Nicole and I woke up last Thursday in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We'd stayed four nights at the Sanderling Resort in the town of Duck. Great place, especially if you can get the shoulder season rate. 

The day before, our anniversary, we'd spent an hour watching dolphins swim in the ocean outside our room. Then we headed off for a walk on the beach. Played some Scrabble by the fireplace that afternoon and topped things off with garlic pasta and scallops at The Blue Point.

But the next day, we were excited to finally make it to our road trip destination in upstate New York -- a smaller weekend home our friends are allowing us to stay in for the time being. We were also excited about the stop off we would be making at our storage unit in New Jersey along the way. Throughout our multi-week road trip across the United States, our new (to us!) Mitsubishi crossover has been completely jammed full of the contents of a storage unit we'd maintained in Arizona since our time living there. My old baseball cards, high school yearbooks, and a coffee table that I built with my own two hands during high school wood shop classes. It needed to be out of our car.

So we eagerly headed north, listening to the A Wrinkle In Time audiobook.

We made it to the cabin late that night, happy to be through with our road trip and ready to settle into a routine which the road does not allow for. 

And then we woke up to nine inches of snow. Much of the Northeast was getting swamped and we were in the middle of it. What happened to the dolphins!?

Later that morning we heard an explosion which turned out to be a large tree crashing onto the neighboring house's roof. 

Then the lights flickered and the power went out. 

We thought, let's get out the house go somewhere with power and coffee. 

But we couldn't get our car out of the driveway.

So I started shoveling. And shoveling. Five hours later I'd cleared the way.

Our friends were headed up from the City to stay with us over the weekend. They arrived that afternoon to a dark home. 

Six of us spent the better part of three days together with no heat, no water, no lights, no phones or internet. 

And we had so much fun. We celebrated Nicole's birthday in Woodstock at the Shindig for breakfast (one of Nicole's favorite places) and then Tinker Taco Lab for drinks. We headed to Kingston and the Rough Draft, a book store that serves drinks. 

My friend and I skied the next day on the local hill. 

Who needs power.

Welcome to New York! 

Like this post? Want to read more about Travis and Nicole's travel adventures? Check out Visiting Wayside Cider And The Union Grove Distillery In The Catskill Mountains Of New York.

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