WANDERS
TRAVEL
’ROUND THE MOUNTAIN TO MOHONK BY JEREMY WAYNE
74
WAGMAG.COM
APRIL 2020
I am coming ’round the mountain, although I am not singing aye aye yippee. I am actually (confession time) singing along to K T Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See,” when — two miles past the gatehouse, where Kara has checked my credentials and asked me if I want valet parking or to self-park — suddenly I see Mohonk Mountain House. Actually, I don’t “see” Monhonk so much as Mohonk — a national historic landmark, just 20 miles northwest of Poughkeepsie — socks me in the jaw. Located in the Shawangunk Mountains in New Paltz, Mohonk has been owned and operated by the Smiley family since its founding by Albert Smiley in 1869. The Mountain House’s façade runs an eighth of a mile and its architectural styles — the house and resort have grown organically over the last 151 years — run the gamut,from Heidi-like chalet, to Dutch gabled townhouse to Fantasy Island stone house, with chimneys, turrets and angular red roofs that would not look out of place in Tibet. Talk about entering a different world. Mohonk’s modest front door gives no clue to what lies behind, although the nine waiting valets (what is the collective noun for valets? A bevy? A scad?) should have tipped me off that Mohonk was going to be big. Inside, it’s a city — which is to say a very wonderful city, lost in time,
Top: Mohonk Mountain House in summer. Right: Mohonk Mountain House main dining room. Photograph courtesy Mohonk Mountain House.
