Little Red Cottage Up North

I am back from what seems like a long vacation! 2 Weeks in Northern NY on the shore of the St Lawrence River. This is the little red cottage we stay in every year.

It has 2 rooms and is quite reasonable ($500 for 2 weeks, though we do get a little discount) to stay in. As I mentioned in my previous post, the view from the porch is the top of this blog. My husband explained to the owners of the cottage that my soul is somewhere in that field as I think it is probably one of the most peaceful views I've ever seen. It was greener this year than the picture at the top of this blog, maybe I'll change the picture. Every morning I would have my coffee while looking at that view and just breathe....

The cottage has a kitchen so we ate all but 4 meals at home. (We went out for 2 dinners, one lunch and one breakfast) I thought that was going to be a bummer because in past years we would eat out a lot! It wasn't a bummer at all and we cooked easy simple food.

Lynne and Michael, who own our cottage are wonderful as are their 3 children who had a great time playing with our 2 1/2 year old. One night we had a fire in front of their 1860s farmhouse and listened to their oldest play civil war music on the violin with her dad accompanying on guitar.

Most mornings my husband would go down to the dock at the cottage to go fishing and most afternoons too. When our daughter was napping we would take turns at the water. We all swam, enjoyed beautiful sunsets and napped a lot!

Every night that we were home we would put our daughter to bed and both take out our books to read. One night we rented a movie but only watched half and lost interest.

We got a library card at the little library there. Had picnics at the local lighthouse, went to the free fish museum and free historical society. There was an awesome playground.

Leighanne's family has a place there so we also spent one weekend with Leigh and her new husband, Tim.

One of my favorite memories is of going to the dump by myself (yes, you read that correctly) When you don't have local garbage pickup it really makes you think even more about your trash and consumption habits. (They would have taken our garbage for us but since we're so comfortable there we just as soon do it ourselves) Anyway, one of the best parts of the dump is that everyone brings the books they don't want and you can just help yourself! One day I took a bag of garbage and recyclables. It cost a dollar. I picked up 11 books and had a homemade oatmeal cookie that the woman who runs the dump made. Let me tell you, that was a way better experience than I have lugging my huge suburban trash toter to the curb every Sunday night. Hmmm.... Life in a small town.

This was a really cheap vacation. $500 for the 2 weeks plus groceries and a few meals out. Of course there were some sideline trips to other towns and a few coffee splurges at the cute local coffee house as well as a new beautiful silver bracelet for me. But by and large this was a wonderful vacation on a budget! We have done this for the past 5 years and would do it even if we had a lot more money for vacation spending!