Poconos: An Easy, East Coast Golf Getaway

The resort offers unlimited golf on weekdays, a deal that many courses have introduced this year to drive more traffic to the tee. Public play is limited and must be booked four days in advance.

If you need a splurge, try the recently renovated Hotel Fauchere in Milford. If you can only afford half a splurge, its Bar Louis makes an excellent burger and fries. It's the perfect lunch stop before an afternoon of antique shopping in Port Jervis, 15 minutes back across the New York border.

Dating back to the 1920s, the imposing Skytop looks like a grand dame hotel on the order of the Biltmore House in Asheville, N.C. You can stay in the Main Lodge, a stately stone structure or in one of the resort's more relaxed cottages. For golfers intent on rolling out of bed onto the first tee, there's also the Inn adjacent to the course. In any case, you get three meals a day with your room. Gentlemen, remember to wear a jacket for dinner in the Windsor Dining Room and Lake View Restaurant.

The Skytop's old-school golf course was built in the 1920s by Robert White, the first president of the PGA of America. At 6,600 yards from the tips, its layout is nuanced and natural, with small greens that demand a neat, imaginative short game. With fewer executives talking business over golf, the course was blissfully open midweek.

We were home in the Hudson Valley within two hours, a half-hour later than those returning to downtown Manhattan.