Secret Little Hack

Skip the Uptown Crowds by Timing the Trolley Gap

Most visitors to Kingston don't realize that the vintage trolley running between the Stockade District and the Rondout Waterfront operates on a loose schedule with a reliable dead window in the early afternoon — usually between 1:30 and 2:30 PM. Locals use this gap intentionally: they drive down to Rondout, park for free in the lower waterfront lot near the boat launch (which empties out as the lunch crowd leaves), and walk the whole strip without competing with the trolley-delivered tourist wave. You get the waterfront galleries, the dockside restaurants, and the creek views essentially to yourself for a solid hour before the next surge arrives.

Bonus move: the small alley beside the old Rondout firehouse leads to a tucked-away overlook of Rondout Creek that almost nobody standing on the main strip ever notices — no sign points to it, and it's one of the best unobstructed views of the Kingston lighthouse you'll find without getting on a boat.

Saugerties Animal Shelter in Saugerties, New York is currently navigating a ringworm outbreak that has forced the facility to pause intakes, adoptions, and in-person volunteer training until the situation is resolved.

The shelter is still working to connect adoptable kittens in foster care with loving homes through off-site events, and adoption applications remain open online. Stray dogs can still be reported to Animal Control Officer Adam, while stray cats may require assistance from nearby shelters in the meantime.

On a brighter note, a fundraising dinner at Mariner's Harbor in Kingston on September 17, 2026 will support the shelter's long-awaited new facility — a big step up from its current repurposed equipment garage.

Interesting Facts

Kingston, New York hides a surprisingly layered past beneath its brick-and-bluestone streets.

• First capital, then torched: Kingston served as New York State's first capital in 1777, but British forces under General John Vaughan burned nearly the entire city to the ground just weeks after the state constitution was adopted there — making it one of the few American capitals deliberately destroyed by an enemy army.
  
  
• Bluestone backbone of a nation: The dense, fine-grained bluestone quarried from the Kingston area paved the sidewalks of New York City, Boston, and other major East Coast cities throughout the 19th century, to the point that "bluestone sidewalk" became virtually synonymous with urban life in America.
  
  
• A canal town that reinvented itself twice: The Delaware and Hudson Canal, which terminated near Kingston at Rondout Creek, once made the city one of the busiest coal-shipping ports on the Eastern Seaboard — a fact startling for an inland Hudson Valley town nowhere near the coalfields it served.
  
  
• Home to America's oldest surviving street grid: The Stockade District in uptown Kingston preserves a street layout originally designed by Dutch settlers in the 1650s, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited planned settlements in the United States.
  
  
• The Senate House's unlikely survivor status: The 1676 stone Senate House where New York's first senate met is still standing largely because its thick limestone walls simply refused to burn when the British set fire to the city — it is now the oldest government building in New York State.

Since a fire broke out in an adjacent building in January 2025, residents of West Kill, a small hamlet in New York's Catskill Mountains, have had to cross county lines — over seven miles of treacherous mountain road — just to collect their mail.

More than 40 locals rallied in nearby Lexington in August, demanding the return of their post office, which first opened in 1833. U.S. Rep. Josh Riley has pressed the Postal Service for answers, but USPS says its search for a new location has no timeline — and warns the office could face permanent closure.

For elderly residents depending on mail-order medications, and neighbors who rely on the post office as a community hub, the stakes couldn't feel higher.