For our second Frousin day trip this fall (read about our first here), Jake planned a trip a few Saturdays ago for the NYC & North Jersey chapters of the fam to visit Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York, about an hour north of the city (just like Croton Dam). Christie, Jake, Katie, and I rode up together to meet the others. Other cars may not have had to deal with such sassy backseat drivers (guilty) or may not have been as lost as we were on the way home, but I can also bet that we had better car games than anyone.

Storm King Art Center is a collection of over 100 large-scale sculptures on 500 acres. It is described as one of the world’s leading sculpture parks, where people can enjoy the relationship between art and nature. Many of the sculptures were inspired by the landscape and the surrounding fields, mountains, and woodlands. It sure was a beautiful place and we went at the most perfect time of year to see the amazing fall colors of the trees and stomp on all the crunchy leaves.

All three cars miraculously showed up within ten minutes of each other even though ours left from Manhattan, one left from Hoboken, and one came from Jersey City. This was important because we had a picnic planned. If our family ends up going down in history for anything like the Rockefellers or the Kennedys, it will probably be for having way too much food at a picnic.

Until our second picnic toward the end of the day, the rest of our time was spent wandering around the sculpture garden grounds, giggling, and taking tons of pictures. We all wore flannel on purpose because our last name in Gaelic translates to “those who are the cheesiest of all time.” The scenery was beautiful and the art was large and in charge.

Some of my favorites:

Three Legged Buddha (Zuang Huan) – a Buddha with his body parts rearranged which reminded me of my trip to Thailand earlier this year:

A sculpture that you could bang with a rubber mallet to hear the different sounds the metals and shapes made (anything interactive is good with me):

Five Men, Seventeen Days, Fifteen Boulders, One Wall (Andy Goldsworthy) – A stone wall winding around all of the trees:

A deconstructed bulldozer in the ground under some grates:

A sculpture that we had to have Jake explain the engineering of and that I was strong enough to hold up with just one finger:

This split panel in the woods where my sister and I look like we are posing for a creepy horror movie poster:

Mermaid (Roy Lichtenstein):

Our visit to Storm King is definitely in the running for “best day of fall 2013”- and I’m not even just saying that because I got awarded “joke of the day” – one of the biggest accomplishments in our fam. It’s also because of this great jumping photo:

xx