Annual Girls Trip: New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts

(This isn't a Jac and Betsy adventure, it's just a Betsy adventure. But, I'm posting it here anyway because I always want to remember this fun trip with the girls.) 

Last year we visited Malorie (Seattle), Kimmie (Portland) and Brooke (Eugene) for our annual girls trip, so this year we headed ALL the way across the continent to visit Kassie in upstate New York.  Here's what we did on our fun, fun, weeklong trip together. I'm not going to give a breakdown day by day, like I do with Jac and Betsy trips. I'm just going to show the pictures and try to briefly explain what they are.  The pictures are in the order in which they happened though. :)

Riding the ferry to get from Vermont to New York:

Drawing fries to see who gets the best rooms. I lost!!! (And boy did I regret that. My room was tiny, with no a/c and SUPER humid. And the bed was terrible. Argh!)

Dinner the first night in Lake Saranac -- a mishmash of grocery store items:

 

Our airbnb was pretty cute and had a GREAT location. Here are some pictures of the place from the airbnb website (a little blurry!):

 

The arrow points to our place. What a great location! (Again, this is from the airbnb website. We obviously weren't there when the leaves changed color. 😊)

The reason for the trip -- to see Kassie! :)

Lake Flower, right across from the hotel:

Touring Kassie and Brandon's ADORABLE house:

 
Hanging out in cute downtown Lake Saranac:

Playing The Game of Real Life in our airbnb backyard. Such a hilarious, fun game!

 
Hiking and floating Ausable Chasm:

Lunch at a small town dive on the way back:

More relaxing at Lake Flower:

Playing more games, this time at Kassie and Brandon's. The game nights were everyone's favorite part of the trip!

 

Visiting Ardith (my aunt) and touring her house in Great Barrington, Massachusetts:

She's a professional artist and her in-home art studio is AMAZING!

 

 

We stopped in cute Schnectady on the way home from Ardith's. The downtown area was so quaint! Love these little town clocks.  

 

We stopped at an Italian bakery while in town for a little treat for the road:

We spent one rainy day exploring nearby Lake Placid

including lunch with a view. (Mom's not there because she was at Ardith's).

At this point in the trip, upstate New York was having CRAZY weather related to a hurricane that hit Texas days before.  We were on a Tornado Watch, then a Tornado Warning (since there were sightings of tornados not far from where we were):

Plus, we kept getting warnings about flash floods happening in our county! (screenshot below of my phone). The rain was fairly constant, sometimes intense, and lasted for several days.

But it didn't stop us from playing fun games night after night!! :)

But eventually it did clear up!  Thankfully!

 

One day we visited Fort Ticonderoga -- a military site that dates to the French and Indian War as well as the Revolutionary War.  It was an interesting visit, made all the better by having costumed re-enactors that told us about life at the fort back in the day.

 

 

Dinner with everyone AND Ardith:

Riding Rail Bikes along the Hudson River:

 

AND, on the last day, we made one last stop in downtown Lake Saranac for breakfast with Kassie and Brandon before leaving (and I took this sweet little shot).

 
And last shot of the trip -- at the airport looking for a golden retriever for Virginia to adopt.  :)

 

 

 What a fun trip!  I love my family!