Last year was good.
But this year was better.
And we were determined to make it the most g.d. autumnal experience we could POSSIBLY have.
Our first stop: corn maze.
We headed to Barton Orchards which boasted a pumpkin patch, apple farm, hayride, petting zoo, corn maze, and haunted house.
We sprang for the deluxe admission. You know us. We spared no expense.
Little did we know, we were already practically identical. (and both too lazy to change.)
Our first stop was this corn maze.
They say men more courageous than us had gone in...and never emerged.
We sprang for the hand-held map and the secret decoder glasses ($1).
Using patented Maize-O-Vision technology, the decoder glasses, when worn by the explorer, would reveal the maze and help us on our journey.
Of course, if we got lost, we could hold up a pirate flag and someone would (hopefully) come and get us.
Also, the glasses were very psychedelic.
"Post-modern" (adj.) :
Mel C's shadow of her taking a picture of me, taking a picture of my shadow, which is of me, taking a picture, of my shadow. (photo by Mel C.)
(real corn! growing!)
After finding our way out of the corn maze-
(Some might say the maze conquered us, but we said, "F-ck you maze--you're just corn. But we're humans. And we have brains. And decoder glasses. And we're gonna turn around and go out the way we came in...")
-we headed to the hay ride which would take us up to the orchard!
(No, this tractor is not in motion.)
Here's us-- riding on hay! (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!)
Me picking my first apple in 5...4...3...2...
This apple is inside-out!
Next stop-- petting zoo and bird farm!
In all, it was a great day on the farm!
We jumped in the car and headed to Milan-Rock City-- home to the World's Largest fork in the road. That sits-- in a fork in the road.
(How could we not?)
We spent the night at the Friar Tuck "Resort and Spa" in Catskill, NY.
http://www.friartuck.com/index.htm
More like the Friar SUCK (Last) Resort and Sh-thole.
I didn't take any pictures, but if you want to know more, look no further than these headlines of reviews by past guests, posted on TripAdvisor.com...
(Yes, all of these are real):
-“RUN AWAY- do not stay here - DISGUSTING, DIRTY, and UNSAFE”
-“this place is the pits!!!”
-“It is a pit!!!”
-“Avoid, even if stranded!”
-“A nightmare of a stay”
-“In need of repair”
-“Horror hotel...no resort”
-“The WORST hotel experience EVER!”
-“Worst hotel I have ever been to”
-“What you've read is true”
-“We called it Friar Yuck”
-“Hotel of Horrr”
-“Badly insulated floors but rest is good” (phew-- relief)
-“Thieves Work Here”
-“Yuck!!!!!!”
-“Stay Well Away”
-“STAY AWAY!!!”
-“Time to Retire this Place!”
-“Honeymoon nightmare”
-“I was a little worried after reading the reviews”
And my personal favorite:
“The Day I lost My Car in Flood at Friar Tuck Inn”
(Note: these were only the headlines from some of the first 40 reviews....)
Now--mind you-- none of these reviews were listed on Expedia.com.
And also the room was on sale.
But-- we watched "Spiderman 2" on cable and fell asleep like babies before the second day of our weekend of fall foliage mania...
The next day, we awoke bright and early (got a cup of pumpkin spice coffee!) to go through Woodstock to Mt Pleasant for a ride on the Catskill Mountain railroad!
This railroad used to be part of a bigger line that took passengers and cargo through New York to places Chicago and Washington DC. The railroad was bought by private investors who run it as a tourist attraction, taking people on fall foliage trips up and down the nearby river to see the leaves change.
We spoke to this woman (whose name I forgot) who was working in the gift shop. We assumed she was a volunteer until she let it slip that she actually owned a controlling interest in the railroad and made most of the decisions about the line.
After the railroad, we headed up the street a couple of blocks to the World's Largest Kaleidoscope. It was constructed out of a grain silo by an artist and his son in the 1990s and a mini shopping center has since grown around it.
For $5.25 you could watch the 20 minute multi-media kaleidoscopic presentation.
The woman who let us in said that the best way to view the show was to eschew the head-rest posts you could lean against while standing-- instead, for maximum enjoyment, we should lay down on the floor.
Which is exactly what we did.
The kaleidoscope show was AMAZING. These pictures don't do it justice. Even though it's just digital video projected in a small triangle of screen, then reflected by mirrors, it becomes a consciousness-raising experience when it hovers above your head, 16-feet in span, as if floating in the sky directly above your face, occupying your entire field of vision. The theme of this particular show (there are three that they rotate) was a little obscure, but I think it had to do with the founding fathers of America, an anti-war sentiment, the benefits of marijuana, and trains...?
Here is some video footage. (It was much more amazing in real life. I think it somehow hypnotized me.)
Better video footage can be found on Youtube.
Just search: World's Largest Kaleidoscope. There can be only one.
As luck would have it, the World's Largest Kaleidoscope gift shop was also home to the World's Smallest Kaleidoscope, pictured here.
Amazingly enough, this gift shop was also home to the World's Largest Collection of Kaleidoscopes in One Place (3 World's Largests!) so we spent a little while browsing the store. (Kaleidoscopic photos by Mel C.)
Look closely-- it's me!
And my eye!!!
We spent the rest of the daylight driving through the forest, enjoying the view and taking pictures.
Look-- real life fractals!
Some of you may wonder where we find out about such things as the World's Largest Kaleidoscope or World's Largest Fork in the Road. It's easy! Before any road trip (or mini-road trip), we log onto RoadsideAmerica.com and see what's near our destination.
RoadsideAmerica has led us to many interesting places and allowed us to see (and experience!) a lot of great things.
As we were driving, I said to Mel C, "I would love to discover something amazing and unknown by the side of the road in America*, and post it online and share it with others, so that we could give back to RoadsideAmerica.com-- as payback for all the wonderful gifts it has given us..."
[*I once came close with World's Largest Stone Iguana-- but that's in Costa Rica [not America, as Mel C pointed out...]-- for more information, see below in post titled, "Costa Rica Redux".]
Well it turns out I got that chance-- TWICE. In one parking lot.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...
The World's Largest Dollhouse and the World's Smallest Log Cabin--in Ulster, NY.
The only thing we're sad we didn't do (because we ran out of daylight)--which was not on RoadsideAmerica, but we just thought would be fun to do-- was to get our pictures taken in front of the municipal signs in the nearby cities of Coxsackie, Gayhead, Climax, and Surprise.
Well, I guess there's always next year!
[PS: Here's a shoutout picture to all my teammates from my LA co-ed softball team, the Landsharks. Shark attack!!!]
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