Fall Adventure Day 2011

For the last three years, my best friend and I have had a "Fall Adventure Day".  It started out as a day where we rented a car and just drove north through the pretty rainbow of colors that Fall provides.   We had no real destination, just to drive and find some things to take some pictures of along the way.    We took a GPS so that we could find our way home but we really didn't have any solid destination.  That's where we found little treasures like these.

The first trip was just a few hours, starting right after church and ending when the sun went down.  The next year, we decided to make it a longer event.  We borrowed my sister-in-law's car on a Saturday and then drove for the day, found a place to stay that evening and then drove some more the next day.  Driving and pretty pictures was our main goal but other then that no real destination.

This year, we borrowed a friends car again on Friday.  This year we added a 10K race in Sleepy Hollow, NY.  We decided to drive north as far as we could get and then we'd come back down to stay near where the race would be.

This is my best friend, roommate, sister (in our hearts, not by blood).  She's pretty awesome and I am glad she's my best friend!

We drove north along the Hudson river on the Jersey side.  We watched out amazing city disappear.

And then looked forward to the sights we were about to see.

We met this guy along the way.  

We stopped for the night in Terrytown, grabbing dinner in town.   We had a 10K the next morning that we had not trained well for at all.  

Somewhere in the night, Ashley began to feel bad.  It turned out to be a really bad case of food poisoning which meant she couldn't race.  I went through with the race, feeling awful about leaving her behind. The entire ride to the race and the preparation before, i was contemplating when in the race I could stop and go back to take care of her.  I ended up running the entire race.  The course didn't allow for getting off track.  I have to say it was one of the hardest courses I have ever run.  I swear some of the hills were 45 degree angles.  I had to walk down some of the hills because my knees couldn't take the incline.

The race was the week before Halloween in Sleepy Hallow.  The Headless Horseman was parked throughout the course as were other creatures, figures, etc.

This was on the roadside about 5 miles in.

This was the view during part of the race.  Made the killer hills somewhat bearable... somewhat, I said... 

This was at the beginning of the race. Notice the cow at the front of the line.  There were all sorts of costumes.  I was truly impressed that anyone could run a 10K in a costume.  

I finished the race with a really good time (for me) especially given the hills. I ended up having to walk own about 2 or 3 hills which I was sure would slow down my overall time.  

This was the end of Fall Adventure Day (Take 1). It was definitely an adventure.  Sadly, it was cut short so we could get Ashley home.  No worries,  we finished the trip, just a few weeks later.  Stay tuned.