The thing that always delights
me about Lonely Planet Road Trip guidebooks
is that despite their diminutive size (8 x
4 x 0.3 inches) and relatively few pages (this
one has 64), the authors imbue these books
with a personality and point of view that
is both in-the-moment and timeless at the
same time. This new guide to the Huson River
Valley is no exception. Whether author China
Williams is describing traffic woes like Route
9's bottleneck in Tarrytown as being "more
congested than a winter head cold," assessing
the wait staff at the Cripple Creek Restaurant
in Rhinebeck "where every sandwich-slinger
is a CIA graduate," or comparing a road's
route to a symphony, her prose is riveting
and evocative. My favorite sentence in
Hudson River Valley is probably this one:
"…A graceful C-loop spirals the
rim of the bowl-shaped valley crowded with
bowing cornfields and a succession of violet
mountains cascading in the distance…"
The scenic route that inspired this effusion
is on Route 6 near New Paltz...[More]
