life in surround sound and process color.

LISTENING TO: a year in review... 1. Kings of Leon - Supersoaker 2. Pop Evil - Human Nature 3. Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Follow You Into The Dark   4. Masked Wolf - Astronaut In The Ocean 5. Silversun Pickups - Songbird   6. The Kid Laroi & Justin Bieber - Stay 7. RAIGN - Things Can Only Get Better   8. Sammy Rae - Good Life 9. Elton John, Yung Thug & Nicki Minaj - Always Love You   10. Iron Maiden - The Writing On The Wall 11. The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Time Warp   12. Tommee Profitt & Fleurie - Sound of War

LISTENING TO: Sound of War - Tommee Profitt & Fleurie And so ends another trip, with a wedding and me working remotely in a different place not too far from home. If you had said a year ago this would be a regular occurrence of my travels, I would have been extremely surprised. Working remotely was never a real part of my playbook if I could avoid it, and yet more and more as the last two years have gone on (and on), it's something I really enjoy doing as a way of lengthening my days away from home. But more on that later. Back to the Halloween wedding! I still find it funny that for all the years I worked at a wedding photography studio, for all the venues in New Jersey I've seen in photographs (and can still recognize based on ballrooms), there are so many that I haven't actually been to in person. With the happy occasion of my cousin's wedding, however, I'm thrilled to say I can officially cross the Meadow Wood Manor in Randolph off my list. Not only was it a...

  LISTENING TO: Rocky Horror Picture Show - Time Warp It seems only appropriate, since I'm posting on Halloween, to use this song as my post title. It really does seem like this week is going particularly quickly, and I'm running to catch up. After recovering from Friday night's surprise party, Saturday was mostly spent ordering more takeout and watching movies around the AirBnB. Every vacation has some of those days popped in, but the day was made a little bit more lively yesterday afternoon when we had another fantastic wine tasting with Lourdes of the Vine. I cannot recommend her enough; even though my sister and I have now had the pleasure of her recommendations twice now, it was a new experience for the rest of our family and friends, and even with some non-wine drinkers in the group, it was such a fun experience. I've said it before, but I will always say it again - if you're getting together with a group of people for an enjoyable night in (or out an an Air...

LISTENING TO: The Writing on the Wall - Iron Maiden For such a late written blog, please bear with me, as we'll be covering a two day period in this post - it starts off slow and then really, really gets going. So let's head back to what is now, I guess, two days ago. Although Wednesday was technically my first day off, Thursday was what I would really actually consider to be my first real vacation day. There was a lot of figuring out where to find everything in the AirBnB, a lot of catching up for my family (starting off with another fantastic Jersey Diner breakfast at the Sparta Diner), and a lot of just enjoying having some free time. Unlike our last trip to Lake Mohawk, there were no hurricanes in sight, so although we did have the usual area issue of some WiFi trouble, it was generally just a really fun time. Cut to Friday. Starting off the same, albeit featuring some of the things missed on our last Northern New Jersey adventure. When I lived in Parsippany, one of my al...

LISTENING TO: Elton John, Yung Thug & Nicki Minaj: Always Love You My relationship with Newark Airport is an interesting thing. It's usually the airport I choose when I fly home (although usually not the one I fly out of, shout out to PHL now that I'm a Central Jersey girl), and it's just as likely to be the airport where I pick someone up from. This explains my early morning trip up the turnpike to pick up my aunts this morning for the start of our family mini-vacation. Although they've been California transplants for over a decade now, and I'm the only family member left in New Jersey, their red-eye arrived bright and early (before even the dawn, which as I'm not the biggest morning person, was a fun drive for me). Having not been to an airport since before the pandemic, it was nice to see that the organized chaos of EWR seems to have remained mostly the same. Although if I'm being honest, I would rather not have to drive their parking terminal again p...

LISTENING TO: Sammy Rae - Good Life I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I can honestly remember being in Connecticut; usually it was because it was a stop on the way somewhere else (my one trip to Bonnaroo ironically started in Greenwich). It's the one of "tri-state area" states that I've been to the least, so it makes sense that my weekend in Connecticut started in New York. Scarsdale and I are old friends, mainly due to the fact that one of my oldest college friends grew up there, and it was a close enough location to visit during college breaks and after graduation. So after a quick drive up to meet with Anna (with plenty of snacks for the road), we were off again - this time to Waterbury, Connecticut. Where is Waterbury, Connecticut, you ask? I can honestly tell you I still don't know. The trip up was relatively painless (although the traffic at times did remind me of some of my past trips to Massachusetts), and although we did have a single s...

LISTENING TO: RAIGN - Things Can Only Get Better I once had a friend ask me if something can really be a vacation if it's somewhere you've been before, and to that I absolutely say yes. While I haven't been a Central New Jersey transplant for that long (and yes, Central New Jersey does indeed exist), it's not like I haven't visited my northern roots in the over three years it's been since I made that move.  When I lived in Morris County, Lake Mohawk was always an area that I related to the summer, albeit one that I never really visited. When I told people that I would be heading to one of New Jersey's summer hot spots... at the end of the summer, no less, I got a lot of quick smiles and shaken heads. While living in Morris County, although I was fairly familiar with Sussex county growing up, our time by a lake was spent in North Carolina, so I was pretty interested to see Lake Mohawk during the off-season. This really is a lakeside community - I know, I know...

LISTENING TO: The Kid Laroi & Justin Bieber - Stay I know this song is absolutely everywhere, but it made my ride home from a great place I want to go back to a lot of fun (and if that's not a lot of words to describe a song, sue me), and here we are. And there we were! During trips, I really do love staying at places where you can both go out to do things as well as "stay home" as you were, and this trip was absolutely perfect for that. Although it was a shame about the weather (which again, makes me only want to come back during the summer to take advantage of all the outdoors-y activities around the area), Pond Eddy is absolutely surrounded by so many different towns and fun things to do if you aren't necessarily an outdoors-y person.  Our first stop of the day was to the town of Milford, PA. If you haven't been to Milford before, it's pretty much Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls. There's a ton of fantastic restaurants (kudos to the Waterwheel Cafe f...

LISTENING TO: Silversun Pickups - Songbirds Last night's post may have been one of the shortest I've made on this blog in a while, but it's honestly an example of how I was feeling to start this trip and just... get here. I find after having a year away from travel, anytime even the shortest excursion comes up, I've been in constant countdown mode. One of the reasons for the excitement, outside of the extremely celebratory reason we're here, is just how long this trip took to plan. Nicole has stayed at the Starling before (albeit not in the Cottage), and between their amazing social media marketing and the extremely long story behind getting this trip off the ground, it was just so great to finally get here. I was right about one thing in my late night impression of the property - this place is absolutely gorgeous in the daylight. Even with the slight turn of the weather (it's a bit more rainy/gloomy, as per almost every other weekend in the northeast this summe...

LISTENING TO: Masked Wolf - Astronaut in the Ocean This has been an exceptionally long day leading into an exceptionally fun weekend, and I'm a little bit too amped to go to sleep yet, so - welcome to Pond Eddy, NY! This is a trip that has been absolute months in the making (the bachelorette party for my best friend Nicole), in a location that I've been excited about staying in for over a year (the absolute adorable Starling Cottage AirBnB), so even with the late night drive and the immediate lack of sleep, first impressions are important.  The Starling is actually a two part location - there's a larger house that has multiple stays (and is currently occupied by a group having a wonderful late night card game on the porch outside), and then there's the Cottage, which is just slightly up the walk from the main house and is where we're staying. The photos online don't even do it justice - it fits the four of us perfectly comfortably, and is absolutely charming. An...

LISTENING TO: Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Follow You Into The Dark It has to be said with all the road trips I've taken over the years, it really is a surprise I haven't had more car trouble. It's always funny to me when it happens in a place I know really well, or on a short trip - which is exactly what happened this morning as I pulled out of my AirBnB and started heading back into Warwick - the idiot light for low tire pressure lit up like an old friend. Speaking of my AirBnB, although I usually prefer staying in my own place (must be the introvert in me), there was something really nice waking up surrounded by the other people this morning. It was an absolutely charming stay, and really was in the perfect location for anyone wanting to stay near the center of town without actually being in town. But back to the air slowly leaking out of my tire, I was luckily able to stop and fix it myself (thank you, air pump in the trunk!) before driving around to some of my favorite...

LISTENING TO: Pop Evil - Human Nature   There are some trips you take that literally push you back in time; although after the last year, that’s not really a bad thing, no?   But as I made my way up Route 17 towards Goshen, NY earlier today, my brain was firing so many shots of nostalgia, it was like participating in a movie flashback scene (the kind of vibe inspired by the end of 6 Feet Under’s final episode, albeit with flashes of the past rather than of the future and way less death).   This area of New York is chock full of memories for me. For the majority of my life (prior to relocating to the west coast), my aunt was synonymous with the area between Vernon and Warwick and Goshen; the amount of road trips through the woods to come see her make up a good portion of my childhood memories of the area. Route 17 was the main pathway back up to Alfred when I went to school there, and after graduating this area held even more memories with friends who called it home. It ...

 LISTENING TO: Kings of Leon - Supersoaker With all the time spent planning trips in my head throughout 2020, it was really nice to be able to choose a new place to go and actually go. Even though this was more of a day trip, it gives me more ideas for future plans, which is always the best way of figuring out where to go next. So where did I go? Most people are aware of my love of the Jersey shore, which has only been amplified by my current home bases' proximity, but for years, I've heard noise that there are other state shorelines that are just as cool to visit. With some much needed time off work, I was lucky enough to get in the car and take a ride into the lovely state of Delaware, heading towards both Lewes and Rehobeth Beach.  One of the first things I was unaware of (which being a big fan of their beer makes me feel even more stupid), was the fact that this area is indeed the home turf of Dogfish Head Brewery. It was a great surprise on the way down to find so many r...