Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Upstate Cowboys

There was this Greek friend of mine at the university whose sister had married a rich stock dealer or something. My friend said that they had a lovely house in wonderful place upstate New York called Catskill Mountains.

Naturally, I had to check Catskill out whilst I was in NY.

As I did a bit of web research, an event caught my attention.


A dairy farmer's annual fest on the top of hill in Meredith, Delaware County, NY, just north of Catskill Park.

Perfect.

We rented a car and headed north.

Once in Catskill area, we quickly realised that the locals are not reliable when it comes to directions. It appears that they do not move around enough to know what is on the other side of hills. Weekend trekkers from NYC were much more helpful.

We somehow managed to drive through Catskill and reached Meredith and aforementioned "Top of the Hill".

As had been expected, ours were just about the only Asian faces in the crowd. However, somewhat embarrassingly, our son was the one who was most into the swing of things...












An old lady proclaiming to be from a local newspaper took some photos of our son. I wonder if this Oriental Cowboy made it to the press.

Nevertheless, I could not help noticing that there was this lone urbane brotha who was definitely feeling totally out of place amongst hillbillies.














Another discovery: a vintage Datsun Z from the late '70s, made to look like "General Lee".












All in all, a great family day out, although I lost my way on the way back and only managed to get back home at 11:00pm.

As for Catskill, I suppose it is a convenient nature getaway destination for New Yorkers and it is fairly pretty. Still, I would not go out of my way to buy a house there, unless I know that I am tied down to NY for the rest of my life. Come to think of it, my Greek friend's sister did divorce that man. I wonder if he has at least kept his house in Catskill.

No comments: