HUDSON VALLEY | MINI VACAY

As I mentioned on Monday, we spent a 4 day weekend down in/around Woodstock & Saugerties (which we kept calling Socrates) in New York. I was pleasantly surprised by how enchanting the Hudson Valley area is with its old homes and abundance of weeping willows.

We rented a cute little barn house through Airbnb for the 3 nights, it was really cozy and quiet but with the nice little extras like TV, a bed, a full kitchen and working plumbing – that you wouldn’t get on a camping trip. It was about a 4 hour drive through the foothills of the Adirondack mountains (2 hours north of NY city).

There was so much to do that the question what do we do today? became almost paralyzing. We had limited access to the internet so finding what we were looking for wasn’t always easy. Our society has become so dependant on our GPS and smartphones to navigate that we hardly ever bring a map or pay attention to street names and directions anymore. Though we hit a few snags along the way, we found our way around and visited lots of interesting places. In Woodstock, we ate at the Garden Cafe and Catskills Mountain Pizza, we bought some wine (including a local NY bottle) at the Woodstock Wine & Liquors, we tried some award wining cupcakes at Peace Love & Cupcakes. We visited the Saugerties Farmers Market for fresh produce to prepare meals back at the barn house.

The mornings started off chilly but warmed up quickly with the sun and we were enjoying the heat by the afternoon. We did a 4 mile hike to Vernooy Falls  on Saturday. I chickened out and couldn’t go into the icy water past my ankles but Matt was a big boy and went right in. His reaction to the water sealed the deal that I would stay on the sunny rocks where my lungs could safely expand. Sunday we took it easy and went to visit the Catskills Animal Sanctuary (which I will be posting about soon in another post) where we got to meet some really awesome rescued farm animals. We visited the Saugerties lighthouse (meh) and then stopped in Woodstock for a beer, a few (too many) slices of pizza and some flea market browsing before we went in search of “The Big Deep“, a water hole minutes from the town of Woodstock.

When I told matt about my vision (obsession) to float on a black inner tube in a river somewhere on our trip, he picked one up with an electric air pump that hooks up to the car. Genius, that boy. Once we made sure the unmarked path we were following was in fact leading to a water hole and not a scene from deliverance, we went back to the car, blew up the tube and dunked in the cold (warmer than the waterfalls) water hole. We floated around, sharing a bottle of beer and a tube between the 2 of us (not at the same time…). It was already late in the afternoon and the weather was cooling off fast so we didn’t stick around too long. Next year, I plan on spending 3 days (at least) merely floating around on tube on a river somewhere.

And then it was Monday, raining and we were packing up the car, buying some Cabot cheese at Price Chopper and heading back on the road home. A good trip, I only wish we had a few more days to spend in the area.

MORE PICTURES HERE

*I used this list in my search for waterholes.
*We stayed in this Airbnb house (great location, cozy and secluded enough, host was helpful, full kitchen was great. But a little pricey for a place that only sleeps 2 and we had no wifi when we got there and when it was fixed the next day, it was slow, like dialup slow. This was an issue since we had planned on using the wifi to plan out our days more specifically and map out any directions to hiking trails and less obvious gps locations).

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