Fall Fun

A few weeks back I organized a little day trip in celebration of fall. We rented a much loved minivan (read: old school ghetto Dodge minivan complete with dents -- thank you All Car Rental at the BK Marriott), gathered a few friends, and took to the highway at about 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Since, lots of people have asked me where we went and how we planned it. Well, for one, I planned it all by my little self (thank you internets -- mostly chowhound). I specialize in cuteness, so the idea of a quaint little trip upstate was too much to pass up - and resulted in probably a good 5-6 hours of research online. Let's just say if there was a Jeopardy category on orchards in the Hudson Valley, I'd ace it.

Here's what we did:


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First Stop (b): Bob-O-Link Dairy. A tiny little cow farm that sell artisanal cheeses and fresh, hearth baked breads. We sampled the delicious cheeses and bought some - along with a load of ciabatta bread - for noshing on later. Note for the next trip: bring a knife to cut the bread and cheese!

Second Stop (c): Pennings Orchard. For apple picking, of course. Unfortunately, Pennings apple picking was done for the season (on Oct. 19), but they provided directions to another nearby orchard that also sold among the best apple cider I've had along with apple and pumpkin butter. Yum! Unfortunately, they didn't have hayrides or farm animals to pet :(

Third Stop (d): Demarest Winery. Not your average winery, this one had some R&B pumped out of outdoor speakers and was manned by the Italian/Venezuelan equivalent of the soup nazi. This man makes everything - from wine to balsamic vinegar to mamajuana. And, if you don't folow the rules, he'll cuss at you in Italian (while his wife chuckles to herself). Charming (really). We got some wine and ate our cheese, bread and apples here.

Fourth Stop (e): Bellvale Farms Creamery. This stuff is among the best ice cream I've ever had. Flavors included s'more, pumpkin, coffee (with toffee pieces in it), and white chocolate with dark chocolate chunks and raspberry swirl. Line was long, but goes fast, and there was a gorgeous view of the valley.

Fifth Stop (f): Applewoods Orchard and Winery. A bit of a madhouse (and we got there only about 15 min before they closed), but satisfied the need for hot cider, cider donuts and farm animals.

Sixth Stop (g): the town (um, street) of Sugar Loaf. Essentially a craft village and the place where we got real food to offset the apples, cheese, bread, wine, and ice cream we had already consumed. There are quite a few foodie-type restaurants in this area, so I'd recommend looking those up and skipping Sugar Loaf.

Now this is where our little trip got interesting -- and also where we, as fearless trailblazers, make your life easier when you take this trip.

**There are no gas stations on the route from Point E to Point G**. In fact, there is only 1 gas station from Point G to Point H, and that gas station is a good 10 miles or so from Sugar Loaf.

You see, we had started out the trip with only 1/4 of a tank of gas -- falsely assuming we could get some along the way. Yes, we passed up numerous gas stations in NJ. And, yes, I was keeping an eye on the gas meter.

Needless to say, when the red light went on, there were no gas stations to be found -- even on our trusty iPhones. We were then caught driving across Harriman State Park (of Bear Mtn fame) in the dark on a two lane highway, with no gas and -- even more alarming -- no cell phone reception. Concerned? Yes. Panicked? Eventually. Usage of the 'neutral' gear to coast down hill while other cars followed behind? Most definitely. We even managed to make a u-turn, *up-hill* in neutral after one wrong turn. (This made us very proud.)

Thankfully, iPhones saved us, and we coasted (literally) into a gas station and fueled up which took us to our final,

Seventh Stop (h): The Great Pumpkin Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson. Over 4,000 hand carved pumpkins light up the night at this annual event. It is truly spectacular and deserves its own blog post. Get your tickets early in 2009. They sell out quickly.

At 11:30 p.m., after dropping our friends off and dividing up our apples, we arrived home, let the dogs out, and summarily went to bed (or I did anyway - the boy, of course, was up for another few hours).

Photos to follow.