New England Fall - Part 4

I think I left off my story at the point where I was packing my camera gear up and calling it a night at Sleepy Hollow Farm.  As I was putting the last of my stuff into the car, one of the locals came by and started up a nice conversation about the farm and telling me a little about its history.  They told me how the farm used to be owned by Joe Perry of Aerosmith who actually grew up in the area.  I think I had heard that story at some point,  years ago but had totally forgotten about it until now.  I could totally understand why he would have loved living there as the area is beautiful and the farm is far enough out of the way that he would have been afforded plenty of privacy while not out on the road touring with the band.

He eventually got around to asking me where I was from and asked if I traveled all that way just to take photos of the farm.  I told him it wasn't the ONLY reason I had made the trip, but it was certainly high up on the list of places I wanted to see when I finally got out to Vermont.  I mentioned that I have the worst luck in timing my trips and how I had really wanted to be there during peak fall colors, and that's when I found out I'd actually only missed them by 4 days!  He told me how the colors were amazing just the week before, but 4 days ago they had a really heavy frost in the area and that overnight most of the trees had dropped their leaves.  *sigh*   I was SO close!  LOL

It was getting really cold out and I said a quick goodbye and headed to town for the night.  I found a little motel tucked away on the edge of town and called it good for the night.  I was planning on being up super early to get back out to the farm for sunrise anyway, so it was really nice that I was dead tired from a very long day of travel.  I was fast asleep in no time.

My alarm went off 5 minutes after I fell asleep (okay, maybe it was more like 6 hours later but it sure didn't seem like it!).   My body was thinking it was 2am and I was trying to trick it into thinking it was really much closer to the time I would be getting up back home anyway.  I don't think it fell for my trick and demanded some caffeine before I hit the road again.  I grabbed my stuff and opened the door to my room and was hit with a blast of cold air and a view of snow covering everything in front of me.  What month is this???  LOL

Well, now I felt I really needed to rush back to the farm as I have the chance now to photograph it in two different seasons, within a 24 hour period.  All I kept thinking was that this will totally make up for missing the fall colors!  I just had to make sure I got there before the snow melted away as the sun came up.

I was really happy I was able to find a place fairly close by and think I was back to the farm in about 30 minutes.  I got all my gear out, set up my camera and realized that my hands were already frozen from touching all that metal in the freezing cold air!  Okay, I'm realized I wasn't going to be hanging out there for an hour shooting a lot of photos as it was just way too cold for that.  Luckily the light and the snow were all great and I got what I think was my favorite photo on the whole trip within 15 minutes of getting out of the car.

I did fight the cold for another 10 minutes and took a few more photos just to make sure I didn't mess something up or not have the photo in perfect focus or any number of other mistakes that are easy to make when you're still half awake and freezing your tuckus off.   Everything looked great though and I rushed to pack my stuff into the car just as a van full of photographers pulled up.  I couldn't have timed the morning better if you ask me.  I was really happy with this shot and those of you that know me well, know I don't say that often.

The trip was now officially a success in my book.  I mean heck, I got a Fall and Winter photo of the place I wanted to photograph most in New England... all in one trip.  :)