The Van Blog: Upstate New York

Part of the reason we decided not to finish Phish tour was because we were starting to feel stress from having a schedule and needing to be somewhere at a certain time, not to mention it gets expensive quick. But mostly it was taking away the very freedom that this trip is all about (especially when the drives are a grueling 13 hours and you need to be there by the following evening). It was also making it impossible for us to see sights that were important to us. And don’t get me wrong, we feel so fortunate to go to 4 shows as it is. So with our “born again” freedom we made a last minute decision to head towards the Baseball Hall of Fame. We were headed towards a campground in the Southern Adirondack Region of New York, hoping to get to Vermont by the next day and about 30 minutes prior to our exit Kyle asked me to see if we were anywhere near Cooperstown. I checked and it happened to be off the same exit we were planning to take, except you go south off the exit instead of the northern route we were anticipating taking. We took about 10 minutes to decide that since we were in the area and might never be again we should go for it. Tonight we are camped at a New York state park called Glimmerglass. It overlooks Otsego Lake, the “Glimmerglass” of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. And tomorrow we plan to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame and head farther east. The drive along upstate New York today was one of mine and Kyle’s favorites on this whole trip. We took several small state highways and it’s absolutely gorgeous, serene countryside.