On September 12, 1901, when there were maybe just a few hints of fall color touching the Adirondack Mountains, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt went for a hike. Vacationing with his family in his beloved North Country, he decided to climb Mount Marcy, New York State’s tallest peak at just over 5,300 feet. While hiking, some…
Category: Upstate New York
Whales in the Mountains
My first clue was this goofy-looking, very dated, blue-and-white parking sign showing a smiling whale with wheels. We were figuring out where we could legally park and my initial thought was “What the hell is there a whale sign doing in the Catskills???” Goes to show what I know. Turns out Hudson, New York, was…
Seeking Enlightenment in the Berkshires
To me, and perhaps to other New Yorkers, the Berkshires look like the Catskills; those same soft blue ripples of rock rising and falling to the north. Yet the Berkshires have a very different narrative than the Catskills. Today, the Catskills feature some of the Rust Belt deterioration that dominates so much of upstate New…
A Chocolate Cake Attempt Inspired by Travel
Yesterday, I attempted vegan baking for the first time. It was an epic failure. It doesn’t look like a failure in this photo, but the cake was a sweetened brick smothered in rich, fabulously delicious avocado icing, a yummy way to enjoy antioxidants, fiber and unsaturated fat. So yes, the icing was a big success;…
The Other O.C.
There’s Orange County, the Southern California beachside haven of three million tawny, manicured people, and then there’s Orange County, a bucolic sanctuary about 60 miles north of Manhattan and home to approximately 372,000 people, many of them pale and wearing ripped jeans and cowboy boots or whatever was on sale at REI. New York’s Orange…