Our Wilderness Adventure

This past Sunday, we went on a hiking adventure with Wilderness Rocks, a company that specializes in providing urbanites with outdoor fun. We went out about 1 hr north of Manhattan to the part of the Appalachian Trail (AT) that runs through New York and hiked 4 miles of the AT. (FYI - The AT is 2,100+ miles and runs from Georgia to Maine.) Our guide (and owner of the company) had hiked the entire AT in 2008 and the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in 2010. (FYI - The PCT is 2,600+ miles and runs from the US/Mexico border to B.C., Canada.) Our guide was a little odd but very knowledgeable and a fun, quirky leader. He also shared some insider hiking knowledge with us, such as good rock scrambling technique and hiker lingo. For example, we learned that 'real' hikers get some kind of trail name over time. Our guide's trail name was Chief Daddy, and he had an awesome Boston terrier named Chief (not sure which came first - the trail name or the dog name), who has hiked 3,000 miles with him. We also learned about trail etiquette, basically all of the towns along the trails are super friendly to the hikers and offer them rides, food, shelter, facilities and whatever else is needed. When someone does something nice for a hiker they are known as 'trail angels.' We had the opportunity to become trail angels, as our hiking group invited two through hikers (guys hiking the whole trail) to a winery with us after our hike.

 Some of the rocks we 'scrambled'.

Joe (aka Chief Daddy) and Chief enjoying a snack break. Don't worry, Joe/Chief Daddy had his own half of the sandwich that was not shared with Chief ;)

Well, of course our hiking adventure was a hiking+wine adventure ;) After hiking, we had some awesome homemade ice cream at a creamery conveniently located at the end of our trail and then headed to the Warwick Valley Winery & Distillery. This is one of the more sophisticated winery setups I have seen. They had a wine tasting gallery inside that also housed several cold bottles (for immediate drinking at the winery) or hot bottles (for take home) to purchase. For your dining pleasure, there was a patisserie/bakery/pizzeria/restaurant also housed inside and run by a Culinary Institute of America graduate. The inside dining area had a very communal feel with long, wooden communal tables, candles, lots of windows letting in natural light and an opening to the outside patio area where live music was playing. And, if you weren't in the mood to be inside, the outside patio with the live music lead to a larger outside, stone-paved eating area with bars serving wine/sangria/cider, grills serving hamburgers/hot dogs/pulled-meat sandwiches and loads of umbrella-covered tables for al fresco drinking/dining enjoyment. We sampled the wine and the cider (which was delightfully light and fruity on a hot summer day) and ended up taking home a bottle of wine :)

The very yummy homemade vanilla ice cream from the local creamery. 

The view enjoyed from the creamery. 

Our ciders, apple and pear. Very refreshing :) 

Our Harvest Moon white wine purchase, also yummy :)

Urban Adventures
We have been having fun adventures in the city as well. Last Wednesday, we got to see Cory Morrow at Hill Country BBQ-Market, which has become one of our go-to venues for good, country music. I haven't heard Cory Morrow live in 10+ years. It was a good show, and we always love to experience a little bit of Texas in NYC :)

We were right off the side of the stage and had a great view.

Last Saturday, we went to the Riverside Park Sunset Concert Series. This is a free concert series offered Saturday nights from June to August. We manage to hit a couple of these each summer. The bands are usually decent, and it is a fun night of picnicking on the river to music and a lovely sunset view.

This past Monday evening, we had our first New York Philharmonic experience. Even though we have lived in New York City for 2+ years now, we only just heard about the free concert the New York Philharmonic puts on in Central Park every summer. We were able to attend the concert with some friends this past Monday, and it was an amazing experience sitting under the stars, listening to classical music played by world-class musicians and sharing food/wine with friends. To top it all off, there was a firework show after the concert. We were all saying that things like this are what make NYC a great city; you can't help but love NYC on nights like that.

I think all of New York was there :)