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Kids aren’t the only ones who get to have fun in the woods: Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, and the like started setting up their own Great Camps in the Adirondacks at the turn of the last century, and the extravagant former Rockefeller estate is now the five-star, eleven-room resort the Point, where a small fortune (the cheapest room goes for $1,250) buys you service unsurpassed by any hotel in the world and the ultimate summer-camp experience for adults.
You want sports? On the hilly lakefront grounds, you’ll have unlimited access to rowboats, speedboats, canoes, sea kayaks, and windsurf boards; nearby, you can hike, ride horses, play golf and tennis, or bomb downhill on mountain bikes. Want to learn to fly-fish? A local guide will take you to a stocked pond. Want to go water-skiing? A staff member will spin you around the lake. Too stressful? Try croquet, badminton, or horseshoes.
Perhaps you’d like a picnic to take with you on an afternoon hike. The chef will prepare a basket of sandwiches (egg salad, roast beef, smoked turkey) on home-baked bread, along with ripe French cheeses, made-to-order salads, wine, and fruit tartlets for dessert. Formal, communal dinners are served promptly at 8 p.m. in the Great Hall, where an impressive collection of game trophies looks down over massive oak tables and a blazing fire. A warm asparagus salad might be followed by glazed monkfish, a spring lamb with ratatouille, and a peach soufflé.
The bunks? Though each of the eleven rooms is different—one has a bed fashioned from tree trunks while another features floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the lake—all are appointed with chiseled-stone fireplaces, squishy sofas, vaulted ceilings, hand-knotted rugs, and fluffy featherbeds.
On a three-day visit last summer, my boyfriend and I swam, shot skeet, and polished off a bottle of Möet while learning to play croquet. We feasted on lobster-salad sandwiches for lunch and roast sea bass and rack of lamb for dinner, and spent our evenings making s’mores by the bonfire, playing backgammon, shooting pool, and snuggling under a thick chenille blanket in front of the fire in our room.
When it came time to leave, we discovered a neatly wrapped box in the back seat of our car: a snack (mini-sandwiches, chips, cookies, fruit) for the drive home. Those bottles of water in the cupholders? They were from the Point, too. And yes, they had filled our gas tank. Whatever you want, whenever you want it. Just like camp—if you were a Rockefeller.
DETAILS
The Point (800-255-3530; thepointresort.com; from $1,250).