Relocators: Where New Yorkers Move when They Move Upstate

  |  November 20, 2012

Recently we came across a blog that was seriously simpatico with ours. A couple of New Yorkers, itching to move upstate, start investigating towns and cities and hatching a plan to escape. Finally, after months of searching (and of searching for a car to carry them on their journey) they honed in on a place, their Mecca of upstate New York. So we asked Kary to write about the town she chose, and why she chose it. Read on. 

Beacon Falls

Way back in May or June of this year, my husband Mark and I traveled to Beacon on our first joint trip to Upstate NY. We chose Beacon because it was easily accessible by train, but far enough away that it wouldn’t feel like The City.

We walked around town, got a bite to eat, looked at some houses and checked out the stores. I had already done a little research online about Beacon. We both liked it. So much so that we instantly started fantasizing about what it would be like to move “Upstate.”

We went so far as to stop into a Realtor’s office that day just to see if year-round rental homes were a possibility. They were.

Eventually we traveled back home to Brooklyn and the idea stuck. We were moving to Upstate NY! We liked almost everything about the idea of doing it. And we actually liked Beacon a lot. But then we got clever. We decided that on our next trip Upstate, we would rent a car and travel to different areas with the question, “Could we live here?”

We traveled to Cold Spring, Rhinebeck and Hudson…and many places in between. On the other side of the river we traveled to Catskill, Saugerties, Kingston and Woodstock.

For some reason….as we tend to do….we lost our focus and completely forgot about Beacon. Perhaps its because Woodstock and Saugerties are more well known. Practically everyone in the world has heard of Woodstock. Fewer have heard of Beacon. So we forgot about it, and began our frantic search for a rental home in the Saugerties/Kingston/Woodstock area.

Nothing panned out. We lost our focus even more. We started looking in areas west and south of Woodstock.

On the other side of the river, we traveled as far east as Millerton and Pawling.

In all, we looked at over twelve rentals that ranged from really cute to really horrible. Nothing panned out.

And then, when we thought we had run out of options, like a little beam of light (okay I won’t get corny here and say beacon of light) a thought hit my head. Why had we forgotten about Beacon?

Did something happen that made us not like it anymore? No
Did we read something that made us no longer want to live there? No

Why did we forget about wanting to move to and live in Beacon? Neither of us could think of a good reason. We had simply tried to be too clever and got distracted.

Long story short…we found our rental home in Beacon. When we drove to the Realtor’s office to see the house they had available, we both felt instantly grounded the moment we turned onto Main Street. We laughed as we asked the obvious question, “WHY had we forgotten about Beacon?”

Who knows? Both of us tend to be a little flaky sometimes. We can be easily distracted and sometimes have the attention span of gnats. I say this only so that no one thinks there is an unconscious reason we forgot about Beacon.

So we’re moving to Beacon. We ended up right where we started, and are very happy for it.

Photo of Beacon is courtesy of TripAdvisor.

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