Pumpkin Blaze

Last Thursday I went with friend and some of her co-workers up to Tarrytown (home to Sleepy Hollow) to see a Pumpkin Blaze, which is 4,000 hand carved pumpkins all lit up on display. I had originally wanted to go to a Pumpkin Festival in New Hampshire with Maria and Marky Mark; it had pumpkins, face-painting, cider and fireworks. I'd pretty much do anything to see fireworks in October, including driving four hours to New Hampshire. Unfortunately this plan fell thru, but thankfully my friend Brook mentioned this to me and I jumped at the chance to tag along.

First of all, we rode up there in car. For those of you who ride in a car everyday, this may not seem exciting, but for someone who has to ride around in the subway all day to get places it is very exciting. There were four of us scrunched in the back seat (I would post the pictures, but they're on someone else's camera and she hasn't sent them to me yet; so check back later for picture posts). This is part of the pumpkin archway we drove under to enter the Manor.


Two, it was crazy to see real darkness...in the country. It's never really dark in the city, there's always lights on. And we could see stars. All of us must've been in the city for too long because we were all amazed by the star, something you can't see in the city with all the lights on.

But it was the most cool for the pumpkins!! They're set up all around Van Cortlandt Manor, which is one of those old, colonial houses you'd see in the movies with wraparound porches, land all around and trees and stone fences. There were pumpkins everywhere! The pictures don't really do it justice, as I had to do it without the flash, which makes the picture sort of fuzzy because my hand isn't exactly steady. But I'll post them anyhow to give you an idea.




This is the manor with pumpkins in every place possible. The color of the manor would change from red to green to blue to orange. Each color change made the pumpkins look so different.




Next was the Dinosaurs. Yes, the Pumpkin Blaze has themes. You might wonder how you can make dinosaurs out of pumpkins. The answer is with lots of them. Again, the pictures don't really convey how totally cool it was. Brook and I spent a lot of time in this area and took a lot of pictures. It was just so cool!




Then there were spiders and a totally cool spider web made out of pumpkins. I don't have a picture of this because my batteries had died, but when I get them from Brook I'll post them. And then there were the snakes.


The next big display was Stonehenge. Again, you think how they can do that with pumpkins. I'm not even sure how they did it (or any of it, really, it was just all so amazing). At the end of the line was an underwater theme followed by a pirate theme with pirates just coming off their ship from the lake.


And then it was time for some hot cider, because it was cold that night. So cold that I couldn't feel my toes for pretty much most of the night. I could see my breath. I had to wear gloves. But man was that cider, and pumpkin spicey thing we ate, so good.


There were no fireworks, but there were pumpkins hanging from the trees, carved as fish, hands, bats, butterflies, skeletons, and even Jack from Nightmare before Christmas. And on the way home we drove through Tarrytown and past the Sleepy Hollow church. No sign of the Headless Horseman, but you could definitely picture him riding through the streets.