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. 

Upper Deck comes through! (eventually)

 Back on Christmas day, I got the 2020-21 MVP factory set, which includes an exclusive blue parallel. When I typed it into my Excel collection chart, I was dismayed to discovered I had only gotten 249 of the 250 cards. A message was sent to Upper Deck the very next day, and finally...on May 11th...the missing card arrived! That makes it only my second completed NHL parallel, after the 2018-19 MVP factory set.

You get a picture because my scanner is not currently plugged in. 

Pretty cool that they actually took care of a problem. Less cool that it took more than 5 months to solve such an easy problem, but the fact that they solved it is what's important. 

As a bonus to this post, here is the rare Racing Champions car I mentioned last time...

Terry Labonte drove this car at Michigan in 2001. The real car was Chromalusion, but the diecast version is just metallic brown. This car was only available as a model kit packed in with the hauler. I didn't know it existed until last month. I thought I had completed the 2001 Racing Champions line in 2001...but I was wrong. I discovered that the Elliott Sadler Air Force car was also made as a standalone model kit, and I discovered that one completely by accident. I was searching for Elliott Sadler cars to use as donors because they are fairly cheap and easy to strip, and there it was for sale on ebay. 

Needless to say, I bought it. I didn't find any donors to use though. 

Some vintage post cards for places I've been

 A couple weeks back I discovered a dealer on Ebay with a rare Racing Champions car I needed, so I quickly added it to my cart. I decided to check and see what else the dealer may have had, and it turns out they were mostly a post card dealer. Naturally, I checked to see if there were any that were relevant to places I've been and not surprisingly, there was. 

this image of the Brooklyn Bridge looking at the Manhattan skyline goes nicely with the trip my brother and I took just two months ago, see here: A driving tour of Manhattan although this card was actually taken from the Brooklyn side of the bridge, which I haven't seen...yet. 

The second was one I'm much more familiar with since I've seen it from the exact same angle the photo was taken from. In June 2019, we went to the FASNY Firefighting museum, in Hudson, NY. Located on the grounds of the Firefighter's Home, the entrance to the museum still passes under this very arch.

I didn't post it when I did my recap of that trip, (link above) but here is my image of the very same arch:

You can even see the same building in my picture. 

Here it is from the way out. Not sure when the post card is from (it's pre-1960s, no zip code in the company info on the back) but the gate looks very much the same today. 

The dealer, who is from Canada, also happened to have a set of 6 automotive stamps issued by Canada in 1994, so I got them too. My stamp collection is not something I add to often. I enjoy it, but it just doesn't outrank my other hobbies for the most part. I don't remember the last time I bought any stamps....I mostly add to the collection by chance, when I get some on something mailed to me.

It felt like it took forever to get to me, but it all arrived in under 2 weeks from ordering to in-hand. I was really waiting for them so I guess that played a role in why it seemed like so long, because it was really pretty quick. 

Glad to add them all to my collection, and I never would have come across them if a friend had not sent me a link to that rare car. 

The last, for now

 We all know that the hobby has gone stupid lately. Cards are ridiculously overpriced, and not even available at retail. It started with basketball, and then moved to all the other sports. When it hit hockey and NASCAR at the same time, I knew that I was probably going to be done when opening new cards for the foreseeable future. The fun of the hobby had been sucked away. 

So I was REALLY surprised when my mom gave me a blaster of 2021 Donruss for Easter! I didn't expect I would ever get one. They either weren't stocked or scalped locally, and probably the latter. She had planned ahead and mail ordered it before the prices went crazy. (last I looked, blasters of 2021 Donruss NASCAR were running at $80)

So I knew that it would likely be the last new product I opened for a while...and I savored it. 

But I've been in such a card funk that I didn't scan them until today, April 22nd. That should say a lot about where I'm at in the hobby. Since I had ordered myself a hobby box back in February, I didn't actually need all that many of them, because, as is well known with Panini, they came out of the packs in the exact same order as they had come out of the hobby box, with the exception of the inserts, which are exclusive to each packaging format. 

Since this is "the end, for now", I decided to post every single new card I got in the box. Not something I normally do, but I'm going to here. 

First, the base cards...

3 of them was it. The rest were all dupes. 

The main draw of the blasters are the orange parallels, which are blaster exclusive. They come one per pack. 

Christian Eckes is a sort of "local hero", as he's from Middletown, NY, which is about 45 minutes away by car. 

The Silver parallels (really gray) also fall one per pack in the blasters, which is more than in the hobby box.

Interestingly, there are three cards where I got both Silver and Orange in the same pack. 

You may notice I mentioned that oranges and silvers are one per pack, but there are only 6 silvers vs. 7 Orange. That's because in one pack I got a serially numbered Red parallel instead!

Even after doing a hobby box and a blaster, each of which has multiple base cards and 2 parallels per pack, this is the only version I have of this card. Go figure. The SN is in the car's grill. 

Donruss Optic (a 100 card insert, which uses the same design, but different photos and card numbers) is also one per pack, and every single one of mine was a duplicate of one I had from the hobby box. However, I did get several of the Blaster exclusive Orange Wave Prizms. 

They look nicer in hand than they do in scans, to be honest.  They do not appear pink in hand, for instance.

I also got one of the Prizm parallels.

The inserts treated me well. Not wholly surprising, because the majority of them are retail exclusive, something new that was introduced with this year's set. 

I pulled the first three in hobby version, but the Edwards was totally new. Surprised to see the Nationwide image, circa 2010, on the Retro Series card. 

I pulled an auto of Dylan Lupton! I thought, when I pulled the card, that it was my first of him, but a quick check of my Cardboard History Gallery shows I have one from 2016. Even so, I'm thrilled to get it. I would much rather get cards of obscure guys than another Chase Elliott or Kevin Harvick. And one thing I will say good about Panini- something I don't do all that often- is that they are really stepping up the autograph checklists. It's got a wide variety of people. covering many NASCAR divisions, and pulling in some people to sign who are very rare signers. (A couple years ago they got 95 year old Hershel McGriff, which were his first autograph cards ever, for example. His first race was in 1950! His last in 2018. He has the longest professional career as an athlete in history. One of those autographs is waiting to ship to me from COMC) I digress. This insert is one of the few that is the same in both hobby and retail.

There are also retail exclusive Insert Parallels, because of course there are, it's Panini in 2021. I'd rather have more base set parallels, but I won't complain too much...my favorite card of the box came from this section.

This one, right here! You guys know I'm a big supporter of Bubba Wallace and Victory Junction, so this was my favorite card in the box.

All three of these are called the "Checkers" parallel, which also looks much better in hand than in scans. Checkers is fitting for NASCAR...every person in the sport is trying to be the first to see the Checkered Flag at the end of the race. from the drivers down to the guy who paints the lug nuts. 

And that's the checkered flag on what will likely be my last new card addition for the foreseeable future. While I have zero intention of ever leaving the hobby, I am dialing way, way back. I'm not enjoying thee hobby at the moment,  from the crazy pricing/availability stuff to stuff going on behind the scenes elsewhere. I haven't even felt the desire to open my latest trades I've received, several of which have been sitting here over a week now, still sealed. 

I'm back to my main hobby, 1/64 NASCAR diecast. It was always #1 for me, but some stuff had gone on there, and when I got sick in 2013, I couldn't afford to collect both hobbies. I chose cards...and I made the wrong choice. I'm working on filling in what I missed, but it's going to be a long, difficult process, that's going to cost me at least three to four times what it would have if I had gotten them new. {sigh} But, it's my true passion, and I will do it. Mostly. Even if it takes me decades. Some of the rarer cars are going for $150 or more. Don't think I'll ever get them. (Would have cost me $7 or 8 if I had gotten them new, depending on which year it was from). In reality, I've been feeling like that choice I made in early 2014, is going to be something I'm going to consider one of the biggest mistakes of my life...to be honest I was never happy with it in the first place, but I felt like my back was against the wall and I had no choice. Now that I'm back into the hobby full time, I actually feel something resembling happiness...maybe it is happiness. 

The timing actually works out well. I don't have to agonize over my choices- cards have been taken away from me due to something out of control...but I don't really mind all that much, because I'm putting them on the backburner anyway. 

Like I said though, I'm not leaving the hobby...I still need something to do when it's raining or too dark and cold to work on models. (Collecting 1/64 and working on models are tied together, they have essentially become one in the same. I am back to building cars that were not made in scale. I'm working hard on my NASCAR by the Numbers project, building one model of every number from 00-99, 110 different builds. I have 16 numbers left to build and 7 of them are in progress already! There is an outside chance I will complete the project in 2021). I just won't be doing as much card stuff.

As you may notice, that includes posts on Cardboard History as well. This is only my third in April. It may be the last for the month, which would be my new low. I just have nothing to say right now...beyond this post. I'll check and see if I have anything saved in drafts that I can crank out. I'm so far mentally removed from the hobby right now that I don't remember.

Just want to reiterate that Cardboard History is not ending, despite the overall tone of the end of this post. 

Jordan hits 1000

 I'm back to modeling mode, so not much card stuff going on right now. I'm still working on my monthly upload, closing in on the new "record" for longest time it took me to finish one of them, which is the 14th. Raining today so the whole day devoted to cards, though Doing the NBA by player, I got to Michael Jordan, and he hit the milestone I knew would be happening this month- 1000 different cards scanned. I only have two people in my collection in the 1000 card club, with Jeff Gordon being the other. However, I've scanned a higher percentage of Jordan cards, since he hit 1000 this month. Jeff Gordon is at only 732 cards scanned. 

I knew Jordan would hit 1000 this month because he got to 994 last month, and I scanned 21 of them in March. 

This turned out to be the 1000th card in the album, although not the 1000th in my collection. That is unknown. 

This is actually the Collector's Choice German insert, not the Rare Air set. Funny thing, I didn't even consider this a real card until very recently. I found it in my storage unit in a box full of toploaders, which basically is stuff I don't need, don't use and wouldn't bother me to never see again. 

If you want to see all 1015 Jordan cards currently scanned, here is his album: Michael Jordan collection

Announcing my new Grading Company: Fanatically Original Only Licensed

 With grading cards all the rage, I've decided to throw my hat into the ring. I'm starting my own grading company, named Fanatically Original Only Licensed. 

But this isn't just a knockoff of the other grading companies. Oh no, this is something slightly different! At Fanatically Original Only Licensed, you choose your grade and your fees will be based on the grade you choose. 

It works pretty simply, like this: If you want a grade of 1, you pay $100, a grade of 2 is $200, etc, on up to a gem mint 10 for $1000 per card. For the special fee of $10,000, you can get the ultimate ultra special rarity, an 11! 

And even better, the actual condition of the card doesn't matter! It can look like this: 

or it could look like this: 

The great thing is that it doesn't matter since YOU choose the grade you want! 

But hey, it has to be an original card. We have to have standards, don't you know? If you try to send in an unlicensed reprint, you will be hunted down and given a paper cut by a 1990-91 Pro Set card. We wouldn't be Fanatical about original, only licensed cards otherwise.

Which of you will be the first to be a F.O.O.L?