I Love Upstate!

(my morning coffee on the porch)

I know that name has been taken already, but I have to share the sentiment. A few weeks ago, on the weekend of the fourth, we went up to my parents' place outside of Cooperstown in an area called Cherry Valley. Even though the weather was substantially cooler than down here on Long Island that weekend and not very summery, we still had a great time.

Friday night we went down to the lakefront park for the fireworks show which was fun (note to self: don't even try to take pictures of fireworks with a point and shoot camera, they just wind up like a blurry version of Lite Brite). Saturday, we went up to Springfield Center for their annual Fourth of July Parade which was a blast. It was classic, small town patriotism. This year's theme was "Red, White, Blue and Green" and they had a lot of the local environmental groups marching along with the veterans and scouts. Apparently going green has a lot to do with decorating your float with a bunch of empty plastic bottles.

(how cool is this?!)

Afterward there was a big barbecue chicken cookout which we didn't partake in (the line was crazy and I don't eat chicken anyway).
But we did walk around the village itself which is incredibly cute.
Driving back, the sky looked ominous and beautiful at the same time, luckily it didn't really rain at all.We had lots more fun up there visiting breweries and trying (unsuccessfully) to get photos of woodchucks and hummingbirds, but three days was just not enough. I can't wait to go up there again!