On Sunday I went on a boat cruise of the Hudson River with my father and his friends, who were kind enough to offer me an extra ticket. The event was actually a fundraiser for our county's historical society. And as usual when I do stuff with my dad and his friends, I was the youngest person by about 40 years on the boat. I had a ball though. It was nearly eight hours, about five hours more than I expected when I agreed to go. But it included a very yummy dinner and a fascinating and historical tour of the fabulous that is Upstate NY. It was the most perfect day, sunny and warm! A very rare find up here this summer. Most of those photos are just random shots that I took along the way. It was simply mesmerizing to hear all the rich history that has taken place in this river over the last 400 years. That's right friends, this is the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson's exploration up the Hudson River.










Some really beautiful homes along the river. This wasn't my favorite home by a long shot but I kept forgetting to stop and take photos until we had already passed.






The bridge in the forefront, the light blue bridge, is part of the Northway heading south (I believe). The steel bridge, rusty colored, is an old train bridge. A train passed abut five minutes after we went under both of them. They really did look pretty incredible side by side and over the river like that.






OK, so can anyone guess what this is? Anyone? It's an old ice house. People would harvest ice in the winter and store it in ice houses such as this one all year long for delivery down state to NYC, etc. Some of these ice houses had such incredibly insulation that the ice could be stored for years even!




So there you go, a little touch of history and scenery from Upstate NY. Or the "north pole" as I so frequently call it!