Ichabod Crane Days

October 7th, the weekend I’d been waiting for! We discovered Sleepy Hollow State Park last October in a search for relatively local campgrounds that we’ve not yet visited. Similar to Metamora Hadley, Sleepy Hollow is woodsy! Like a huge patch of forest with campsites carved out. You have brush and foliage in between each site so if you like your privacy, you’d like this park.

Good thing we both took half days on Friday. When we arrived, we found the site nowhere near deep enough for our trailer, although it’s described as up to 40 feet. And woods directly across from it, so no room at all to pull forward and back it straight in. I’m still thanking God for Bill’s trailer-pulling ability and experience. If it were me, I’d still be trying to get it parked. Doing this in the dark would have not been fun, so I was extremely thankful we had the extra daylight.

Halloween decorating commenced in the warm October sun on a Friday afternoon and I was in my glory, stringing lights and getting the projector lights into place. By nightfall, our section of the road, like the rest of the park, was all aglow in Halloween orange.

Saturday called for clouds and a few showers, and turned out to be clear and sunny all day. A bit chilly, but it warmed up past the 56 degrees they forecasted for a high. Perfect for the costume contest, cornhole tournament and other activities planned! We walked through all the loops, touring all the decked out campsites.

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I was disappointed to learn though, that the headless horseman would not be making an appearance this year. The equestrian team puts on this very awesome sounding event and this year, they were planning an event of their own the following weekend. This would have been so cool to see!

Returning to the campsite, Bill took a nap and I caught up on almost all my pending blog posts, outside on the picnic table on this gorgeous fall day. Soon it would be time for the goblins to start arriving for tricks and treats.

Last year, Bill bought a baby mask at one of the Halloween stores, really because of a Full Throttle episode. It was the one where Jesse and another staff member don baby masks (after the new baby announcement) and start slapping each other’s arms like twin toddlers fighting. Angie and Michael Ballard were laughing so hard they cried. It’s our favorite episode of all time.

So we brought it along for costume purposes (I in my black horns and ghost turtleneck) and Bill put it on for the trick or treaters, with some creepy lullaby music he downloaded from Napster. I think we actually scared some kids. Some of them stared at Bill, wide-eyed, having to be led away by their parents, saying nothing even after the “say thank you!” prompts. OMG. Some parents even took one look and dragged their kids right past our campsite. LOL

Except for one awesome little girl dressed as a sailor who came right up to Bill, pressed on his rubber nose with her finger and said, “You’re a BABY!”  It was too adorable for words!

Five large bags of candy went extremely fast and we luckily caught a lull between kids where we cut the music and quickly ran inside the trailer with four pieces of candy to spare. I was afraid a large group would come by and we’d only have enough left for some of the kids in the group, but not all. Whew! Trick or treating only went from 5pm to 6pm, and we ran out of candy at 5:55pm. Perfect.

Next up on this incredible weekend’s agenda was the hayride from 7pm to 9pm. Three tractors pulling hay wagons circled the loops taking loads of people on a tour of the thoroughly decked out campsites, which looked even more amazing all lit up in the dark. At this point my head was ready to explode with Halloween awesomeness.

Both those on the hay wagons and people at the campsites cheered and waved as the wagons passed by. After we returned to our campfire on this chilly night, you could hear cheering throughout the park. What fun. Bill put a flashlight in the baby mask on the picnic table facing the road which resulted in shrieks from the passing wagons. Hahaha.

We finished out the night playing with sparklers, photographing the motions with a slow shutter speed, something I’d not yet tried. I’ve seen it done also with burning steel wool, and it makes from some crazy photos. Bill meant to spell out Halloween here, but ran out of rooom.

To add to the creepiness, off in the distance we heard several times the howling and cackling of what sounded like a large group of perhaps coyotes? At times, we heard snapping noises in the brush just beyond our campfire, but shining the flashlight in the woods revealed nothing.

OMG. What a great time. Sunday morning we sipped coffee and watched The Addams Family in the cozy warmth of the trailer before packing up to head home.

Ichabod Crane Days 2017 will be held next year on October 13^th and 14^th. I will be ready to grab a site next year, just not Site 1!