Family Lodging in the Catskills: Options and How They Differ

Several of the Catskills' oldest family resorts include meals, which keeps a trip with children simple. Winter Clove Inn in Round Top has been run by the same family since 1838, with 49 rooms on more than 300 acres and all meals included, and Full Moon Resort in Big Indian includes three meals a day, with a four-season heated pool on 100 acres. Gavin's Irish Country Inn near East Durham, run by the Gavin family since 1961, also includes meals and has an outdoor pool.

Newer resorts lean on activities instead. Wylder Windham has a heated pool, pickleball, an indoor recreation room and tubing on the Batavia Kill, and Callicoon Hills in Sullivan County has 65 rooms, a seasonal pool and two saunas.

The northern Catskills around Hunter and Tannersville are close to the region's best-known family hikes. Kaaterskill Falls, the Escarpment Trail and the trails around North-South Lake are within about 20 minutes of most Hunter-area lodging. Matterhorn Hunter Lodge on Hunter's Main Street has 14 units, including a 3-bedroom suite and a 5-bedroom cabin, and a game room. The Catskill Forest Preserve trail map, published by the DEC, lists public trailheads with parking and seasonal access.

Around Phoenicia and the Esopus Valley, families come in summer for the swimming holes and tubing on the Esopus Creek. The Catskills Visitor Center in Mount Tremper has short trails and information on hikes nearby, and Phoenicia is about 25 minutes from the Thruway at Kingston.

A few larger Catskills properties run as resorts, with pools, organized activities and dining on site, which saves families planning. They are a minority in a region of independent inns, and the larger ones, such as Mohonk Mountain House, with three meals a day and 2,000 acres of trails, are among the region's most expensive stays and book up early for summer weekends.

Self-contained resorts are not always close to the swimming holes, trails and towns that many families come for, so check the drive times to the places the family wants to see before booking.

Summer, from late June through Labor Day, is the busiest time for family lodging in the Catskills, when the swimming holes, farm markets and trails are all open, and weekends need booking ahead. Fall foliage, from mid-September to mid-October, is the second busy season, driven more by couples, but family properties fill too. In ski season, from December through March, Hunter and Windham draw skiing families.

Spring and early June have more open rooms, and the trails and farms are open. Unpaved back roads can be muddy in early spring, which can make some rural properties harder to reach.