Hudson Valley

Happiness abounds now as I am currently on Spring Break. No, I am not sitting on a beach someplace sipping piña coladas, nor am I hitchhiking across some remote nation; rather, I am sitting in my office eating take out Italian food on my lunch break. I surely blew my load already this semester when I took off half a week to travel to Belize on $180 tickets, and now I must work work work.
This did not stop me though from taking a little advantage of the break. Brandy took off work on Monday and we took a little trip upstate. We caught the Metro North train on Saturday to Beacon, which is in the Hudson River Valley. Here we were picked up by our Couchsurfing host, who nervously asked in our first phone conversation whether we were law enforcement, and further, whether we were 420 friendly. Important questions surely for someone who smokes daily, but certainly not an issue for us. It is a shame that in our advanced country one must be worried that a house guest may see a stem or seed and condemn.
But I digress. He was a friendly, and quite talkative fellow originally from Yorktown, and he immediately took us off to a spectacular hike up Breakneck Ridge. The Hudson Valley is truly a special place, the likes of which I have not seen in my travels. One of the wider rivers I have seen, the Hudson travels more or less straight south through a deep valley girdled by ridges, cliffs, and mountains, in the typical rounded, leafy Appalachian style. There are numerous protrusions into the river that add to depth of the scenery.
Our climb was a steep and straight one up the side of the valley. There was plenty of scrambling and opportunities for scaling, and we were soon rewarded with spectacular views of the river, which was smooth as glass this day. This was also nice because it was in the 50s, and a wind might have made things a bit less enjoyable. At the top there was also a small swamp filled with cattails and other such vegetation, which seemed odd considering you could see a drop off just past this little depression.
After the climb, we made a loop through the woods and returned to the car starving and tired. Back at the apartment we cut up a cantaloupe and ate much of the kielbasa I had brought.
After a brief nap we headed into the town of Beacon. We strolled the ridiculously long Main Street, which was quite lively due to a combination of it being "Second Saturday," which is a monthly event where all of the many art galleries have showings; and that is was the day of the St. Patrick's Day pub crawl on the other end of Main Street. This event was filled with underagers completely wasted. It ended predictably with a brawl, which we managed to have passed just before its outbreak. No sooner had it begun when over a dozen cop cars flew down the street. They must have been itching for something to do because they swarmed like crazy to what sounded like a small fight. There was a group of guys in front of us and one said, in a mocking redneck cop accent, "It's time for us get back where we belong. Yup, back to Poughkeepsie." Word on the street the next day was that someone was tasered, although this was likely a different incident.
Other highlights include a glassblowing demonstration and a super-powered pogo stick, which I was able to handle well for awhile, but the thing eventually went out of control and I narrowly avoided landing on a parked car.
Dude had to head down to some crappy other town for a friend's birthday, so Brandy and I went to what I would consider to be one of the better coffee shops I've yet encountered in the NE. It is a very chill place with tons of natural light, couches, and space. Best of all, it is right across from a delicious cheesecake shop.
When the coffee shop tossed us out at 9, we headed back down the Main Street, which is about a mile long, in search of nightlife. There were only three places that were open, a dive bar overflowing with drunken tools, next door to a fancy-looking Italian restaurant with a bar, and a pretentious-looking wine bar on the far end of the street. Skipping the douchefest, we entered the Italian place briefly, but found that overflow from lamo pub had infiltrated and filled all of the bar seats, leaving only dining seats or standing, so we resigned ourselves to pretension. When we got to the wine bar, we found that we had misjudged and that it was not nearly as pretentious as we thought. In fact, it was quite as their name, "Chill" Wine Bar, implied - Quotes included. We drank delicious wine and relaxed there for the rest of the evening.
The next day we did some stuff.