So yesterday I took a trip to Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown for the day. Why you ask? Because I just like to do stupid, random crap for no particular reason at all. Plus I hear the babes like that sort of thing, so consider this my way of practicing.

My first stop was at a local park that offered a magnificent view of the Tappan Zee Bridge. They had an awesome boardwalk literally next to the Hudson River, making for a lovely and quiet morning walk. That is, it would have been a lovely walk had I not run into this:

Yep, that pretty much sums up my life.

I could have hopped the fence, but this was me we’re talking about. Anybody else, they’d do it, have a smoke and a beer on the boardwalk and be none the wiser. I do it, and 15 minutes later I’ll be calling Mommy in a state of panic because I’m only allowed to make one phone call.

Still, I managed to get some purdy shots off where I could:

The awesomest thing was finding a… cherry tree? I think that’s what it was, but it was a tree unlike any tree I had seen before:

Mmm, now to find a tree that grows the Reddit Whip.

Next stop: The cemetery! I hadn’t realized it, but Washington Irving was buried here after all. I got to see the Irving family plot, and his original grave too:

Dude, seriously, could you stop throwing change at me? I'm not a wishing well.

We chatted for a while, and Irvie provided some helpful tips to improve my writing. Try as I might though, I couldn’t get him to understand the concept of blogging. Ah well. I paid my respects and moved on, eventually discovering Andrew Carnegie’s grave:

Ironically, Carnegie's grave here is just a stone's throw away from Samuel Gomper's, the founder of the American Federation of Labor.

Not sure he liked the idea of a unionized worker prancing around on his grave though, so conversation was minimal at best.

I have to admit this was an interesting and pretty cemetery. Lots of picturesque views to be found here, but then of course, my hated arch-nemesis that is poison ivy just HAD to go and announce its presence much to my chagrin:

*Shudder* Good grief, they were EVERYWHERE, vines jetting out wherever I walked, like willowy arms stretching forth from the very bowels of hell itself, reaching out to pull me into its itchy darkness from whence there is no return.

I tried to put those thoughts behind me though, and drove around again until I came across Rockefeller’s grave, a mausoleum bigger than even the biggest house I’ve ever lived in:

Look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

This was actually William Rockefeller, the younger brother of John D. Rockefeller. He was supposed to be the nice one from what I heard. Still, this mausoleum was arguably the biggest one in the entire cemetery, roughly in the middle and on top of the highest hill, so that Willie can continue to lord over all, even in death. And… the mausoleum was locked too. Dweeb.

I moved on and eventually discovered even William Chrysler was interred here:

Would this be a bad time to tell you I drive a Hyundai?

I was nice enough to spare him the gory details of what’s been happening with his company lately, but I couldn’t resist telling him I drive a foreign SUV.

All in all a fascinating cemetery, with some humor here and there to boot:

Now there's an appropriate name.

Whoa... bad omen, dude.

I then moved on to another nearby park, offering even more magnificent views of the Hudson and some rare trees as well. While I was walking I happened to notice this one atop a hill, which stuck out like a sore thumb because it was the only white birch tree around:

Ok, yeah, so I'm white. You got a problem with that?

And what’s Sleepy Hollow without its trees too? This was another one of the rare specimens I’ve found, again a tree unlike any tree I had seen before:

You were awesome in Lord of the Rings by the way.

It provided an umbrella covering and almost felt like you were walking around in a room instead of around a tree. Really beautiful, the kind of scenery that made me wished for a minute that there had been a special girl right there with me to share a romantic moment with, and some side order of playing suck face too. Ah well.

Eventually I turned back and went into town, getting pizza, a coke (and this came in the traditional hourglass bottle too!) before moving on for a “quick” half mile hike into the woods.

Sometimes I wish I were hiking on a yellow brick road instead.

That actually wasn’t too bad.. until it started going up a steep incline. After gasping for breath and sweating even from my eyeballs, the ground finally leveled off for a bit. Then I saw some movement in the bushes and just about had a heart attack. Coyotes! The Headless Horseman! OMG ImgonnadieImgonnadieImgonnadie!!!!

But no, it was a deer. Whoooooooooo…

It just kind of looked at me curiously, then started prancing around. I was too tired to prance along with it, so I just kept going. Then I saw more movement: a figure shaped much like a velociraptor from the movie Jurassic park. What the…

Then again… fast as lightning, circling around me. Ok dude, seriously, I’m not cool with this. Deer I can handle, but I, sir, am an urbanite, and my idea of the great outdoors involves nothing more than an outside table at Starbucks. I mean people do this for FUN? Really? Camping amongst poison ivy and deer ticks and coyotes and little baby raptors running around waiting to sink their teeth into me and eat my face off?

More movement, and then a strange gurgling sound. WHAT IS THAT!??!?

Then I finally recognized it: wild turkeys. Not baby raptors ready to gnaw my face off, just a few scared turkeys jutting around me.

Whooooooooooooooo… Breathe boy, breathe…

By this time it was starting to get dark, and even though I was dead tired from the half-mile hike, I suddenly found I had more than enough energy to run like a thief in the night back to the parking lot, convinced that after the deers and the turkeys, the coyotes would soon follow, and THAT was not something I wanted to see right now.

Day quickly became night as I arrived back at the parking lot, hugging my car like a long lost friend.

Well! That was fun! Let’s do that again, like say, never? Well maybe I will try it again, if I had certain… motivational incentive to do so…

Update: You can view the rest of the set from Sleepy Hollow at Flickr.

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Tags: cemetery, death, deer, graves, hiking, park, poison ivy, sleepy hollow, tarrytown, tombstones, town, trail, trees, wild turkeys, willow
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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