There is just something comforting about a small downtown,
a Main Street filled with quintessential local businesses – antique stores, small boutiques, maybe a hardware store, whose ownership has been passed down from father to son, father to son. Throw in a handful of coffee shops, a couple of bars, a tattoo parlor and a barber shop. The streets are lined with lamp posts and trees whose colors change with the passing seasons.
For me, it’s the overall sense of community that creates the downtown charm and draws me to these places.
From downtown to downtown, near and far their essence is the same.
It’s when the old man walks into the diner, picks his personal mug from the wall and takes a spot at the counter, the waitress comes by to fill it up and asks “the usual”? It’s the college kids that come and go with the semesters, cramming away behind heavy textbooks and laptop screens. It’s the tiny bits of conversations between neighbors on the street that I overhear while visiting, just an outsider looking in for a moment.
As I write to you, I’m sitting in one of these little coffee shops in downtown Oneonta
Across from me sits Emily, one of my few remaining high school friends. Emily shares my love of small downtowns and when she called me the night before with the idea of getting on the road early and finishing up her work calls from a coffee shop downtown, I was all in.
As we spend a few hours of our first afternoon parked outside the Latte Lounge, sipping our coffee and typing away, we can sense the downtown essence all around us.
After that morning at the Latte Lounge
Emily and I headed out to East Meredith to find our Airbnb.
The further out of downtown Oneonta you drive, the more rural the landscape becomes, with farm fields, roaming cows and rustic barns, as far as the eye can see.
Succurro, a holistic health center and working homestead, would be our home for the next two nights.
Perched on top a hill, overlooking the farmhouse and grounds, sits the 4 tents, Flow, Harmony, Order, and Balance that make up the
“Glamping”- or glamorous camping, tiny homes and experience stays have become all the rage with Airbnb’s increasing popularity. I, myself am a big fan.
Each tent was about the size of a small cabin, with a little porch fit with two Adirondack chairs. Inside was cozy and rustic. Since it was early November, we were a little worried about how cold it would be at night. There was the option to use the pellet stove, but a few hot water bottles and we were plenty warm under the wool blankets.
One of the other really nice features of Succurro was the outdoor kitchen setup
A covered area protected from potential rain, equipped with grills, toaster oven, coffeemakers, and a refrigerator for each cabin. Emily and I were set with plenty of space to store and cook our own food. We decided full advantage of the kitchen and cooked most of our meals at camp.
Going down to make breakfast in the morning was my favorite, the smell of the melting frost, the soft warm light from the sun stretching out over the hills. The goats and chickens saying their good mornings to us as we walked by.
On Saturday, after breakfast we ventured out towards Cooperstown.
We decided to hit up a couple breweries on our way there, stopping first at Cooperstown Brewing. Cooperstown Brewing was of course, baseball themed. Cooperstown, home to the baseball hall of fame and Doubleday Field, holds it’s own special place in sport’s history.
It was an unseasonably warm day for central NY in November. Emily and I enjoyed each and every moment of it, and sat outside, basking in the sunshine at every brewery, along the Cooperstown Beverage Trail.
Both Emily and I are not big sports people, but we’re always down for an adventure and always down good beer.
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