The Great Outdoors

My new obsession: hiking! I love the exercise, being outdoors, and meeting new people of all walks of life.

I found a neat coffee shop in Peekskill the first weekend I was here. They have live music on Friday nights and I was able to see Joe Duraes play. It was a cool mix of pop and indie, surprisingly not your typical coffee shop sound. I ordered something cold and decaf expected some sort of iced tea and was pleasantly surprised with a delicious iced coffee, something I normally avoid due to the caffeine.

I've been on a ton of hikes since I got here 2 weeks ago. It's my new favorite activity and I've met a lot of people through the NY Outdoor Meetup group. My first excursion was an easy-moderate hike at Wonder Lake which was about 5 miles and took us 3 hours. Lots of neat, quirky people on these group hikes; along the way I met a woman who is vegan and works at a wolf preserve and another woman who lived in a treehouse in Hawaii for 3 months. The hike went a little faster than I expected. I didn't have much time to look around at the scenery as I spent much of the time staring at my feet to make sure I didn't trip on a rock or root. We did stop several times for pictures and snacks, though.

That's me in the pink shirt and blue pack

Walking up to the namesake, Wonder Lake

Rockefeller Preserve was about 5 miles long but more like a nature walk on groomed trails rather than a hike. It also has a farm-to-table restaurant which is booked up months in advance. It was pretty but not too challenging so I probably won't attend another one of the weekly meetups there.

The restaurant

Walking through the restaurant courtyard

White-tailed deer

Turkey Mountain was another short weekday hike of about 3.5 miles. The group leader showed me how to identify a black birch tree which smells like root beer when you scrape the bark off a branch! We saw a turkey (of course!), owl, and rabbit. The view from the summit was amazing. We could see the NYC skyline, Bear Mountain (which I hiked later that week), Anthony's Nose, and Storm King. This is definitely one of my favorite hikes. It's also only about 15 minutes from my house so I'm hoping to take the McDaid family with me out there some weekend!

Taken by our wonderful photographer Jim

My favorite hike by far has been Breakneck Ridge. It's one of the hardest, steepest hikes in the area and is considered "strenuous" since almost the whole thing is a rock scramble which is basically a combination of hiking and rock climbing. I definitely had some butterflies before we started! I ended up being the fastest one in the group and missed the flagpole checkpoint, oops! I met back up with the group about halfway down and decided to go the rest of the way back down on my own since I was tired. It was almost harder going down than going up! Luckily, I spotted a guy with casual sneakers and jeans who was talking on his cell phone. I figured he knew what he was doing if he was climbing down one-handed! We joked about that, exchanged contact information, and are planning to hike together again next weekend.

Storm King across the Hudson River

  

I hiked Bear Mountain on Monday with my friend George who came out from Michigan to visit for a few days. It was my first time going without a group and trail guide so thankfully we didn't get too lost thanks to a guide book Nancy let me borrow. We had a vegan picnic lunch of falafel pitas, apples with peanut butter, granola bars, and yummy coconut cookies. The hike was about 4 miles long since we took the long way up and the rock stairs down.

Such a nice little stream

We constructed an Inukshuk

Perkins Memorial Tower near the summit. You can also drive your car up... which is cheating!

View from the summit

Other activities during the last couple weeks included making mozzarella cheese, building an electric fence and tent for the meat chicks, finally getting them out of the house, weeding and cleaning up for Farm Day this weekend. I thought the chicken enclosure would never get done as it took Nancy and I two and a half days to complete by ourselves! It was nice not to be woken up by 150+ peeping birds and to get rid of all the dust from their feathers. I also did some gardening at Julietta's, a friend of the family, which included mixing up compost, peat moss, and vermiculite for raised beds, spreading wood chips and planting herbs and flowers.

Caprese with newly made mozzarella. Wish I had fresh basil!

Some cheddar Nancy made a few months earlier. So good!

Some of the laying flock inside the coop

Yesterday George and I went into the city to meet up with some friends of his. First, we had lunch at Franchia Vegan Cafe which was surprisingly yummy since I'm not crazy about Asian food. I even managed to feed myself with chopsticks! We had faux duck, pumpkin mushroom tofu salad, vegetable dumplings, and mango tea. Then we went over to the Strand bookstore, walking through crowds of Occupy Wall Street and labor activists since it was May Day. The group that got my attention the most were the "consciousness awareness" folks who were walking really slowly and silently. Such a contrast to the fast-paced, honking horn-filled city. We took a break in Central Park before meeting up with one of George's colleagues. They're magicians who travel all over the world to do performances so lots of neat stories! I also learned about kibbutz in Israel which are collective agricultural communities and a similar concept to WWOOFing.