Catskills Mountains

After being immersed in the busyness of New York City, we needed some downtime to be one with nature again. We headed north in New York State towards the Catskills. On our way, we encountered Orange County Choppers and took a quick tour of the showroom and the shop. There were many cool bikes to see. They were currently working on a build for Bass Pro Shops.

  

 
 
When we arrived at North-South Lake Campground in Catskills Mountains, the office was already closed. We didn't have a site but luckily there were walk-ups available. We took a pic of the list showing what was open and started driving the loops in search of a good site. We settled in on the last lake site and started cooking dinner. We were a little startled by a knock on the camper door. A lady had a check-in slip claiming the site we were on. I wan't very happy to have to move but we ended up finding another site by a creek that was actually better.

 

1st site

This one was completely shaded so it was a good place to set up the Tenstile tree tent and test it out. Jason and SamBob slept in it one night after working out the kinks of set-up. Jason and I took a short hike to a waterfall but had to turn back early due to mosquitos and my upset stomach!

The next day we did a family hike to Kaaterskill Falls. It had rained so there were a lot of slippery areas around the Falls to be concerned about; at least for this mom! Boys take risks that I don't...

 

view from upper falls

lower falls

 

A mom made this sign- I am sure of it!

Visiting the "Big Apple"

There are few to no options for camping in New York. We found a place in Brooklyn called Floyd Bennett field which is an old airfield no longer used. It is part of the National Park Service. The hangars are still there with some old restored planes in them. The campground is actually a runway where you can park your RV .

 

We had to take a bus then the subway to get into town each day. This was a little confusing but we eventually figured it out after a few days.

Our first stop was Times Square. The view was quite different without the sky and trees all around. The buildings masked everything.  We were excited to take it all in... including the pizza!

We had planned to do so many things in this city but everything was so expensive for a family of six. We did make it to the Statue of Liberty via ferry which was an awesome experience even though it was overcast that day.

 

We also got to experience a New York Yankees Baseball game at home thanks to Kevin Brown for the awesome seats on the 3rd baseline. The fans are definitely passionate there in New York. Sad to say, they lost to the Red Sox.

 

 

Back Home & Continuing the blog for our summer trip

 I am currently sitting in the hospital with Jason Jr. for a week of video EEG monitoring for his seizures. This is required in order to consider him for surgery to remove the cavernous angioma discovered last summer.
Since I have so much down time, I figured that I would catch up on the blog for our summer trip that we just completed. Be on the lookout for a new post about our visit to the Big Apple.