Unique Things to Do on Long Island for Adults
Updated: Oct 15
Long Island has more to do than its reputation suggests. If you are looking for group activities for adults near you, the options worth your time run from axe throwing in Farmingdale and a Ducks game in Central Islip to hiking at Caumsett, a brewery afternoon out east, and blending your own wine in Hicksville. Here is what each one is actually like, who it suits, and how to plan it for a group.
Table of contents
Long Island has more going on than you think
Axe throwing at NY Axe Throwing, Farmingdale
Catch a Long Island Ducks game
Hiking at Caumsett State Park
A craft brewery afternoon on the North Fork
Blend your own wine at wineUdesign, Hicksville
Surf lessons at Long Beach
A morning at Planting Fields Arboretum
Old Bethpage Village Restoration
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 NY Axe Throwing, Farmingdale
NY Axe Throwing on Michael Avenue in Farmingdale books lanes and private rooms online. 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 from late April through September, with around 60 home dates, and a box seat comes in around $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 1,680 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 1920s model dairy farm, now being restored, and looking at coastline that stretches far enough that the 21st century disappears behind you. Cars pay a parking fee in season.
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 serve food, Jamesport through daily food trucks, and both have a pace that makes you want to stay for another round.
Be realistic about the drive. The North Fork is about 50 to 75 miles from Hicksville and works well as a half-day trip if you leave in the morning and point back before dinner. For a group on a weekday evening it is too far, which is why it sits lower on this list than its scenery deserves.
Blend 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 wines made on site from California and Chilean grapes 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.
Sessions run about 90 minutes, and you can see dates and book on wineUdesign's wine blending class page. 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.
It works just as well for groups. Companies bring teams from Bethpage, Melville and Hauppauge for corporate team building on Long Island, with tables of 6 to 12 and custom labels that can carry the company's own logo.
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. Surf schools run beginner lessons there from July through October.
You're not going to stand up on your first wave. That's part of the deal. What you do get is an hour and a half in the water with your full attention on one thing, which is harder to come by than most adults admit.
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, which runs guided tours from April through mid-November, with holiday tours in December.
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. It is open Friday through Sunday, and adult admission is $15.
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 about 90 minutes, 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's wine blending class page has everything you need, and if you're planning something for work, take a look at corporate team building on Long Island. And if you are planning an evening for two, our date night ideas on Long Island pick up where this list leaves off.
If you are organizing for a group rather than just yourself, tell us the number and the date. We seat 6 to 12 at a blending table and can run more than one table for a larger party, so birthdays, reunions, friends who have been meaning to do something for months and work teams all book the same way. If you are looking for a present rather than a plan, our wine experience gifts let the person choose their own date.
