Sleepy Hollow

 So as you all know, we try our best to get to New England in the Autumn because Florida has no such thing as an Autumn season.  Well, a few years ago, I got a wild hair to add Sleepy Hollow to my list of places to visit on our trip.  Since we stay in Vermont usually, and hit Salem each visit as well...it required a bit of a drive and a change in hotels to make it happen.  It's about 3 hours west from Vermont.  And we were going to see the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze, (which is incredible and totally worth doing if you get to Sleepy Hollow in October!).  We also planned on checking out the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery so we could see the actual bridge where the Headless Horseman rode across in Washington Irving's classic haunted tale.

The cemetery was beautiful and I took lots of photos...but sadly, I lost them all, as they somehow got erased from my compact flash card.  I can't tell you how sick I still am about that!  The town, originally Tarrytown, is a very quaint town in the Fall.  The colored leaves blowing by, the shops with their Halloween wares on display, and streets decorated for the season...all collaborate to add to the magic of the legend itself. 

During the month of October there are a variety of activities to enjoy like the Jack O'Lantern Blaze in nearby Croton-on-Hudson, the Haunt Attraction, Horseman's Hollow, Irving's Legend, a master storytelling performance complete with organ music, the Haunted Hayride, Lyndhurst Mansion After Dark, site of the first two Dark Shadows movies, family fun at the Legend Weekends Event, the spectral tales of The Ghosts of TarryHollow and of course, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Tours where you can enter the crypt of Barnabas Collins and find the graves of Brom Bones and Katrina Van Tassel.  I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to live in this town...what a spooktacular October we would have!
 

As for the infamous bridge where the Headless Horseman chased ole' Ichabod Crane....well, you can find the bridge, and it is pretty....but it was a bit anticlimactic due to the fact that the bridge you see now, is not the 'real' bridge, and is not actually standing in the exact same place it was back in the day.  But it was all still a heap of fun, very cool....and absolutely perfect for a Fall vacation!