Dutchess County Exploration: The Taconic

 I've been so busy modeling that I have not had time to get much written posts wise. My last post for instance was about hitting the 300 build milestone...Well...I'm currently at 347 built right now. I'm almost halfway to the 400 build milestone! 

My brother and I took this trip as part of our Dutchess County Exploration project back in September. In fact, we did it the very next day after the trips to the Maritime Museum and Den of Marbletown. 

The last major road we had to do was the Taconic State Parkway, which runs from New York City to Albany. However, for the scope of this project, we were only doing the Dutchess County section. 

Rough road? More like NO road! Luckily, the only road work we encountered.

Dunkin Donuts and Weight Watchers in the same plaza

The bridges, both over the Taconic and when the Taconic passes over other roads, are generally all nice looking. This is the Taconic over Route 82.

Now on the Taconic

Mostly just trees. 

They reopened a couple of the rest areas in the center, which are reachable from both sides. Stopped here the last time we were on the Taconic, and turned around there. 

There are several cross roads that cross the Taconic, a journey that is not too much fun to make. This one has a silver Ford Edge, like we have, waiting to cross.

I always love the open road. 

The mountain in the background earlier is now much closer. 

Exit 72 is the last exit in Dutchess County. In fact, the exit ramp- really a road in and of itself- juts up into Columbia County briefly. 

Last view of the Taconic for this trip

This is the exit ramp/road

actually in Columbia County now.

We turned left at the stop sign and headed back down into the county

The other side of the mountain. We literally went over it to see what we could see.

The Roelff Jansen Kill

Some of the trees were starting to turn

Where one road ended, there was a beautiful vista of rolling hills.

I love old barns!

This is horse country

we snaked through a lot of roads, but in a first, we had to stop for an actual snake crossing the road! 

I like the metal cow!

Yes, I took this in New York, not Texas!

Not sure what was going on here but 6 State Troopers means something was.

Cool old architecture

an old mill

neat house

This church was built in 1828, in Pleasant Plains. 

Back on Route 9 in Poughkeepsie. the Mid-Hudson Bridge

we stopped at Lowe's

which had their Halloween stuff out. I guess this would have been better if I had posted this before November 6th, eh? 

I thought I added 6 towns I had never photographed before, but as it turns out I was wrong, I had previously gotten Clinton Corners. So I only got 8. Frost Mills is so small that it doesn't even appear on the Atlas I am using to make sure we don't miss anything! 

And here is the very updated map. Between the previous trip and this one I realized I hadn't gotten it entirely accurate so I updated it to be more complete now. The red with purple outline that goes up and back was this trip...I think. It was hard to match up the roads we were on in this trip because only the Taconic was actually on the map here, the others were all too small to make it until we got back to 9G, so this is really just my best guess. 

My schedule, health problems and the weather didn't cooperate so we didn't get to do a traditional adventure or ride at all in the month of October. Hoping to be out on a small adventure when this publishes as I'm scheduling it. Hopefully if we can, it won't take me this long to get it posted. Probably won't as we are at the point in the year now when it's too cold to work on models at night time, in fact my computer says it's 32 Fahrenheit as I write this, so definitely no open windows now.  Thanks for reading!