The Catskills (a.k.a. NO FLACK)

Well. I'm sitting in a McDonalds in some town on the eastern side of the Adirondacks (just an hour or so away from Vermont). Amazingingly enough by the time I find free Wi-fi its at a location where their server is down. So i am sittting here drinking a fruit smoothie (only thing i can stomach on their menu at the moment) and downloading my pics...writing up an adventure that I may or may not ever get to post...

So, here I go - The Catskills

Where to begin. I love them. They are beautiful and the people are amazingly nice. And after the first day when i drove around endlessly on the same roads looking for a way out (to find a town - to get a map) and believing I had trapped myself in a biodome...asking random hikers along the road if I was trapped in some sort of bubble (only half of them looked at me like i was crazy)--I finally got a good map and figured it out.

I will summarize my adventure - my campsite, while a good one along the river - was packed in tight with a strange family that seemed to know everyone at the campsite. They blared rockin oldies most of the time and there was a man (who i named Al) who kept yelling at people. But then there was the big guy (who I named Big Ole Billy) who cracked the worst joke to me the first morning - he said "they say its supposed to be a 3-dog night," I assume in reference to my 1 dog and lack of 2 others... I laughed and spoke to big billy for a bit.

I mostly drove around in the catskills. I drove and drove and drove and drove and found cute town after cute town. I met an awesome lady named Jill who owns her own pottery business out of a barn near her home on some mountain in a tiny town in the middle of the Catskills that I somehow managed to find in spite of the fact that they don't really believe in signs here... Jill invited me to a benefit event for the movement against the mining for Frack - some kinda gas that they leach out of shale. Sounds ridiculous. Mark Ruffalo and Debra Winger were going to be there. I thought Jill was awesome and really wanted to get a chance to see debra winger in person, but ended up not going because I was so exhausted that next day from all the driving i went back to camp and crashed. good thing - cause turns out Big Ole Billy was worried about me when i didn't get back to camp until dark - so it was really nice to know that big ole billy was looking out for me. Big Ole Billy said he was gonna send the rangers after me. Not sure where they would have gone to look, but again, it was super nice to know he was looking out for me (I know my momma would be happy to hear that, too).

I found a super cute town where I bought an old book on yellowstone and ate some yummy mussels & calamari and drank a irish hard cider (with Oreo chillin beside me on the patio) and enjoyed myself. all of this is out of order. I'm trying to remember the details after a few days.... Oh, I also met a super nice mennonite family that lives on a commune in the Platte Clove of the Catskills. They talked to me for a long time and I'm fairly sure they would have invited me back for Sunday dinner, had I not been starving on the trail and in desperate need of a snickers. They actually even offered me food on the trail when I told them i was heading back to get some. This place is so full of nice poeple! Oh, and I was searching for the bottom of a super nice waterfall and met some mountain bikers who directed me down the side of a mountain where Oreo and I went rockclimbing. Did i mention my dog is a bad-ass? all that quarry climbing back at ijams has paid off! So much to tell, so many fun adventures...

Some Pics: