Sleepy Hollow Country

When we told people that we were going to Sleepy Hollow for Halloween, many asked "that's a real place?" Yep, it's a real city, about 45 minutes north of New York City. To prepare myself for our trip, I went to the library and checked out The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. The story about the headless horsemen is fiction, but the city and some of the characters were based on real places and real people that Irving knew in his time.

We had an awesome time! I had a hard time narrowing down my favorite pictures, so I am just going to post quite a few of them. (click on a picture to make it bigger so you can see more detail)

Brett and Erin were kind and let us crash with them. This is Ariana, their daughter. She looked soooo cute in her costume; I had to take a picture!

We went to Sunnyside, home of Washington Irving. He built it right on the Hudson River and it was very pretty. We went on a tour of the house (sorry, no pictures allowed) and it was neat to see all of his little inventions.

A Scarecrow Invasion. There were over 400 scarecrows!

Lyndhurst Castle. Who knew there were castles in Hudson Valley? Not me. The tour through the inside was cool.

My goofy husband, on the grounds of Lyndhurst Castle.

The view from the backyard of the Lyndhurst Castle. That's the Tappan Zee Bridge that we drove across.

Lyndhurst Castle from the front.

This is Philipseburg Manor. It was built in the 1700's and the Philipse family originally owned 55,000 acres! Eee gads! Nowadays, the foundation only owns about 25 (thank goodness).

A pond on the property - so pretty!

Cool black and white shot of the bridge.

They actually still use the mill on the property - Cory is grinding up some corn. We bought freshly ground wheat flour and corn meal - it's going to be yummy!

Pretty in the fall - the building on the far left is the mill.

The Hudson River at sunset.

The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze. Pretty much the whole reason we went down for the weekend. Volunteers and artists carve between 4,000-5,000 pumpkins for the event (held 20 something nights in October). It's held at the Van Cortland Manor, and it was SOOOO COOL!! Really, the pictures do not do the coolness justice.


"Thriller" pumpkins. They had the Michael Jackson song playing in the background.

The Manor House.

Dinosaurs - all made out of pumpkins! AMAZING!

Gigantic spider web - again, made entirely out of pumpkins.



Stonehenge pumpkins


This is the same place (Van Cortland Manor) only it's during the day. You can see the Thriller pumpkins behind me.

Michael Jackson. He's even wearing a white glove.

The Manor House, now in the daytime.

How they made the pumpkin dinosaurs.


The giant spider web.

Pumpkins everywhere!


We got a lesson on weaving. They actually still use the loom to make scarves, throws, etc. Cory is hands-on learning how to make a weave pattern.

View of the Manor House from down below.

The Sleepy Hollow Bridge - where Ichabod Crane galloped over in his haste to escape the Headless Horseman ... or so the story goes ...


Sleepy Hollow Cemetary, famed to be the resting place of said Headless Horseman. Alas, we did not see him.

Washington Irving is buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetary - his grave is the bright white one you can see in the background.

Yeah, we had a great time!! For any of you fellow east-coasters, you should definitely make plans to attend "the Blaze" next year. It was soooo cool! We're glad we made the choice to go down and have such a great weekend, seeing some cool historical places.