Dutchess County Exploration Trip #4: Dogtail Corners, The Lookout and beyond

 A while back I decided that I wanted to visit every town, village and hamlet in Dutchess County, NY, which is my home. My original plan was to one big recap at the end, but I have changed my mind and will do them as they happen going forward. Yesterday, we took the 4th trip in this project, and it will be the first one I write about. We started out going to the "end" of 55, then going up Route 22. This part of the trip was not photographed on this trip, because Route 22 was the basis for trip #3. Yesterday's trip begins when we left 22 to go to Dogtail Corners, one of my three favorite place names in the County, along with Shekomeko and Oniontown, all of which I was in yesterday. For Dogtail Corners and Shekomeko, it was my first time ever being in those places. 

This sign is in Dover, NY. It actually IS on 22. It's unusual to see this kind of historical sign outside of rest areas on major highways. 

A nice looking river

We made it to Dogtail Corners! This project springs from my Places I've Been Project, which is photo documenting all the places I've been on our Edge's GPS. 

a scene from Dogtail Corners, after making a Uturn. There's not much there, residential area, I didn't see any stores.

We made a quick detour into Connecticut, which was not planned, a navigator error (I am the Navigator) but it worked out OK because we got this sign...

and the Welcome to New York sign.

I like farms. This is on Dover Furnace Road. Dover Furnace is a small hamlet. 

Love old barns

Love the open road most of all.

This woodchuck was one of the few wild life we saw. (Lots of horses though)

Watching a woodchuck run is always funny.

Found a coin shop in Amenia, but unfortunately it was closed and no hours posted. We parked and I walked down to investigate but with no hours we didn't want to wait around. We were there at roughly 10:30 AM so if he was going to open at 11 we would have waited. It's easy enough to get to, and we have reason to go back...

This sweeping loop has a lookout inside of it, and it's spectacular. Pictures don't capture how magnificent it really was. I had only brought my smart phone to take all the pictures, forgetting my actual camera, which is basically only good for long distance shots, at home. So we will be back for sure. The next few photos are of the lookout.

when I opened the door of the Edge you could smell wood burning, and it was clearly coming from this chimney in the valley.

Back on the road, we are now in Smithfield NY. I had never heard of Smithfield before (other than the food company)

So far every trip has resulted in old cars being seen. Here two 1950s Ford Thunderbirds traveled together, still in Smithfield.

There's a deer here

we do see some odd things sometimes...here's an old tractor made into...something? 

This appears to be a headstone in the middle of an island in an intersection. 

Zoomed in as best I could

Looking into, I believe, the Harlem Valley.

We passed Hunns Lake, note that there is an owl sitting on the dock looking out at the water.

A neat old house for sale. If I had money I'd buy and fix houses like these. I rarely discuss it but old architecture is one of my favorite things.

The tiny town of Bangall NY didn't shop up on the GPS, but I was able to get the road sign marking it, so it still counts.

Flowery mural

Not really sure what this is

Another neat old house. I think this one had people living in it.

And another neat barn, possibly even on the same property as the last house

Tractor. There are a lot of tractors in the Eastern half of the county

Lots of old cemeteries too.

A most unusually colored building in Pleasant Valley

Your speed: 6 

Made me laugh. Pleasant Valley is the only place we found any real traffic until we got back to Fishkill. The western side of the county, where I live, has MUCH more traffic, people, buildings, and stores.

Found a museum to visit. I think I've actually seen this building before, but didn't have a photo of it. There used to be a model shop just down the road that I visited, but that closed circa 2001 so it's hard to remember.

Spotted an El Camino!

and this monstrosity, poor Cadillac.

We ended the trip with KFC

I added 16 new places to the "Places I've Been Project", some of which I had been in and never photographed, and some of which I had never been in before. My total for places I've been in New York is now at 287. 300 is just around the corner, and if I had thought to start this photography project sooner, I would have been there already. 

The blue line is what was added new today. The red and yellow line was the third trip, and the first two trips and what I had done previously were combined into the green line. (where I stood when I created this drawn on map). We had a lot of fun and saw some really nice places. I update the map after every trip. The red border line (provided by Google) is the county. We already know our next trip will be the Taconic State Parkway, which I have been on in full, but not photo documented. 

One last note...some of the pictures show a lot of dashboard, I normally hold the camera closer to the window, but my arm injury that I've been battling with since the week of Halloween make that impossible. It also makes it hard to use the computer mouse, and have contributed to my not doing card stuff over the last two months. (editing scans is really quite painful) Unfortunately I reinjured it Friday afternoon, which made the photography a little under my usual standards. Like always, I'm doing the best I can within the limits of what my health will allow.  

You can see all the photos I took on my website here: Drive #4 One cool thing about this project is that I have my phone's GPS turned on, so you can do more research via Google about pretty much any place in the photos.