Avontuur in New York: ROAD TRIP!

When you become an official U.S. resident, you need to get your driving license before you're allowed to drive again. Bram decided a while ago that he wanted to be able to drive so he applied for the test. Naturally, he passed!

To celebrate, he rented a car for the weekend and we went on a roadtrip to the Catskill Mountains to escape the concrete jungle and see a bit of actual nature, especially now that all trees are wearing their autumn colours. We left home pretty much without a plan, except for one stop, not too far outside the city.

The first 45 minutes looked pretty much like this, moving slowly behind a lot of other cars.

But then we finally got to our first stop.

Because more pop culture references are always better! We found a parking spot at the Sleepy Hollow cemetery (because no trip is complete without a visit to a cemetery is what I always say.)

It was a beautiful sunny day and there were a lot of people there. There were even guided tours because apparently there are a lot of well known people buried there. We didn't go dead celebrity spotting though, just strolling around. And taking a lot of pictures.

(I haven't checked my photographs for ghosts this time, so please let me know if you find any!)

I figured out that this is a gravestone, but as for the how and what of the design, I'm completely lost.

Curious to know the story behind this one as well..

We made it to the other side of the cemetery and sat here for a while:

Lovely scenery! ;)

Then back through the graveyard and to the car...

We didn't see the Headless Horseman and we didn't participate in any of the many spooky activities that are being organized there this time of year. Maybe next year ;)

Bram pointed out this sign was partially in Dutch. There's a lot of Dutch history still in this part of America.

Onward in our noble rental steed, our heads still firmly in place, we toured through the landscape, marvelling at the beautiful colored leaves and soaking up the sun. We made a few stops along the way, to take pictures and stretch our legs.

Bram took this one, unfortunately you can't see all the ladybugs that were crawling over me, there were a lot of them and they appeared attracted to my bright pink shirt.

The view here was lovely as well.

Onward again!

By this time, Bram had figured out where we would stop for the night and he booked a room in a simple roadside motel. The argument here being we both didn't care for fancy stuff, just a decent and clean bed, a shower and some breakfast in the morning. Well, what we got didn't entirely meet those standards.

Up until now I've only seen motels like this on television, so despite everything it was a completely new experience, and I'm all for new experiences. I'm not going to lie about how uncomfortable this particular new experience was though.

We pulled into the parking lot of this building:

The view across the street. Building to the right was a liquor store, not entirely unexpected.

We checked in at the front desk without any problems, and we got the key to our room. It was the one completely at the end.

When we opened the door, the smell just hit us like a ton of bricks. I don't even know if I'll be able to accurately describe it, but try to imagine the basement of an abandoned building that had flooded regularly over the past 60 years and hadn't been opened once in all that time. It smelled like mold, only highly concentrated. I had to stop myself from checking how many mushrooms were growing under the bed because I was afraid I might find something worse.
The next thing we noticed was the cold. It was like walking into a giant refrigerator. it wasn't even cold outside. Just in there. Thankfully, the thermostat actually worked and the room started warming up soon enough. The smell never got any better though. When I took off my shoes I noticed that the carpet had tried to suck all the moisture out of the air, failing miserably due to lack of capacity, but making it cold and damp in the process. Pulled back the sheets on the bed and found out the entire bed was damp as well. There was a big puddle of water on the bathroom floor that we thought was a leak at first, but after mopping it up the water never came back, so no leak, thankfully. I'll try not to think about wat it could have been instead, but it didn't smell any worse than the rest of the room so it can't have been that bad.

Then I tried letting in some daylight.

Thankfully there was another window which provided a slightly better view.

The tv show was the most modern thing in the entire room by at least a decade.

We left our luggage there and went to find a spot to eat. There was an inn at walking distance from the motel, which should have been a warning, but one we chose not to heed at this point.
The inn itself wasn't bad. The food wasn't bad (despite being overpriced) but our waitress was pretty bad.
(The -my grandma would have fired her on the spot- kind of bad)
She completely forgot to bring the soup Bram ordered and she actually managed to chase off two other customers, who had to yell at her to finally get the bill for their drinks so they could pay and have their dinner elswehere, because they were tired of waiting for it.

Anyway, she did eventually manage to bring us most of our food in nearly the correct order and we didn't go hungry.

Back at the motel the temperature had gotten better. The stench had not. But we watched some college football and a commercial for something called the "Three way Poncho" (click at own risk!) that was horribly hilarious, and then we tried to get some sleep. After a long night of tossing and turning while a violent thunderstorm raged outside, I finally gave up on sleeping and got out of bed to take a shower and start the day.
So I turned on the hot water. Then I used the toilet. Then I took my sweet time brushing my teeth. By that time the water was finally warm enough to take a shower. This experience was slightly diminished by the presence of stray hairs that must have belonged to the previous tenants, but that was all part of the charm of this place at this point.

I put on my clothes that were wet and stinky from being in that room the whole night, including the clean clothes I packed. There was actual condensation on my phone.
After having our continental breakfast in the common area (breakfast was exactly what you would expect from this place, at least nothing was moldy) we checked out and left, relieved that we could get out of there.

Oh alright, fair enough. These were actually fresh and tasty!

Back on the road our moods significantly improved and Bram had plotted a course through a gorgeous region. The weather had taken a turn for the dramatic, but dramatic can be pretty too :)

After driving a while longer we came past this little surprise here!

Death to Rothbart!

Moving on to our next destination..

Making his old man proud!

By Odin, I believe this picture might have been tampered with!

Bliss.bmp

The place was pretty much deserted, except for one other couple. They walked past us when Bram and I were joking around and we heard one of them start laughing and say "Oh néé he!"

Yep, the only other two people who happened to visit Woodstock that day were also Dutch. They were very nice people who were on holiday and decided to come and see the place while they were in the area. We talked for a while and then we went our seperate ways..

By now it was time to direct our journey homeward, but not without stopping along the way a couple more times to wander through the beautiful landscape before getting back to the big apple. Bram found some pretty gorgeous places too!