Prepare for a long post as we spent 10 lovely days in Livingston Manor, NY. Plus we started taking more pictures. Enjoy.
We had an amazing drive up to Livingston Manor from DC through tiny backroads in Central Pennsylvania. At one point, we lost cell service (you’ll note a pattern forming for pretty much this whole trip, i.e. the reason you’ve not heard from us much) and ended up asking a man on a tractor for directions. For real. He basically said we were nowhere near our destination and how on earth had we gotten there in the first place? Casey navigated old-school-style using a map and eventually got us back to a real road and ultimately to Livingston Manor, which is quickly becoming the hottest place in Brooklyn. This place is the little gem that Jenny and Eugene (sis and bro-in-law) found a couple of years ago and have made a wonderful home-away-from-home upstate for the weekends. What a gift on a trip like this to get to stay somewhere so lovely. It was surprisingly wonderful to be in a familiar home after weeks of travel.
Livingston Manor, NY is a really special place. Supposedly where fly fishing was invented in the U.S. I went all in, bought waders, boots and a new fly rod from a third-generation shop called Dette Trout Flies (the house in the pic below), and hired a backwoods guide, Bruce from DeBruce, and successfully fly-fished and caught tiny indigenous trout with five-foot fly rods. Heard a bear. Saw a massive pile of bear poo. Truly one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever done in my life as a sportsman.
We had a freaky awesome meal at The DeBruce, the newly re-opened inn just up the road. Anyone who wants to get out of Nashville and work in the mountains would be in heaven. The chef is cool as hell. I’ll let Casey tell you about the dinner:
Woah! Where to start? We were the only guests for the evening and they created what ended up being a ten course meal for us. The whole place is deeply connected to the 600 acres around it so the chef tries to replicate the experience of foraging that he enjoys—things like a mound of tasty mushroom/onion dirt (for real was SO delicious) piled on stones and decorated with berries, flowers, and other tasty treats. Other items included more local items like trout, gorgeous plates full of vegetables, cheeses, and mushrooms (the dish came out on fire! And this led to a bit of a mushroom obsession later in the trip– see a handful of pics below and this was just a selection of the crazy mushrooms we saw on our hikes).
In the middle of all of this, Jenny, Eugene & darling nephew Elliott (see below for proof of said darling-ness) came up for the weekend with their super fun, chill friends, Pat and Sara. We enjoyed lots of lazy days together hiking, grilling out, and we might have even got it done one night down by the campfire on the river. All I remember is me and Zeke sneaking up on everyone in the dark. And Eugene pulled a proper hillbilly slip at some point. Smart move from a smart man. Check out the group shot above of the whole gang plus two dogs and one cat (that became an action shot when one dog discovered the cat).
We’d been told that the area around their house gets some of the heaviest snowstorms in upstate New York. It also seems to get some of the biggest thunderstorms around (or at least some of the bigger ones we’ve ever seen). We had a couple of real gullywashers with quarter-sized hail. It was pretty wonderful curled up in front of the fire with the rain pounding. One night we pulled down the newly-installed projector screen and watched the Game of Thrones (check out Jaime and Cersei on the bigscreen below). The feed was pretty slow, but that worked out fine so I could keep up by asking Casey questions every few minutes. But I must admit it’s gotten a lot easier to follow this season. Hmm. Are they dumming this shit down for all of us? Spoiler alert: Wait until we get to Maine and those mother-fucking dragons get down on them Lannister boys. Why didn’t his hand melt? Does anyone know the melting temperature of gold? Just things that go through my head.
Anyway, on to other fun. One of my favorite things in the world is going to the dump. In Livingston Manor, I got to go not once, but twice. Get this, Jay Knowles—you back your car in, throw your bags of trash right into the smasher, and watch it smash your trash immediately. For only $2 a bag. In my book, that’s about as much fun as you can have for $2.
As you can tell, we really love this place. Glad to know we’ll be back many times in the years to come. If we hadn’t had a date to keep in Maine, they might never have gotten us out of here. Thank you, Jenny and Eugene (and Elliott) for a wonderful retreat in the middle of our sabbatical. Thanks to the chef at The DeBruce for the champagne. And our wonderful new friend, Bruce, for the magical day of fishing. And John at the hardware store for putting up with all of our questions. We’ll see all y’all soon.
summartime.blog 