Hooked On The Old Houses of the East End

A glorious end-of-summer day today -- brilliant sunshine and the kind of clarity that is the special talent of Fall. Everything looks sharp!

It's a good day to go house-peeping.

Climb in, we're off to Long Island's East End, one of Nature and Man's favored places.

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At the end of New York's Long Island are the Twin Forks, North and South, and we are heading for the North Fork. (See end of post for a link to more information.)

Although surrounded by water -- Peconic Bay, Long Island Sound, and the Atlantic -- there are no endless miles of open sandy beaches, no boardwalk, no honky-tonk stuff on the North Fork (unless you count the Fireman's Carnival and the midweek concerts at the Gazebo), and many of the day trippers come to see this:

The vineyards and wineries.

They don't come for a day at the beach, because public beaches are mostly

limited to the local taxpayers, and the rest of the water front is private. It's a quiet place.

Join me for a Friday Hooked On party, at Julia's Hooked On Houses blog. Click here.

I am Hooked On the old houses of the North Fork!

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We all love beach houses and waterfront cottages, but out on the East End, there's another breed of beautiful house that is everywhere you look: The Old House.

Farm house, doctor's house, 17th century parsonage -- despite coming out this way for almost as long as I can remember, my eyes still ping-ping back and forth as we drive along; there's just so much house to look at!

So here, in no order, and without explanations, and in all sorts of conditions,
are just a few of the great old houses of the East End:

Oh, you have to love this -- an interior design office in a former gas station.
Did I mention that the East End is not pretentious? We leave that to the big Fork across the Bay.

But we have the world's best looking McDonalds!

Yes, that really is a McDonald's, below. That huge corporation jumped through a thousand local hoops
to get permission to build the only fast food place on the North Fork. No drive-thru; might cause littering!

Lots of places to buy locally grown produce, seafood, and apparently -- "baked gods."
:-)

Is it any wonder, after spending summers out on the East End, that I fell in love with this New Jersey house?

That Old House would fit right in on Long Island, wouldn't it?
And rightly so, as it was originally built by a farming family that moved to New Jersey
from -- you guessed it -- the North Fork of Long Island in the 1700s, looking for more land.

Have a lovely long holiday weekend, my friends!
Stay safe, wear sunscreen, and give Summer a grand send-off! -- Cass

P.S. For more information on Long Island, and a nice clear map so you can see what I mean by the Twin Forks, click here.