camping

If you find the heat and noise of New York City particularly taxing during the summer, why not take a note from history and head upstate? Many (generally well-to-do) families shipped out of the cesspool that is New York during the months of glare and heat, with breadwinners commuting in or staying alone in their apartments. It’s even the plot of ‘The 7-Year Itch’!

Even by highway traveling up the Hudson River Valley is gorgeous. The lush greenery and rolling valleys spread out before you as you climb into the mountains, with roadside oddities increasing in strangeness the moment you leave NYC. For example, this rest stop. At first it appeared like any other stop with a variety of chain restaurants and coffee shops for your snacking pleasure. However, a woman standing in the parking lot in front of a chained-off section under a sign reading ‘DO NOT PARK’ directing us where not to park with neon batons was the first bit of strangeness. Second was noticing the road to Woodstock is paved with hippies. Silly, silly hippies:

The inside dashboard was also peppered in Moe, Phish, and Bonnaroo stickers, along with a bobble head Grateful Dead bear.

Oddly the dichotomy betwixt hippie and redneck is found often further north:

Standing on line for caffeine, I turned around and found this…useful tidbit staring at me:

Milk! Wow! Actually New York isn’t so special; of the states that DO have a state beverage, most of them are milk, with the following awesome exceptions:

Alabama: Conecuh Ridge Alabama Fine Whiskey
Maine: Moxie ®
Nebraska: Kool-aid

Rhode Island offers a variant called Coffee Milk, made with Autocrat syrup, rarely available outside of Rhode Island with the exception of the bodega around the corner from me. Go figure.

Now, pretty as the scenery of upstate New York is, my principal reason for driving up is that my love of shiny objects knows no bounds. Worse than the magpie, sparkly stuff calls to me with a sweet siren song, one that obliterates the ridiculousness of me paying someone for the privilege of breaking rocks in the hot sun all day. That’s right, I went to the Herkimer Diamond Mines!

Firstly, Herkimer diamonds are not real diamonds. They’re a rare geological phenomenon where quartz formed into perfectly faceted shapes within dolomite, far more exciting than real, boring diamonds. Dolomite, as I found out the hard way, is one of the toughest rocks there is. Good job, Dolemite, it’s not just a clever name.

Only a few places in the world have pockets of faceted quartz like this, and the largest and most famous vein is in Herkimer, NY. The ‘mines’ are actually several outdoor fields filled with dolomite rocks. For a small fee, you get access to the fields, free hammer rental, and get to keep whatever you find! Visions of sparkling gemstones flashed before my eyes; I would smash open every rock in the place and return home victorious with overflowing bucketfuls of diamonds!

Above are the mines on a Saturday, with 2 Girl Scout Jamborees descending on the place (apparently it’s the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts or something this year). The day I went was a weekday, not crowded at all. Just me and a handful of professional diggers and retired couples. If you’re planning on going, here’s what you’ll stare at most of the day:

After a solid hour of smashing rocks to bits, I whacked open a wee, tiny pocket:

Sweet victory! That is, until some fat kid and his family, TOTALLY NOT OBEYING THE WARNING SIGNS, just walked right in, climbed up the side walls, and the fat kid found a Herkimer diamond 2 inches across ‘just sitting there!’, he yelled. Not a good time to have a hammer in hand.

IT SAYS STAY OFF THE LEDGES! Demoralized and weary, I took a break in the mine’s store/museum. I asked the ladies working if they had any advice, and they said breaking rocks was hard work; try just sifting the ground. Victory! Indeed, sifting the pre-smashed dirt for gems proved quite successful. In the remaining hour I had I picked up over 20 wee diamonds! Hooray!

Here they are looking rather unglamorous in a plastic bag:

A few of the choice fellows: