Unique Things to Do on Long Island for Adults

Table of contents

1. Long Island has more going on than you think

2. Axe throwing at Bad Axe Throwing, Farmingdale

3. Catch a Long Island Ducks game

4. Hiking at Caumsett State Park

5. A craft brewery afternoon on the North Fork

6. Make your own wine at wineUdesign, Hicksville

7. Surf lessons at Long Beach

8. A morning at Planting Fields Arboretum

9. Old Bethpage Village Restoration

10. The one that sticks with you

Long Island has more going on than you think

The reputation follows Long Island around: it's the place you grew up, not the place you go. That framing has always undersold it.

Between Nassau County and the North Fork, there are craft breweries, minor league baseball, surf schools, a living history museum, and a studio in Hicksville where you blend and bottle your own wine. Most of these places don't show up in the same round-up articles. Some of them draw visitors from Manhattan on purpose. Most Long Islanders haven't tried half of them.

Here is a list worth actually using.

Axe throwing at Bad Axe Throwing, Farmingdale

Bad Axe Throwing in Farmingdale runs walk-in and booked sessions throughout the week. You're throwing real axes at wooden targets with a coach who gets most people accurate within the first twenty minutes.

It's louder and more physical than it sounds, and once you land a few clean throws it becomes hard to stop. Groups of friends tend to overstay their lane time. Book online and show up a few minutes early to get the safety briefing out of the way.

Catch a Long Island Ducks game

The Ducks play at Fairfield Properties Ballpark in Central Islip, a few minutes off the LIE. The Atlantic League season runs May through September with around 70 home dates. A box seat comes in around $15 to $20. The ballpark holds a few thousand people and the sight lines are good from almost everywhere.

This is the kind of night that surprises you. You go expecting novelty and you stay because minor league baseball moves at a pace that's genuinely easy to be present for. The crowd is local in a way a professional game never is. Get there before the first pitch and bring cash for the parking lot.

Hiking at Caumsett State Park

Caumsett State Park in Cold Spring Harbor covers around 1,520 acres of Long Island Sound shoreline. The trails are wide, well-marked, and mix salt marsh with wooded bluff in a way that feels genuinely remote given where you are. On a weekday morning you can walk for an hour without seeing many other people.

The park sits on a former Gilded Age estate. You're walking past a working dairy farm that dates to the 1920s and looking at coastline that stretches far enough that the 21st century disappears behind you. Parking has a fee in season but entry on foot or bike is free.

A craft brewery afternoon on the North Fork

Greenport Harbor Brewing and Jamesport Farm Brewery are the two most established stops on the North Fork and sit within a reasonable drive of each other. Both have outdoor seating, solid food options and a pace that makes you want to stay for another round.

If you're in the area anyway, the North Fork wine trail runs the same road. The North Fork is about 90 miles from Hicksville and works well as a half-day trip if you leave in the morning and point back before dinner. The Saturday evening drive back is easy.

Make your own wine at wineUdesign, Hicksville

Most of the activities on this list are things you show up for. This one you make.

At wineUdesign's studio in Hicksville, you taste individual California grape varietals and build your own proportions for a blend. You're working through the same decisions a winemaker makes at the tank: how much Cabernet for structure, how much Merlot to soften the finish, whether a small addition of Malbec rounds out the texture the way you want. When the session is over, you've got a labeled bottle of wine you blended yourself.

Classes cost $149 per person and run about two hours. You can see the options and book at wineUdesign's wine blending classes. No wine background needed. What keeps people talking about it is that you leave with something you actually made, not just a reference to an afternoon you had.

Surf lessons at Long Beach

Long Beach is the closest Atlantic surf to Nassau County: about 40 minutes from Hicksville, walkable from the village, and a stretch of beach that works for first-timers from June through September. Several surf schools run beginner lessons off the Long Beach boardwalk through the season.

You're not going to stand up on your first wave. That's part of the deal. What you do get is two hours in the water with your full attention on one thing, which is harder to come by than most adults admit. Bring a wetsuit in spring. The Atlantic runs cold until early July.

A morning at Planting Fields Arboretum

Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay is a 409-acre estate maintained as a New York State park. The grounds include formal gardens, working greenhouses with camellia collections that go back decades, and Coe Hall mansion, which runs guided tours from May through September.

The arboretum is quieter than you'd expect for somewhere this close to everything. Late spring is the best time to go: the formal gardens are in full color and the greenhouses are worth an hour on their own. It's the kind of place that makes you wonder why you've never been, given that you've driven past Oyster Bay your whole life.

Old Bethpage Village Restoration

Old Bethpage Village Restoration is a living history museum in Nassau County that reassembled around 50 historic buildings from their original sites across Long Island and rebuilt them on a single property. Costumed interpreters work the trades and household routines of a 19th-century Long Island village.

It sounds like a school trip. It's genuinely one of the more interesting two hours you can spend in Nassau County. The level of detail in the buildings and the knowledge of the staff are well above what you'd find at most local museums. Open year-round, with adult admission around $10 to $14.

The one that sticks with you

Everything on this list is genuinely worth your time. Some of it you'll do once and that's enough. One of them you'll want to go back to.

The wine blending class at wineUdesign is the one you're most likely to tell people about. You make a set of decisions over two hours, those decisions turn into a wine with your name on the label, and you take it home. A hike or a ballgame gives you a good afternoon. This gives you something you can open six months later and say you made it. That's hard to find in Hicksville or anywhere else on Long Island.

If you want to see how a session runs, wineUdesign.com/classes has everything you need.