I spend a lot of time on social media, but when you spend as much time traveling as I do it’s a great way of staying connected to family, friends and colleagues.
It also often throws up the additional benefit of letting me know about events or experiences I might be interested in that I otherwise would never have heard about.
This was the case recently when I saw fantastic pictures of The Great Jack o Lantern Blaze in New York State on the Instagram story of someone I follow.
I’d never heard of the Blaze festival but it looked like fun and knowing we had a trip to New York coming up I googled it and found out it’s only an hour or so from the city and runs through most of October and November. I booked tickets online, and Stuart and I headed upstate for the first time to check it out.
The fall colors made for a beautiful drive up, and we stopped off in a couple of lovely little towns in the Hudson Valley to look around.
We got to the pumpkin festival and it was everything I’d hoped for! Amazing displays of lit up carved pumpkins, including a Statue of Liberty,
a full circus train,
and a working carousel. 
My favorite was this giant dragon,
closely followed by the big Thanksgiving turkey.
It was freezing cold so we didn’t linger past the 45 minutes it took us to walk through the display, stopping on the way back to the city for a great dinner at Tally Lodge that the hotel concierge had recommended.
The funny thing was that as we caught up with different friends in NYC over the next few days they’d seen the pictures I’d posted on Instagram – but prior to that hadn’t ever heard of the festival despite how close to home it was. I’m thinking my Instagram feed this time next year will see a few more pumpkin festival posts….
Stay tuned for pics from Hawaii next month when we try glow in the dark stand up paddle board yoga under skies filled with fireworks, thanks for the tip Facebook!