New York

Breakneck Ridge Scramble & Cold Spring Riverfront

Breakneck Ridge in the Hudson Highlands is the most popular day hike on the entire East Coast — a technical scramble up exposed granite ridges with Hudson River views from the first 20 minutes. The Metro-North train stops directly at the trailhead, making it car-optional. The river town of Cold Spring below is the bonus for those who drive.

Hudson Valley Apple Orchards & Storm King Art Center

Storm King Art Center is one of the finest outdoor sculpture parks in the world — 500 acres of Hudson Valley landscape with 100 large-scale sculptures by Richard Serra, Alexander Calder, Mark di Suvero, and 50 other major artists, positioned in relationship to the hills, meadows, and tree lines of the surrounding landscape. The apple orchards of the Hudson Valley's Black Dirt farming region are 10 miles west.

Sleepy Hollow: Washington Irving & Kykuit Rockefeller Estate

The lower Hudson Valley holds the most concentrated collection of historic estates in America — the Rockefeller family compound at Kykuit, with its Philip Johnson sculpture garden and the Hudson River School paintings in the house, sits 3 miles from the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where Washington Irving and Andrew Carnegie are buried, and the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow that Irving used as the setting for his most famous story.