Category: LGBTQ+ Travel

The Hudson Valley has always been queer territory — it just took the rest of the world a while to catch up.

Hudson Valley Style Magazine is the fine art photography/editorial project of queer artist-activist and visual storyteller Maxwell Alexander — the creative force behind the Cocky Cowboy, a composed queer masculine alter ego whose adventures across river retreats, mountain light, and the artsy queer towns upstate New York does so well have shaped the visual language of gay travel above the city. This is the archive. Every cabin review, trail dispatch, and cultural feature here is filtered through a gay gaze that finds the political in the pastoral and beauty in the landscape.

LGBTQ+ travel in the Northeast found its spiritual home somewhere between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River. Gay-friendly vacation rentals, gay-owned Airbnb Hudson Valley properties, and queer-friendly glamping in the Catskills have transformed upstate New York from a pastoral afterthought into one of the most compelling eco-queer travel destinations in the country. Queer upstate hikes through old-growth forest, Catskills Pride ski weekends, and chosen family getaways in the Catskills draw travelers who want their wilderness with a side of liberation. The Hudson Valley Pride season anchors June, but the queer Hudson NY guide runs year-round — from the galleries and drag brunches of Newburgh’s waterfront to Pride in the Sky on the Walkway Over the Hudson to queer honky tonk upstate nights that nobody is writing about yet but should be.

Wellness travel here means something specific. LGBTQ+ wellness retreats upstate, queer farm-to-table experiences rooted in Hudson Valley agriculture, and safe space travel across upstate NY have built an infrastructure of belonging that the region never had to advertise but absolutely earned. Big gay Hudson Valley energy is real, it’s grounded, and through the lens of Maxwell Alexander and the spirit of the Cocky Cowboy, it has never looked better.