In my therapy practice, my clients and I often work on procrastination and priorities. I think lots of people struggle with these two things. “I’ll do it later.”, “We don’t have time right now.”, “Is now the right time?” are common refrains I hear. I struggled with the same issues. We are led to believe there is a right and wrong way to do life and that just isn’t the case. There is only the right way to live your life which is how you want to live it. My partner and I have chosen to prioritize creating experiences and it is always the right time for a new one!
This was a season of great trips with our camping trailer. There were lots of trips to known and loved places, but there were also some new explores. If you have checked out my website, you know I am a weaver and I am a weaver partly because of the Little House on the Prairie books specifically Farmer Boy. Farmer Boy is the story of Almanzo Wilder’s childhood on his parent’s farm in Upstate NY. They raised sheep and his mother took the wool and spun it into yarn and then made their clothes from it. How cool is that? Ever since I learned the farmstead museum is a few short hours away I have had it on my list of places to visit. In July, I was looking at a list of festivals happening in the Adirondacks and saw one at the Almanzo Wilder Farm. I checked the calendar, and we were free that weekend! Next stop was an internet search of nearby campgrounds. We prefer to stay at state campgrounds because of cost and their often private sites. There was nothing close by, but I found a New York State (NYS) campground about an hour from the farm and a short distance from the highway and a brew pub we had enjoyed in the past. My partner thought it was a solid plan.
We went on the campground website and also pulled up campadk.com . There are a few campsite photo sites out there, but we have always had luck with campadk. We pay for a subscription so we can see all the photos available for each site. They have all the NYS/DEC campgrounds. We compared available sites on the Reserve America (this is the vendor that manages reservations at all NYS/DEC campgrounds) map and looked at their photos on campadk.com and found a great site. It was big and relatively private with a view of the lake. It wasn’t waterfront but we weren’t planning on paddling that weekend so that was fine with us. Macomb Reservation state park is not a DEC campground as it is not within the “blue line” or the boundaries of the Adirondack park. It is instead a NYS campground. This means you can find sites with electric and sometimes water hook up. We didn’t need those as we have solar and a good size battery which provides plenty of power for a weekend and a 5 gallon water tank. This was a good thing because we saw when we arrived that the electric sites were close together in the beginning of the campground and that is not our jam at all.
We were not disappointed in our spur of the moment trip at all. Our site was private and beautiful offering a lovely view for us to just chill and read after we got set up on Friday afternoon. We had brought a ready to go dinner so it was quite a relaxing kick off to the weekend. On Saturday, after a quick breakfast at the site, we headed off to the Almanzo Wilder Farm. It was an easy drive through a part of the North Country we were not familiar with. The farm was interesting and so fun to tour. This trip reminded me how much explores to new places is important to me. I encourage you to prioritize your interests and goals and not procrastinate. You are worth it!
Robin Schneider Larkin 