Great Get-Away Spot

The Inn at Starlight Lake in northeastern PA goes back over 100 years and is owned and managed by Sari Schwartz, only its 3^rd owner. Starlight Lake resulted from a stream being damned nearly 100 years ago. The Inn is separated from the lake by a country road seldom used. We counted about a car every 30 minutes mid day on a Saturday.

Sari and her late husband had been going to the Inn for decades. She mentioned being there every New Year’s Eve for 19 straight years. That’s how much they cherished their get-away from their home in Connecticut. When the previous owners were ready to sell Sari and her husband bought it as part of their retirement plan. Sari now runs the Inn with the help of her son and daughter who was the Chef the Saturday night we were there. Her daughter and husband recently opened their own bakery shop in Hancock, NY.

We like to travel with Faith, our German Shepherd. The Inn allows “nice” dogs so it was an ideal spot for us to try. One real positive that came out of the overnight get-away is that we learned for the first time that Faith loves the water. As soon as we went lake-side she jumped in and had the time of her life paddling around. The wooden Inn has about 20 rooms. We stayed in an adjoining building with attached rooms that Sari referred to as lake-side cabins. A fan and open windows substituted for air conditioning on the hot evening we were there but it worked. The rooms are certainly peaceful without phone service or a TV. So, it’s either sleep, read or talk once you get to your room.

We had dinner in the Inn on the Friday night we arrived. They serve up until 9. We showed up about 8:30 so we just made it into the dining room. The dinners were excellent. We had their turkey and pork chop entrees and split a really nice vanilla cake for dessert. A carafe of their house Pinot Grigio worked fine for us. Even though we were the late arrivals we hardly felt rushed at all. Both Sari and her excellent waitress were quite prepared to spend quality time with us talking about the Inn, its history and the surrounding area. We learned that many in the area are prepared to travel 30-40 miles to food shop either in Honesdale, PA or close to Binghamton, NY.

Judy and FaithSari was an engaging hostess and spent enough time with us so we got to understand her passion for the Inn while learning how challenging a business it is being remotely located in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania. To drive local business to the Inn Sari has started a Starlight Inn Dinner’s Club that now has over 700 members whom she keeps alerted about special events at the Inn. It was pretty clear that Sari is an innovative entrepreneur doing whatever is needed to grow her business.

It took us about 2.5 hours from Morris County to get to the Inn leaving late on a Friday afternoon. The total cost of the overnight stay with dinner and a complimentary B&B style breakfast was about $300. State taxes beefed up the bill a bit more than we might have expected.

The Inn at Startlight Lake is about 10 miles south of Hancock, NY which we drove to after we left the Inn early Saturday afternoon. Most of the way there was on dirt roads. Hard to imagine we still have state highways that are dirt roads. We then followed the scenic route back through Port Jervis and Milford, PA scouting out possible places to get a guide to try some fishing on the Delaware. Along the way are plenty of places to rent canoes, kayaks and tubes. All in all it was a very good quick get-away weekend.

Visit the inn at www.innatstarlightlake.com.