Comfy Moodus Resort Worth a Replay from an article in New York Newsday
There may be a few things more anxiety-provoking than planning a family vacation: knowing your new roommate will be Hannibal Lecter, for example, or being chased through a dark forest by hungry wolves.
So it’s downright comforting to know there’s a place where your family can return again and again. For a while, our no-brainer was Shelter Island, until our family got too large for the tiny cottage we shared, and the tariff got too high. Then there was the lovely beach-front hotel in Cape Cod that was a delight one year, disaster the next. It was cold and cloudy all week, the pre-teen was bored, the wife and I bickered, and the baby was going through a phase common to 18-month-olds: Restaurant Terrorist.
Besides, the drive was to onerous, even with an attempted stopover. (Ever try to find a room – any kind of room – in Rhode Island without reservations on a summer Saturday night? You can’t.)
We needed a place within, say, a three-hour drive that had plenty of activities for kids of all ages. So we found ourselves booked for a week at the family-owned and operated Sunrise Resort in Moodus, Conn.
Where the heck is Moodus? Even Nutmeg-staters of my acquaintance never heard of it. Moodus, it turns out, is part of the town of East Haddam, on the Salmon River tributary of the Connecticut River in the southeastern part of the state, not too far north of Old Saybrook (Sag Harbor radio station WLNG comes in loud and clear across the Sound), not too far south of Middletown.
It’s picture-book Connecticut: winding rivers and rolling hills, replete with tiny villages of white clapboard houses, a church, a graveyard and a store that sells beer and Lotto tickets. The largest nearby town to Moodus is actually called East Hampton.
Sunrise Resort, in fact, provides plenty of insulation from the tyranny of celebrity and media hype. The plain but comfortable motel-style rooms and cabins have air conditioning and private baths, but no TVs or phones. This has a remarkable effect, especially after dinner. Instead of ambling back to the room to watch repeats, people sharpen their skills at the lost art of conversation. About half of the guests seem to come from the New York area, the other half from the Boston area, and as long as you don’t talk sports, fisticuffs usually can be avoided.
There is a nightly movie on the big screen TV and nightly supervised activities for little kids. If you crave organized entertainment, you’re just three miles from the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, a major regional theater. Teens and pre-teens have their own rec centers and activities, with video games, DJ parties and snacks, under the supervision of friendly and well-trained young staffers.
You can select from organized activities, from sports to crafts to dance lessons, every hour of the day, or just lollygag by the pool under a tree.
For the activity-prone, consider this typical moment: I am sitting on a lounge chair on the sloping lawn near the enormous, Olympic-sized main pool. Behind me, there’s an all-ages ballgame on the softball field – much gentler than the weekly staff vs. guests games, events laden with sweat, grime and overflowing levels of testosterone.
In the pool, swimming and diving are temporarily suspended while ad hoc teams compete in a rubber ducky contest: Up to three contestants on each inflatable raft gather as many of the floating quackers as they can in 60 seconds. Around the corner on one of two basketball courts (both lighted at night), there’s almost always a full-court, five-a-team game going on, or half court three-vs.-three. Next to the courts, old timers and small fries toss horseshoes or play shuffleboard.
Down the road next to the building known as The Frog, there are five well-cared for tennis courts. Don’t have anyone to play with? Just ask the resident pro to knock the ball around with you. There’s no charge for court time or lessons. There’s also no charge to play bocci – yes, bocci – on the courts adjacent to The Frog. In fact, among the few extra charges are $2 a game to play miniature golf on the Sunrise Resort’s own low-frill, but 18-hole, course. And there are Ping-Pong tables not just in the game rooms, but near the rooms and outside the dining room, by the river. There was so much to do, in fact, that we never did get around to taking a canoe, rowboat, or watercycle out on the river.
This is not the place for singles, or honeymooners looking for a romantic escape. Sunrise Resort is a family place in the best sense. To see three or more generations of the same family eating, swimming, talking together is not unusual. One night, four tables of relatives from the same extended family based in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island took up a corner of the dining room, many with toddlers and infants, with about five the guys wearing fake groucho noses-and-glasses. Why? Why not? One with a small child said he had been coming to Sunrise for 38 years – since he was 2 years old.
And what a place it is for 2-year-olds and their parents. The kiddies have a fenced-in, supervised play area, with well-trained counselors. In addition to the wading pool with kid-sized lounges and chairs, there’s a school house with books and art supplies, a mock western village, and playscape all scaled down to make the toddler feel like master of his or her domain. And it allows the harried dad or mom to take a swim, read the paper or just hang out without worrying.
The three meals a day included with the price of a room are ample and decent, if hardly cutting edge. Lunch selections might include a burger of the day, a sandwich, salads, soup, soft drinks and desserts. Dinner is more ambitious: chicken marsala, fried scallops, roast beef, lasagna, or tomato stuffed seafood salad were the selections one Monday night. Children’s portions are available, as are hot dogs and peanut butter sandwiches for kids with one-track palates. At least once a week there’s a dinner barbecue with chicken, ribs and the trimmings.
There’s no liquor served at Sunrise, but BYOB seems to be the tradition. We brought our own wine or beer to dinner. In the Club House ice and mixers are available and it was not unusual to see large family tables sharing their own jugs of their favorite spirits.
How much did we enjoy this place? We didn’t wait until next summer for a replay. We returned three weeks later, and we’ll probably be back this summer: Gotta keep working on that bocci game so my skills don’t get rusty.