after lunch and bought a few small things, and then headed back to New Paltz. In New Paltz, we walked the main street and browsed in its shops, including a secondhand shop. This walk and our Mohonk hikes saw us finally getting in some pretty good exercise.

Back at the motel we decided not to spend our time doing laundry, so lazed and relaxed in the room. After our big lunch we were content to snack from our cooler and food bag. We were in our jammies watching HGTV when Sarah discovered that she’d left her charge card up at Mohonk. We called and they were holding the card in Security, so we dressed and drove up. Because it was dark, we saw many deer right beside the road, and on the single lane up to Mohonk, a red fox (Internet image, right) crossed the road and shortly after, a small

porcupine (Internet photo left). No parking down the hill in the day-guest lots this time. We drove directly to the portico, and Sarah jumped out and got her card. We were lucky to have discovered it missing before our drive to Vermont the next day and before the road to Mohonk was closed for the night.