1.) Biggest Regret: Not stopping to have our picture taken with the taxidermied bear.
2.) Culinary Highpoint: Kingston, NY. Pulling into our hotel and seeing a TGI Fridays, Taco Bell, and a Sonic Drive-In did not bode well for our gastric expectations, but a little expedition off the beaten path to the waterfront brought great rewards. This is where we found Ship to Shore Restaurant , and Richard, our charming and darn near perfect waiter who brought us one of our best meals in recent memory. Starting off with a soup of caramelized onions, cici beans and just a hint of curry and followed by a seafood risotto with rock shrimp and scallops that were beyond fresh we thought we couldn’t ask for anything more. Until…dessert! The vanilla bean crème brulée had us near tears. We felt we need never eat again, at least until the next morning when we made a stop at Adams Fairacre Farms market and picked up local goat cheese and apples and pears for that night’s automotive dinner. AND chocolate…which brings us to...
3.) Best Breakfast: Truffles from Adams Fairacre Farm! Don’t give us that look! Chocolate is loaded with good things that fill one with peace and good will towards one's fellow man, especially when the chocolate in question has been laced with brandy. Besides, isn’t it a vegetable?
4.) Low Point: In a nameless city in a nameless hotel calling for extra blankets and receiving something called a blanket that seemed to have been fabricated out of melted cassette tapes. ICK!
5.) Best In-Car Entertainment: Reading P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves & Wooster stories aloud. Musical use of language, great characters, and fall-on-the-floor funny. Just what the old onion needs while on the road.
6.) Lower Point: The much-vaunted "Sleep Number" beds in our hotel rooms somewhere along the way. As far as the Redheads can discern, the perfect sleep number is the phone number you call to get a couple of Sealy Posturepedics delivered a.s.a.p.
7.) Magic Moment: Stopping on a pitch black road in the Adirondacks and looking up to see that the lights in the sky were millions of stars. Millions!
8.) In our Next Life: We want to be dancers with Paul Taylor’s Taylor 2 Company.
9.) Our Confession… There is no Ten; we got distracted by something shiny.
3 comments:
Laurel, some years ago, my husband and I attended a boat museum meeting in the Adirondacks. We flew into Albany and then drove to the mountains. We were AMAZED at how rural parts of upstate New York are. I suppose we thought the entire state was like the five well-known boroughs.
Our motel, if I dare call it that, was primitive, to say the least. The thermostat for our room was in another room of the small motel, and we were at the mercy of the guests in the other room for the temperature in our room.
The views were lovely, though. I climbed Blue Mountain, which is quite a small mountain. The view from the top was worth the effort.
Yes. Blue Mountain is beautiful. Did you by any chance stop in at Church of the Transfiguration on the shore of Blue Mountain Lake? It was a summer-only church, with one of the most wise and intelligent and passionate priests I have ever met, the late Rev. Ralph Carmichael. I knew him in the 1990s, but only now am I beginning to realize the strength of his influence on my spiritual life.
The Adirondacks have a brooding presence, not pretty, I think, too real for pretty, but profoundly beautiful.
Thanks for commenting!
Laurel, I did not see the Church of the Transfiguration. We were in the area in October, and we barely missed a major snowstorm which arrived the day after we flew out of Albany. We probably would have had to delay our return home if we had left a day later.
The day that I climbed Blue Mountain, a light mist was falling, and the path going down was quite slippery. I slipped down three or four times, but fortunately I did not injure myself, but the aches and pains the next few days were not fun. I did not have the proper shoes for the climb.
We attended a wine and cheese party in a beautiful home on the shore of the lake with spectacular views from the patio. I have one enlarged print hanging on my wall, with the incredible blue sky reflecting in the lake. The color in the photo appears enhanced, but it not. The print shows the true, gorgeous blue that I saw.
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