Swimming holes abound west of the Hudson River near the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. It’s one of the great things about living up here. But sometimes, they’re not easy to find. There are a few websites kicking around that will give you the location of some, but generally, if the location is on a website, it’s going to be mobbed.

But the Waterfall House, located in Palenville (Greene County) has completely private swimming holes right outside the door, which are fed by waterfalls on the Kaaterskill Creek.

Location-wise, there’s lots of outdoorsy stuff to do around the area: Hiking in the Catskills, skiing at Hunter Mountain in the wintertime, Saugerties and Woodstock are both nearby, plus Catskill and Hudson not far away, but we’re not sure we’d be willing to leave the property. The house has a big wrap-around porch within earshot of the falls, and that alone makes the idea of just hanging out and staying put rather tempting.

According to the website, the owner, Bob Malkin, and his wife, Babs, fell in love with the Catskill region after living in NYC and California, respectively. The rental property was featured last year in the House Tour section of the NYTimes.

Meals can be cooked in the kitchen, or catered through various local restaurants. The Fernwood Restaurant is also next door. Rates run from $350-$400 a night, peak season September 1-October 31. Their availability calendar looks like it’s filling up. Here’s the link to their website for more information.

Show of hands: Who wants to live in their very own castle? Now’s your chance! We’ve actually driven by this Palenville property a number of times, and to say that it’s “eye-catching” might be a bit of an understatement. Built in 1899, it was a school house in a former life, and now the listing calls it a “blend of commercial and residential space”. So you can live in it, work in it, pine for Prince Charming while you brush your long golden hair in it. Whatever you choose to do in it, make it good, because you live in a castle now.

It’s huge; castle-huge, you might say, at nearly 9,500 square feet, and it sits on an acre. But we know that it’s right on Route 23a, which is the main drag through Palenville and the road everyone takes to get to points beyond, including North-South Lake during the summer. Traffic is pretty much guaranteed.

But still! It’s a castle! Don’t you want people to drive by and say, “ooh”, “aah”, and “Who lives there?” You do, that’s who. Huzzah! Let’s quaff a flagon of mead to celebrate!

3276 Route 23A, Palenville (Westwood Metes & Bounds) GMAP
Asking Price: $1,250,000
Beds: 2
Baths: 5 (!)
Square Feet: 9,400
Year Built: 1899
Land: 1 acre
Taxes: $11,462
Features: It’s a castle

It’s always fun to stumble across a listing that you’ve seen in real life.  Even more delightful is finding one that you’ve ogled repeatedly in the real world, and discovering that it costs less than a hundred grand.  So imagine my delight at running across the listing for this property, which I eyeball every time I drive up Route 23A in Palenville.

The main building

Less than ten minutes from Exit 20 on the Thruway, this compound sits right at the base of the steep pass that leads up past Kaaterskill Falls to Tannersville and Hunter.  There’s a main log cabin house/lodge, a recreational building, and six (!) cabins with en suite bathrooms on 1.5 acres.

A smattering of cabin/bungalows

The condition is handled with a terse “It needs work.”  Fair enough.  With that out of the way, it’s a terrifically retro-charming place.  It looks like somewhere my grandparents would have stayed on their 1949 drive across the country (in their Oldsmobile sedan with three kids and two dachshunds).

A camping hut!

Brick red siding and all-pine-all-the-time interiors?  A gigantic river stone fireplace?  Sign me up.

A riot of knotty pine

Best of all, with all those buildings it feels eminently shareable.  So I started back-of-the-napkin brainstorming: six like-minded folks or families kick in enough to buy the place and fix the big issues in the lodge/rec building.  Everybody gets their own cabin, to fix up as they please.  Weeks in the main lodge are split up timeshare-style – everybody would get eight weeks a year.

Load up the rec building with foosball, pool, skee-ball, etc. and turn the kids loose.  Did I mention there’s a stone fire pit in front of each cabin, and a koi pond?  The pitch writes itself!

Of course, on sober reflection, an acre and a half is close quarters for six families, especially when the tiny camping cabins probably don’t have, um, kitchens.  And it’s right next to a busy trunk road – like, RIGHT next to.  And who knows what shape the main systems are in.

Sigh.

Still, it’s a fascinating property.  Anybody been dreaming of running a rental cottage business?

After the jump: property stats, plus a bunch more photos.  Enjoy!

(more…)

It’s always fun to stumble across a listing that you’ve seen in real life.  Even more delightful is finding one that you’ve ogled repeatedly in the real world, and discovering that it costs less than a hundred grand.  So imagine my delight at running across the listing for this property, which I eyeball every time I drive up Route 23A in Palenville.

The main building

Less than ten minutes from Exit 20 on the Thruway, this compound sits right at the base of the steep pass that leads up past Kaaterskill Falls to Tannersville and Hunter.  There’s a main log cabin house/lodge, a recreational building, and six (!) cabins with en suite bathrooms on 1.5 acres.

A smattering of cabin/bungalows

The condition is handled with a terse “It needs work.”  Fair enough.  With that out of the way, it’s a terrifically retro-charming place.  It looks like somewhere my grandparents would have stayed on their 1949 drive across the country (in their Oldsmobile sedan with three kids and two dachshunds).

A camping hut!

Brick red siding and all-pine-all-the-time interiors?  A gigantic river stone fireplace?  Sign me up.

A riot of knotty pine

Best of all, with all those buildings it feels eminently shareable.  So I started back-of-the-napkin brainstorming: six like-minded folks or families kick in enough to buy the place and fix the big issues in the lodge/rec building.  Everybody gets their own cabin, to fix up as they please.  Weeks in the main lodge are split up timeshare-style – everybody would get eight weeks a year.

Load up the rec building with foosball, pool, skee-ball, etc. and turn the kids loose.  Did I mention there’s a stone fire pit in front of each cabin, and a koi pond?  The pitch writes itself!

Of course, on sober reflection, an acre and a half is close quarters for six families, especially when the tiny camping cabins probably don’t have, um, kitchens.  And it’s right next to a busy trunk road – like, RIGHT next to.  And who knows what shape the main systems are in.

Sigh.

Still, it’s a fascinating property.  Anybody been dreaming of running a rental cottage business?

After the jump: property stats, plus a bunch more photos.  Enjoy!

(more…)

This Palenville property is the kind of listing that always catches my eye. A graceful white farmhouse, ideally built before women had the vote, is basically my platonic ideal of an Upstate property. I sometimes feel like Victorian vernacular builders knew how to market to me even better than those geniuses behind the Anthropogie catalog.

While I think this one has such nice curb appeal, I wish the listing included more interior photos. The outdoor space isn’t large but it has some good selling points, too. It’s on a relatively quiet street, across the road from Kaaterskill Creek. The realtor points out that the yard is big and flat enough for a pool. The location is village-seeping-into-country: not totally private, but plenty of trees as well as that creek. Note that Palenville really doesn’t have much of a town center, so Catskill would be the closest town. You’d be close, too, to Kaaterskill Falls and some good hiking, though a good thirty minute drive from skiing farther up the mountain so it would be harder to make this one into a ski or winter rental.

Stats and map on the jump. (more…)

As our readers (3,000 so far–thanks, everyone!) have probably figured out by now, I don’t necessarily want to be alone when I head up to country houses in upstate New York. So when I met 65-year-old Harley-driving Rennie in a Ditmas Park Coffee shop today (and his Pomeranian, Moxie, who rides in a pink basket in the Harley), I was intrigued by his description of his “country house”–a trailer permanently parked in Hunter Lake Campground in Palenville, N.Y, in the western Catskill Mountains.

Rennie describes the place as family-friendly but not overrun by kids–fair representation of folks in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s–and surprisingly private considering the layout of the place and the 94 campsites. If you set up shop there and are hungry for new faces, there are always the weekend campers–in tents, not trailers. Rennie himself is a fisherman, so he’s all about the lake, but there’s entertainment in the rec hall, air hockey and ping-pong, playgrounds and soccer fields. It’s like an upstate new york bungalow colony, but without the bungalows. To rent a seasonal spot, with water, electric and sewer hookups, it’s about $2,000–*camper not included!

For Rennie, the appeal is not only the Hunter Lake Campground itself, but the portability of his upstate New York country house–it doesn’t have to be in upstate New York if he doesn’t want it there! As he said this morning, “If you wanna vacation in Florida, you just unhook everything and go.”

Hunter Lake Campground GMAP
Distance to NYC: 123 miles; 2 hours, 37 minutes
Transportation: Trailways Bus to Palenville; car recommended