You were in Croton!? I live about 20 minutes from there. Next time you're up this way, drop me a PM.
It was a total impulse-trip. After an early-afternoon recording session, I was having a beer with Peter (hookstrapped) and we were talking about how much we wanted to just get out of the city and he mentioned the Hudson Valley and I said YES! and took the next train up 
Peter & I may do a trip together and if so I'll definitely let you know. Where exactly do you live?
I'm in one of the more inaccessible bits of Putnam County, but I know how to get out. My recommendation is to head a little further up the Hudson Line to Cold Spring, Beacon, or Peekskill (in order of preference, not geography). Good places to eat and drink in all of them, lots of opportunities for the sorts of things that city folk seem to crave (at least judging by the number of them I see on the weekend 
) as well as photography. I'm out of town this weekend, and things are a little hectic until the semester ends with grading and whatnot, but once my grades are in (mid-May) I've got lots of flexibility. Depending on when, I might even be able to drag limr out from under her rock.
Sounds like a plan! Let those limeys have their fancy-schmancy Margate walkabout, we'll hit up Cold Spring!
Yeah, a colonial walkabout! 
I like my rock, but walking, cameras, and beer will probably lure me out...
To be honest, any one of [walking, cameras, beer] would lure me out
Peekskill is like a hippie town, right? Sort of a Woodstock spillover? That may be nice for color photos...
If I had to categorize any of them as full of hippies it would be Beacon, though there are a few in Cold Spring as well.
Cold Spring is the most revitalized of them. After decades as a factory town, then as a sleepy backwater, it has been rediscovered. It manages to support a pretty good array of restaurants and antique stores, as well as a few other businesses, relying heavily on people day-tripping up, either just to the town or to hike the trails in Hudson Highlands state park.
Beacon is sort of Williamsburg north. DIA set up shop there a while back with a huge facility, and there are lots of places serving local foods and shops with "artisanal" in the name luring in the hipsters. Lately every shop seems to have a Pete Seeger poster in the window. Both ends of the main drag are like this, with about six blocks of lingering semi-urban blight in the middle.
Peekskill is trying to revitalize itself after decades dealing with the effects of misguided urban renewal efforts - it's making some progress, and there are some interesting things to see and do, but also some areas that are a bit heavier on the post-industrial malaise than others.
I've shot both color and B&W in both places. This time of year the choice is yours; in the winter, everything's gray anyway, so you might as well shoot B&W.
