Saratoga Spa State Park

First Week in New York || Saratoga Monument || Saratoga Spa State Park

The last bit of stress or inconvenience we faced over the move had to do with the Pod. No big deal, I mean, it’s over now, but it came a day late and was picked up 5 days late. What that meant for us was a few days with no bed, kitchen utensils, and well, everything. Honestly we were fine, except for the fact that we didn’t have wifi and had very spotty cell reception. The only solution was to get out of the house and go check out new places! Oh yeah, and I guess another stress was not knowing when Curtis would actually start work or if we would have to move again right after signing a lease…but that’s a given in this life. And it looks like things are working out ok now. Anyway. Back to the topic.

On Monday, some friends of ours from Tucson just so happened to be driving through and visiting Saratoga National Historic Park, so we drove over to meet them and spent a while catching up. This couple is seriously living one of our “retirement dreams” by being based in AZ and traveling the country on crazy long road trips during the summer, or whenever they want! It was fun to catch up and hear their stories and get some advice for places to visit, since they’ve been pretty much everywhere already! We didn’t really tour the battlefield itself again, but if you’re interested, you can read about our visit to Saratoga Battlefield from one year ago here.

Once we said goodbye, we set off to find the Saratoga Monument, which is one of the 4 sites related to the National Historic Park. We didn’t have time for it last time, but we saw a picture of the tall obelisk and just had to go see it for ourselves! The drive from the battlefield to Schuylerville was gorgeous, with windy roads around the country side, mountain views around some turns, and purple and yellow wild flowers growing in the ditches. Actually, that sums up a lot of the roads here — it makes driving so much more enjoyable, and I can never predict when we’ll turn a new corner and get a great view of rolling hills in the distance.

The monument is in a cemetery and there are some trails that we may come back and take next time. I say next time because once we arrived, we realized that at certain times you can go up in the obelisk and have a look around, and it’s certainly a view we’d love to see! It was closed for the evening at this point, and we also had Charlotte with us so we couldn’t have done it together anyway.

Our next adventure that week took us to Saratoga Spa State Park. Curtis had to visit this place on an earlier day for work, and decided that we needed to go check out the pretty architecture of the buildings and walk the trails together. We spent several hours there walking around both the historic buildings and through the woods. We learned a bit more about how Saratoga Springs came to be, and how it was basically started as a resort town, drawing tourists in because of the springs. The park itself also includes museums, a hotel, golf course, and pools, but we just stuck to what we like best: hiking! To learn more about the park and visitor’s info, go here. While walking through, we thought the trails would be great to practice snowshoeing on — flat, and still long enough to keep it interesting!

There were signs for a 5 mile trail here, but we just followed random trails looking for letterboxes. We were able to find one, and randomly stumbled across a Geocache. I love how even though we were just walking in the woods, it felt so new and exciting — I guess it’s what you could call the “honeymoon stage” for living in a new town. The ground was flat and we were walking through the woods, yet it somehow felt so much different than a similar hike would in South Carolina. Maybe it was just because we traded the sticky humidity feeling for a cool fresh breeze. Maybe it was because we weren’t being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Perhaps it was because we actually found a letterbox? Not sure.

The last few months in the South, we were really struggling with being motivated to go out and do things. Often times, if we didn’t have a longer weekend with hiking planned, we would just wake up on Saturday morning, look at our bucket list, and pick something we felt like doing just to get out of the house. I’m not saying that won’t happen here, in the dead of winter especially, but right now we are relishing the newness of our new home and all the excitement that comes with it. Every drive around feels like a new adventure, and even a walk in the woods feels magical. Oh how we love a fresh start!

Controversially, I don’t think we’ll make an actual bucket list for our time living in New York. There’s a few hikes we’d like to do, and hiking challenges we want to attempt, then a couple historical sites and cities we want to see. I think that as we figure out what our schedule will be like and how we handle the weather (winter!), we’ll find our way back to what life used to be like when we lived in Arizona: doing a hike or something outdoorsy on weekends or days off, going on weekend trips when the opportunities arise, and checking out local things when we need a break. The awesome part is that out of all the exploring we’ve been doing over the past 2 weeks, only one thing actually had an admission fee — so not only will our activities up here be more our style, but they’ll also be significantly cheaper! Yay!

Anyway, that was the first couple days of our first week in NY…I’m only 2 weeks behind on writing about what we’re doing, and yet it could possibly be like 2 months before I’m actually caught up if we keep going out and doing things at this pace! More about that coming soon! 😉