Coxsackie, NY

We decided to take the morning of Wednesday, June 21 off from cruising in order to visit the Olana State Historic site, a house museum and landscape in nearby Greenport, NY.  We found a driver to take us there (surprisingly, Uber and Lyft are not much available in these parts).  What a wonderful “find” Olana was for us!  It was the home and property of Frederic Church, one of the major figures of the Hudson River School of Landscape.  He bought the property in 1870 and over time acquired 250 acres where he designed “landscape paintings” throughout the grounds.  He planted thousands of trees to create wooded areas that would open up to fabulous meadow and river vistas that looked just like the scenic paintings of the Hudson River School of Art.  

Church also designed and built a fabulous Persian-inspired home on the site. It embraced a variety of architectural styles with every room positioned to provide another grand view of the grounds. Each room was filled with his and other artists’ works and it was furnished with all the original furniture.

We took a guided tour of the house and grounds led by a very knowledgeable guide who considerably enhanced the experience. We highly recommend a visit to Olana!

Upon our return to Zendo we ate leftover pizza for lunch and left the marina at 2 p.m. bound for Troy,  NY. It was the longest day of the year and we knew we had plenty of time for the five hour journey. But just after an hour on the water, Jonny realized that he had left his credit card at the restaurant the night before. What to do? We could cancel the card or we could return and retrieve it from the restaurant.  For a variety of reasons, we chose the latter option and returned to Hudson much to the surprise of the other boaters there.  Jonny and Archie quickly walked up to the restaurant, grabbed the errant card and we took off once again - this time at 4 p.m.

This change required us to revise our planned destination for the day and we decided to go to Coxsackie (pronounced Cooksacky), a village on the west bank of the river.  It was described as having a free town dock and a farmer’s market on Wednesdays.  What more could one ask for!  So we took off following the current that was in our favor and reached pretty Coxsackie by 4:45.  We were the only boat on their long and easily accessible floating dock next to a big, lovely, grassy park. As promised, the park was hosting its weekly farmer’s market where we happily stocked up on escarole, snow peas, strawberries and cherries.

Archie enjoyed being able to run through the park’s extensive grounds and managed to indulge me for a quick photo op!

We wandered through the charming town and eventually made our way to a riverside restaurant for drinks and nibbles.  The place was hopping and a band was playing nearby. It was quite enjoyable. 

Back on board Zendo, Jonny spent time inflating additional fenders since we would be going though twelve locks in the next couple of days.  We ate a few more nibbles for dinner and had a quiet night onboard.  A gaggle of teenage girls in their bathing suits were celebrating the last day of school jumping off the dock to go swimming. It was a joyful sight!