For 65 Years It’s Been A Place For Guests To Grin And Bare It

There are bares in the woods in Palmerton.

Guests at Sunny Rest, a clothing optional resort, don’t have pockets, but they do bring money. Sunny Rest grossed $1 million during its four-month season last year, the best in its 65-year history. Typically 500 to 600 guests visit on the weekends. The Fourth of July is busiest, with 1,200 guests.

“You’re going to love happy hour at the bar. I’ll be there,” promoted the friendly, clothed man in the gate house. Guests would see more of him later. Sunny Rest became the first nudist resort in Pennsylvania to get a liquor license in 2008.

To the uninitiated, a different culture is behind the gate. Naked people walk casually around the grounds, some pausing in circles to chat. A group of old friends sit nude, visiting around a table.

Couples stroll hand in hand, children splash in the pool and a long, naked line forms at the check-in counter where the jump ropes and Sunny Rest T-shirts were not selling on Friday.

Nudes linger at the bar and listen to open-mike night performers.

No one seems alarmed or even interested that their clothes are missing. That is actually the point.

Like kicking off a tight pair of shoes, nakedness is less restricting than being clothed. It is secondary to the usual resort activities.

While most resorts have a transient population, Sunny Rest has many repeat guests. They get to know each other and build close friendships.

Sunny Rest co-owner Irving Mesher, 85, first spent a weekend in the buff in the 1960s.

Mesher wore uniforms all his life; Navy uniforms in World War II, show costumes as a professional trumpet player, and a chief’s uniform from the New York Fire Department. Mesher wanted to shed his uniform and the reaction it got from people. He and his wife went to a nudist camp for the weekend. The next weekend, the couple returned with their children, ages 6 and 8.

The family became seasonal residents at Sunny Rest and in 1978 took the resort over from former owner Wally Rogers. Irving Mesher co-owns the resort with his daughter-in-law Myra Mesher.

Sunny Rest originally opened Memorial Day 1945 on rolling farm land owned by Reed and Jeanette Suplee. It has always been a clothing optional resort.

In past years, people were more secretive about visiting nudist resorts. Jack Strum, 71, and his wife, a retired kindergarten teacher, kept their trips to Sunny Rest quiet in early years so her job would not be jeopardized. In 1986, they built a house at Sunny Rest and became the first of 28 year-round residents.

Today, guests talk about it on Facebook, said Halsie Shoemaker, Sunny Rest marketing manager and Mesher’s granddaughter. Shoemaker will own Sunny Rest one day. She hopes to make the resort year-round eventually to accommodate the many people who request rooms after skiing at Blue Mountain.

Sunny Rest’s 65th anniversary reunion is Memorial Day weekend. Day passes are available.