For Three Days, Phoenicia Becomes One Big Art Space
Front porches become stages, Rachael Yamagata plays Maverick, and you can boat to a Hudson River lighthouse — then climb to the top.
This weekend, some of the best venues in the Hudson Valley aren’t really venues at all.
Phoenicia is turning an entire Catskills town into an arts festival. In Poughkeepsie, front porches become stages. And in Woodstock, Rachael Yamagata brings her unmistakable voice into one of the region’s great listening rooms.
We’re also finding the ruins of an industry that once shipped Hudson River ice all the way to New York City, stepping inside a natural stone cathedral with a waterfall hidden in it, and heading east into Dutchess County to visit the only accredited zoo in America located on a high school campus.
Explore the Hudson Valley
Two places that reward curiosity — one shaped by an industry that once depended on winter, the other by water and stone.
Before Refrigerators, New York City’s Ice Came From Places Like This
The Hudson River used to have a winter job.
Before mechanical refrigeration, workers cut enormous blocks of ice from the frozen river and hauled them into massive windowless ice houses, where they were packed in insulating materials like hay and sawdust. At Nutten Hook, a short trail leads to the ruins of the Scott Ice House operation, once part of an industry that supplied ice to New York City.
Interpretive signs explain the harvesting process, while the rocky Hudson River setting and surrounding Stockport Flats make the walk worthwhile even if industrial history is not usually your idea of a Saturday afternoon.
Why we recommend it: The Hudson is full of history you can see. This is history that asks you to imagine the entire river functioning differently — frozen, industrial, and filled with workers harvesting something we now make automatically in a freezer.
A 30-Foot Waterfall Is Hiding Inside a Stone “Church”
The church is geological, not religious. Stone Church Brook cuts through a fissure in metamorphic rock and emerges through a towering natural opening that looks uncannily like the entrance to a cathedral.
Step inside and a roughly 30-foot waterfall drops into a pool within the cavern. The surrounding preserve covers 174 acres with more than four miles of trails, turning the famous rock formation into the beginning rather than the end of the outing.
One important detail: the public right-of-way into the preserve crosses private property. Stay on the marked access route and follow current parking and trail guidance.
Why we recommend it: There are plenty of waterfall hikes in the Hudson Valley. Very few end somewhere that looks like nature decided to build its own cathedral.
🚗 Worth the Drive
A destination that gives you something you literally cannot find anywhere else in the country.
The Only Accredited Zoo on a U.S. High School Campus Is Hiding in Dutchess County
Pull onto the campus of Millbrook School and you’ll find something no other high school in America has: an accredited zoo.
The zoo began in 1936 when the school’s first biology teacher, Frank Trevor, brought his passion for wildlife into the classroom. Today, its six acres are home to more than 170 exotic and indigenous animals representing 70 species, including 11 endangered species.
Red pandas, wolves, lemurs, otters, reptiles, birds, and other animals live here, while Millbrook students take an active role in the zoo’s education and conservation work.
Why it’s worth the drive: A good Worth the Drive should give you something you can’t simply find closer to home. There is literally no other accredited zoo on an American high school campus, and this one is sitting quietly on a country road in Dutchess County.
This Weekend
Arts in the streets, a singer-songwriter in the woods, and more than 25 front porches turned into neighborhood stages.
For Three Days, Phoenicia Becomes One Big Art Space
This weekend, the gallery walls extend well beyond the gallery.
From Friday through Sunday, Phoenicia Festival of the Arts turns the Catskills hamlet into a walkable creative campus, spreading visual art, installations, performances, music, film, workshops, and unexpected encounters through galleries, businesses, public spaces, and the streets themselves.
Start on Main Street, wander into VARGA Gallery, follow an installation outside, stop when you hear music, and let the town determine the itinerary. Phoenicia Playhouse adds film programming Saturday and Sunday.
Why we recommend it: This is exactly the kind of festival we love: one where the destination and the event become the same thing. Phoenicia itself is the venue.
Rachael Yamagata, Inside One of Woodstock’s Great Listening Rooms
Some artists need a big room. Rachael Yamagata is the kind of songwriter who can make a quiet one feel enormous. Friday night, she brings her intimate, cinematic songs into Maverick’s hand-built woodland concert hall, which has been hosting music in Woodstock since 1916.
It’s a particularly good artist-and-room pairing: a singer known for emotionally close-up performances in a space where the separation between performer, audience, and surrounding forest can feel unusually thin.
Why we recommend it: The memorable concerts aren’t always the biggest ones. Sometimes it’s the artist, the room, and the audience all seeming like they were supposed to end up together.
More Than 25 Front Porches Are Becoming Stages
On Sunday afternoon, the Southside Historic District trades the usual concert setup for something better: a map, a pair of walking shoes, and more than 25 front porches.
Musicians, bands, and spoken-word artists spread across Academy Street, Garfield Place, Franklin Street, and Barclay Street, while food vendors and children’s activities join the mix. There’s no single headliner to chase. The point is to wander the neighborhood and keep discovering another performance around the corner.
Why we recommend it: PorchFest makes live music feel less like an industry and more like what it was in the first place: people making noise together in their neighborhood.
Plan Ahead
A lighthouse you reach by boat and one of the biggest Radio Woodstock-aligned music days left on the summer calendar.
Boat to the Rondout Lighthouse — Then Climb to the Top
You can see the Rondout Lighthouse from shore. Getting there is a different story.
The 1915 brick lighthouse sits where Rondout Creek meets the Hudson River and is accessible only by boat. Guided tours leave from the Hudson River Maritime Museum aboard Solaris, its 100% solar-powered tour boat, for the short trip out to the light.
Once there, visitors head inside with a guide and climb through the lighthouse from the first floor all the way up to the observation deck around the light itself. The tour also includes the return boat ride and admission to the Hudson River Maritime Museum.
Why we’re circling it: Plenty of us have admired Hudson River lighthouses from shore. It’s another thing entirely to arrive by boat, walk through the keeper’s quarters, climb the tower, and look back out over the river from the light.
Willie Nelson, The Avett Brothers and Sheryl Crow Are Heading to Bethel
This is one of those bills where the ampersands start doing a lot of work.
Willie Nelson & Family bring the Outlaw Music Festival to Bethel Woods with The Avett Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Stephen Wilson Jr., Robert Randolph, and Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble.
And there is something particularly satisfying about Willie Nelson bringing an outlaw-minded traveling festival to the site of the original Woodstock festival.
Why we’re circling it: The lineup alone would make this worth planning around. Putting all of those artists together at Bethel Woods makes it one of the biggest Radio Woodstock-aligned music days left on the summer calendar.
On Our Radar
A good old-fashioned record shop just got a new home on Main Street. Hudson Valley Vinyl moved into 323 Main Street at the beginning of August, giving Beacon record hunters a fresh place to dig through the bins for LPs without turning the experience into something overly precious.
Catskill has a new place where dinner and the walls are both worth looking at. Endless Art and Food serves handmade Asian comfort food while bringing art into the mix.
One room. Local stone. Built in 1663. The oldest house at the Bronck Museum has been standing in Coxsackie for more than 350 years, and it is only the beginning.
Curated each week by the Radio Woodstock team.
Have a great weekend. Wander somewhere you’ve never been, follow the music coming from somebody’s front porch, walk into the gallery you normally pass by, and if you find a place that makes you think how did I not know this was here?, send it our way. Those are exactly the places we want to find. We’ll be back next Thursday with another edition of Circle This.