``I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.`` — John Burroughs
About This Tour
As you embark on the Catskill Mountains Scenic Byway driving tour, take in the sweeping mountain views and charming small towns as you hear stories of the history, landscape, and culture of the Catskill region from the people that call it home.
This tour is presented by the Catskill Center, a nonprofit organization that has been committed to preserving and enriching the economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of the Catskills since 1969.
Sample Stories
For more content, click the "Explore this Tour Remotely" button below.
Tubing
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Harry Jameson: Busy day in Phoenicia, we've got a lot of motorcyclists that love to ride the roads of the Catskills, so lots of them up for a visit. And it looks like it's just about lunchtime, so we've got a lot of people sitting at the local eateries here. Temperature is running right in around the high 70s, low 80s, perfect day for tubing on the Esopus. Of course, in my world, every day is a perfect day for tubing.
On a hot summer day, you can rent a tube in Phoenicia and experience a whitewater adventure. Harry Jameson is the Town Tinker's founder. We hitched a ride upstream on one of his tube taxis-an old white school bus-to the start of the course.
Harry Jameson: Okay ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard. On the right-hand side is a trail that you'll use to get back from the river when your trip is complete. This bridge that we're going over is the end of the ride. This is the third bridge, it has a yellow circle, black number 4 painted on the upstream side as an indicator. When you're coming downriver and you see that, you need to start working over to the left, and you're going to exit the river right here, just above the bridge. Thank you much, enjoy your bus ride.
People will attempt to sing songs. "The Wheels on the Bus" is strictly banned. After 34 years of doing this, there is no singing of "Wheels on the Bus." I do allow song, but it must be creative and done well. I had actually a group one time that did the "William Tell Overture" for the complete trip, which was very exhilarating. [Sings] Like that. It's about a mile and three quarters. The trip takes about an hour and 20 minutes based on the water level we're using right now.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the top of the course. On the right-hand side behind the boulders is the trail down to the river. Face downstream, put your tube behind you, when the current pushes it up to your butt, have a seat, and you're on your way.
[Unloading sounds]
Tuber: It's cold water!
With water temperatures hovering 25 degrees below the average swimming pool, tubing the Esopus is a quick way to cool down on a steamy summer afternoon. The creek changes rapidly throughout the course, ranging from lazy river, to whitewater excitement.
Tubers: It was a lot scarier than I thought [laughs].
Absolutely recommend it. There's nice flat bits, where you're just chilling out, floating along, and then before you know it, there's more rapids. No, it was lovely. The water is perfect temperature, drag your feet along, cool you down. It's a really pretty river.
The Esopus creek gets its name from the Esopus tribe of Native Americans.
John Burroughs
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Bill: When I arrived in the Catskills 43 years ago, I never heard of John Burroughs. In terms of writing an essay that brought people into the outdoors and allowed them to kind of experience the outdoors along with him was quite different, I think, from what Thoreau was doing.
John Burroughs is the spirit that resides here. He was born in 1837, Roxbury, New York. He was the kid who wasn't really that interested in the farm chores. He was more interested in wandering up on the hills and daydreaming and reading - the kinds of things Delaware County farm kids, certainly in the 1830's, it was unusual. He had read Walt Whitman's groundbreaking book, "Leaves of Grass," which totally changed the nature of poetry, totally changed the nature of literature, and totally changed the American language.
Walt Whitman and John Burroughs and Ursula Burrows, would have what we would call today, "brunch" every Sunday at Burroughs' house. And Whitman said to Burroughs one day, "Publish your personality." And so he started to write essays about the outdoors, and it was a success.
Probably, the book that people should turn to first is "Wake Robin." Every year, John Burroughs, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone would take a camping trip - it's a camping trip none of us would recognize: Ford cars outfitted with kitchens, outfitted with tables and chairs and tablecloths, and the men still wore their suits, they just took their ties off. They would go to all these wonderful sights in America. They called themselves the "Vagabonds" - these four.
Home for John Burroughs was always the Catskills and Roxbury. So in 1910, he leased a home on the farm that he'd grown up on from his brother, and he built a very rustic porch on that house - a porch he slept on every night. He called it "Woodchuck Lodge," and every summer for the last 10 years of his life, Joe Burroughs would come to Woodchuck Lodge and he would spend his time there. The lodge is open for tours of the interior of the lodge the first weekend of every month, May through October.
You've been listening to Bill Birns with music by the John Burroughs Memorial Locust and Wild Honey Mountain Orchestra.
Bill: I think the wonderful thing about Woodchuck lodge is that it looks very much like Mr. Burroughs just stepped out... He might be back any minute.
