Unplug This Weekend: Peak Color, Two Mountains and a Field Full of Apples (October 3–4)

An Unplugged Cabins weekend guide — for everyone who’d rather be outside.

TL;DR

Near Clove Creek (Catskills)

• Colors in the Catskills, Hunter Mountain — Sat–Sun, Skyride from 9am — ~15–20 min
• Belleayre Fall Festival, Highmount — Sat–Sun 10–5, free admission and parking — ~35–40 min

~1–2 hours from the cabin

• Country Living Fair, Dutchess County Fairgrounds, Rhinebeck — Fri–Sun
• Hudson Valley Apple Festival, Barton Orchards, Poughquag — Sat–Sun 10–6
• Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze, Croton-on-Hudson — nightly, timed entry
• Warwick Valley Applefest — Sun 9–5

~3 hours from Manhattan

• The Big E, West Springfield MA — final weekend of the run
• Saratoga Book Festival — Oct 1–4, nearly all of it free
• Great Cortland Pumpkinfest — Sat 10–7, Sun 10–4
• Falls Harvest Festival, Montour Falls — Sat 12–7:30
• Double M Haunted Hayrides, Ballston Spa — Fri–Sun (Saturday is the kid-friendly one)
• Saratoga Showcase of Homes — Sat–Sun, and again Oct 10–11

~5 hours from Manhattan

• UCI Mountain Bike World Series, Lake Placid and Whiteface — Fri–Sun
• World’s Largest Garage Sale, Warrensburg — Fri–Sun, free
• Heritage, Harvest & Horse Festival, Fort Ticonderoga — Sat
• Adirondack Experience FallFest, Blue Mountain Lake — Sun 10–5

The mountains open first this year. Hunter and Belleayre both start their fall festivals on Saturday, they both run the same two days, and from Clove Creek they sit in opposite directions — twenty minutes north, forty minutes south. You can stand at the top of either one and watch the color work its way down the ridge.

Hunter calls its opening weekend First Leaves. The festival runs Saturday 11 to 6 and Sunday 11 to 5, with the Scenic Skyride turning from 9am, DJ Frankie both days, Joe Adee and The Lugnuts on Saturday and The Lustre Kings on Sunday. The Skyride is $31 for adults and $21 for kids 3–12 and seniors; VIP packages run $41 without a lift ticket and $89 with one. If you came for steinholding and the Doxie Derby, note that those are on the later October weekends, not this one.

Belleayre answers from Highmount with free admission and free parking, 10 to 5 both days. Its schedule lists a stein holding contest at 1 and a pie eating contest at 1:30, with a Brews & Views VIP at $50 if you want the lift-and-tasting version. Two mountains, two festivals, one tank of gas.

Peak doesn’t announce itself. It just shows up on a Saturday, twenty minutes up the road.

Down in the valley, the orchards take over. Barton Orchards in Poughquag runs its Hudson Valley Apple Festival Saturday and Sunday, 10 to 6: pig races, magic shows, a petting zoo, live music, and their own craft hard cider at three bars on the property. A pass gets you onto the farm — $34 for adults and $22 for kids 4–12 booked early online, $37 and $25 at the gate.

In Rhinebeck, the Country Living Fair fills the Dutchess County Fairgrounds Friday through Sunday. General admission is $28 for the day with parking included, and the grounds hold makers and antique dealers, with an Americana stage and a main stage. Sunday it closes at 4 instead of 5.

Sunday also belongs to Warwick, where Applefest shuts the village down from 9 to 5. Admission is free, the organizer counts more than 150 craft vendors and 75 food stands, and there is an apple pie baking contest. Applefest has been running since 1989. Bring $10 in cash for parking at the satellite lots — the shuttles are free.

After dark, Croton-on-Hudson glows. The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze runs every night in October at Van Cortlandt Manor, more than seven thousand hand-carved pumpkins along a longer path than in past years, with a pumpkin dance party and new movie-monster photo stops. Entry is timed and advance-only: Friday and Saturday slots run 7 to 10:30, Sunday ends at 9, and prices this weekend run in the $30s and $40s rather than the season’s $24 floor.

Three hours out, the weekend gets louder. The Big E closes its seventeen-day run in West Springfield — $20 at the gate for adults, $12 for kids 6 to 12, gates at 8. Saratoga Springs runs its Book Festival from Thursday through Sunday, nearly all of it free, with a literary night market Friday from 6 to 9 and a kids’ day Sunday afternoon. Cortland’s Pumpkinfest fills Courthouse Park Saturday 10 to 7 and Sunday 10 to 4, hayrides a dollar a ride. Montour Falls keeps Saturday simple: harvest festival on Main Street, noon to 7:30, free, a waterfall for a backdrop. And in Ballston Spa, Double M opens its thirty-sixth season of haunted hayrides Friday through Sunday — with Saturday reserved for the kid-friendly Little Monsters version.

Five hours north, the Adirondacks are peaking. Lake Placid hosts the UCI Mountain Bike World Series Friday through Sunday, cross-country at Mt Van Hoevenberg and downhill at Whiteface, $20 a day with under-12s free. Warrensburg turns its whole town into the World’s Largest Garage Sale, free, sunup to sundown. Saturday, Fort Ticonderoga runs its Heritage, Harvest & Horse Festival with oxen demonstrations, a farmers’ market and a six-acre corn maze that took a national readers’ choice award this year. Sunday, the Adirondack Experience in Blue Mountain Lake closes the weekend with FallFest, 10 to 5.

That’s four hours of driving to see what’s twenty minutes from the porch. Your call.

Staying in the middle of it? Clove Creek Cabin in Lanesville sits between Hunter and Phoenicia, with a hot tub, sauna and fire pit for when the lift stops turning. Book Clove Creek. More weekends worth the drive are on our events calendar.