Holiday to the Boredoms (conclusion)

Feeling a bit isolated in the depressed Monticello area and being the victim of an attempted devouring by a swarm of mosquitoes started our trip off on a bit of an undesirable beginning, but the beauty of the Catskill State Park and the ATP Festival ultimately made the vacation quite enjoyable. Dinner in the college town of New Paltz on the Saturday night after our trip to Kaaterskill Falls gave us a small return to civilization, and the drive back to the hotel from there provided some wonderful views from a mountain chain we had to cross.

While the eastern side of the park was filled with many small villages, a nice drive at the Park's western border along the Pepacton Reservoir on Sunday morning revealed a much more isolated area where nature prevailed over fireman's fairs that blocked small yet critical roads for reaching destinations (a small inconvenience not worth otherwise documenting). There is no area in Northern Virginia / suburban DC that I've found that has the same solitude as we found in some areas in NY; even the deepest wooded trail here has an underlying soundtrack of airplanes and traffic that is simply unavoidable. However, we also have a much more obvious recession-proof environment that has far fewer failing businesses and abandoned buildings than we noticed while driving in the north. I suppose everything comes at a cost.

Image swiped from the Wired New York Forum