Bovina and nearby Bovina Center are a pair of towns in the rolling landscape of the New York Catskills.  Words like “serene”, “bucolic”, and “postcard-perfect” come to mind on viewing the images of a vacation rental home in this rural area.  Fall seems to be particularly kind to the soft panorama of mountains, fields, and groves of trees - it’s an easy bet that more than one tourist has grabbed his or her camera and taken shot after shot of the fall colors, exclaiming, “Wow!”

Bovina and Bovina Center seem like interesting if unlikely choices for names of towns; they are a not-so-subtle tribute to the dairy industry, the bovine lifeblood of the area at one time.  (As a side note, it helps the tourist immensely to know that the “kill” in town names like Wallkill and Catskill should be taken as a noun, not a verb; in this case it means stream or creek, not the forceful end of existence.  Cats and walls are quite safe.)

Being just three hours away from New York City, the Catskills had their glory days as a retreat for the urban wealthy - and later, for the urban middle class and their children.  After suffering something of a decline, these areas are being rediscovered.  One of the benefits of getting a vacation rental in the Bovina Center neighborhood is its proximity to great skiing, hiking, and other outdoor activities.  Given the setting, a simple picnic in the hills may take you straight back to a Norman Rockwell painting.