12-of-12: November 2010

It's Friday and the 12th of November.  That means it's 12-of-12 time!

What better way enjoy the 12th of the month?  I know!  Take the day off from work and start the long weekend off with a road trip.  Even MORE exciting was the weather.  Temps in the mid-60s today (almost unheard of in Western New York State, in November).

Oh, don't let me forget to first thank to Chad Darnell for starting the 12-of-12 and keeping it going all these years.  Visit his site to learn more about the project and how you can participate!

6:30am at home:
Starting the day off right with a little run.  2.72 miles, to be exact.  I'm working my way up to a 5K (and maybe, later, an 8K).  Sorry for the blurry shot... I didn't realize I had the camera on the wrong setting till after the workout was over.  Oh well, you don't want to see me & my "running face" anyway. :)

... shower up, have breakfast, then chuck the hubby & pups in the car, and off we go!

Noon - 5pm at Allegany State Park, Salamanca, NY:

Today's visit was our second to Allegany this week.  We were in the Red House Area on Sunday, then today we made our way down to the other "developed" section of the park, Quaker.

But first, a stop at Red House... the lake was calm as glass...

At Quaker Lake, we're reminded that this is a man-made environment.  The Dam (with water-regulating spillway) turned this valley into a 275-acre lake.

Have I mentioned it was a warm day today?
With temps in the 60s, everyone came out to play.

The Ladybugs...

and the Ruffed Grouse (this little guy was seriously flirting with someone).

Our last stop of the day was Science Lake... named after the Science Museum nearby. 

Can you see the moon in the sky and the reflection in this 1st photo?

What a surprise!  As we finished up our hike around the lake, we found this little guy (gal?) and two friends swimming around their dam. 

Back at home, 6:30PM:

Neither of us felt like cooking after our busy day, so we got an order of Wings (being from Buffalo, we don't call them Buffalo Wings) to go and headed home.  We were obviously hungry, because we devoured them in a matter of minutes.  YUM!

Sorry, folks, there's no "View from the Porch" this month.  I forgot to take a photo before we left today, and it was way too dark to get a shot after we got home.  Oh well... maybe I'll snap a quick shot tomorrow morning and post it a little late.

Thanks for stopping by!  See you next month!

Woodstock, Day 2

Saturday was a full, full day in and around Woodstock.
How full was it?
Overflowing!  And WONDERFUL!

We started with a casual breakfast at the Inn.  Good natural foods, gourmet coffee, and a promise of perfect weather.  Then we walked around the corner to Mower's Saturday Flea Market - a marketplace that's been around for over 30-years!
As I always like to buy a "local" souvenir (hand crafted by folks from the area I'm visiting), I was SO happy when I found Davin Butterfield of Butterfield Pottery.  I would have liked to buy a full set of dishes from him, but I settled on this little creamer. (It was perfect for maple syrup on our french toast this past Monday morning).

We returned to the Inn to drop off our goodies, then back into town we went to explore "downtown" Woodstock.  In and out of shops & galleries we went, people-watching all the while.  And if you can believe it... the whole town smelled of incense (would you expect anything else?).  It was amazing!

Okay... here is when my story of my adventure in Woodstock takes an unexpected turn...
Instead of chilling out in the land of the hippies, I got "high" with Elizabeth.
No.  Not that way.
We got high in the altitude way.

I'll explain.
As you know, I'm a geocacher.  I use million-dollar satellites to find ammo-cans in the woods.  Since I can't go anywhere without looking for a cache, I brought a long list of possible finds with me.
The most interesting looking cache (as well as the most challenging) was one called the Overlook Mountain House Cache.  To get to the cache location, one must hike 2.4 miles up Overlook Mountain.  (and then to get back, you need to hike down.)  I didn't know if either Elizabeth or I were up for such a hike.  BUT... after seeing the photos posted by previous cachers I was SO excited to try it.  But was E?
YES!
Fortunately, she shares in my love of cool old "creepy" structures, so she was willing to make the hike to visit the ruins of the Overlook Mountain House (and maybe find a cache).

So UP we went.
The hike itself was nothing spectacular.  (For a nice pictorial of the trail, visit The Bridge & Tunnel Club site.)
However... it was a tough, tough climb.  The phrase of the day was "it just keeps going up" - just when we'd get to a flat spot, it was only a few hundred feet before the steep climb started again.
But, BOY, was it worth it.
Here's what we found when we arrived at the top of Overlook.  (Click on the photos to see a larger version.)

The Overlook Hotel:

 

The 1928 Building:

 

From here, we went up a little bit more to the lookout point.  OMG.  What an incredible view.

 

 

 We certainly weren't the first ones here...

... and I'm SURE we won't be the last.

So... all-in-all we climbed almost 1600' in about 90 minutes.  I think we calculated about 800 calories burned over the 4 hours we were hiking around, which was perfect, because we REALLY enjoyed ourselves at dinner that night.  

So ends day two of the adventures in Woodstock.  Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of the trip in my next blog entry!

12-of-12: September 2010

Hello from the new home of my 12-of-12 photos!  I'm approaching my 2-year anniversary of 12-of-12 participation and decided after last month's submission that I no longer wanted my 12 on a separate blog from my main site.  SO... from now on, please visit me (and my 12-of-12 shots) here.

For those of you new to the 12-of-12, it's a fun photography project started by Chad Darnell that goes something like this... On the 12th of each month, you post 12 photos that represent your day.  You do this for all 12 months.  There are other rules (more like guidelines), but you get the gist.  Visit Chad's site to learn more or see photos from other 12-ers around the world.

September's 12th falls on a Sunday, so the hubby and I planned a full day with (hopefully) lots of photo opportunities.  We were not disappointed.  Even with a bit of rain in the morning, we got a TON of shots... so many so, that I'm totally breaking the "rule of 12" because I couldn't shrink my set any further.

So without further ado..

12:12am at home

 Last night we watched 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' with Jack Nickolson.  Interesting film.  I didn't realize how long it was.  It was 11:45pm when it ended.  Since I'm not usually awake this late, I had to stay up a little longer to get an early shot on the 12th.  I felt this was a good time for today's project.

9am at home

Good morning!!  Had a special treat this morning for breakfast... Cranberry Honey Oatmeal bread/toast with our coffee.  YUM!  It tasted extra nice after my somewhat soggy and chilly bike ride.

1pm in Fredonia, NY

It's Concord Grape season in Western New York, so that means a road trip to Fredonia to Lasecki's Farms (a small family farm, the kind we like to support).  We got our grapes from them last year and they were AWESOME!  This year we learned that we could PICK OUR OWN!  We grabbed a couple baskets and some shears and into the vines we went.

Look at these beauties.  They smell heavenly and taste even better.  (So sorry this isn't smell-o-vision, folks).

3pm at Evangola State Park, Irving, NY

Our road trip continued up Route 5 to the park and beach!  No, 65-degrees & windy doesn't really make it a normal beach day, but it was PERFECT for the pups.  The beach is closed for swimming which means dogs have a chance to romp in the surf.  This is the south cost of Lake Erie.

The hubby and I had dueling cameras today - he was taking a picture of this tree when I snapped mine of him.

After our walk on the beach, we did a bit of geocaching!  Here are the kids relaxing (crashed-out) after their hike (with their find, of course).

On our way out of the park, we saw this cool old covered bridge.  I don't know the story behind it, unfortunately.  I couldn't help playing with the "antiquing" effect in iPhoto.

Mr. and Mrs. Whitetail Deer wished us farewell as we headed home.

8pm at home
Dinner's done, time for one more 'to do' before sitting down to publish my 12-of-12.  Turning those fresh-picked grapes into jam.

A View from the Porch
Last night's and today's rain prompted mixed feelings... kind of a bummer to not have a super sunny day for picture-taking, but we were so happy because we REALLY needed it.  It's been a dry, dry summer.  Not much change in the yard since last month... but didn't want to leave this shot out of the series.

It's 9:45pm now.  It's been a great day, but now I'm ready to relax and enjoy the last hour-or-so of the weekend with the family.  Hope you had a great 12th - see ya next month!

Geocache Pouch

Thank you, Stormdrane!
This guy is amazing.  He can do ANYTHING with paracord.  Seriously.
Not only are his pieces highly functional, but they're beautiful, too.
Oh, and THEN, he teaches everyone (including me) how to do it.

Yesterday, I set aside some time to rebuild a geocache that needed replacing.  The container hangs in a tree, so it needed to be resistant to the elements (rain, snow, mud... birds).  I found a small plastic Lock-n-Lock (R) container, but then needed help getting it to hang.

Enter Stormdrane's Blog.
He had just the thing... and a tutorial!
I found his post describing Cow Hitched Paracord Waterbottle Sleeve and used it and a previous post to put this together:

I am SO excited to get it into its place.  I am CERTAIN I'll get comments from geocachers on it (if they find the cache).  In fact, the only thing I'm worried about is that someone will take it because the pouch is so cool.  We'll see.

Thanks, again, Stormdrane.  I really appreciate all the work you do.

Spring has Sprung

The snow is almost melted!
.... muddy puppy feet everywhere.

The temps are rising!
.... did I mention muddy feet?

I took my first ride of the season!
... 8.5 miles in the rolling hills.  Ouch.

Maple Festival Weekend!
... Yummmmm, lots o' maple syrup on homemade pancakes.

Finally, Geocaching!
... first find since January - way too long between hunts.

And the crocuses.... oh, they're poppin!
... if the rain ever stops, I'll post pictures.

HAPPY SPRING!

Akron Falls Cache Log

At home, looking out the skylight... planning the day ahead

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Posted to GCZWFW: Akron Falls Earth Cache

We couldn't pass up an opportunity like today - it was sunny and warm (for late October) and with all the fall leaves, we had to do some caching.  We also have a book of the "200 Waterfalls of Central & Western NY" which lists Akron Falls. 

 

SO, we put those two things together and here we are!  (Seems a lot of other people were thinking the same thing, because the trail was packed.  Families, photography buffs, dogs, ... everybody!)

Will post pictures soon, but this was a wonderful little hike.  The large part of the Lower falls was really flowing, bubbling whitecaps crested here.  Plus, there had to be 8-10 small rivulets on the left side of the falls.  It's hard to put the entire falls into perspective and guess the width... I'll just have to look that up.

We walked up to see how much of the Upper falls we could see, but trees/branches made it tough.  It looked to be rather impressive, so maybe we'll have to make a trip up this way in the spring.

We'll also need to make a 2nd trip because we didn't have a chance to find the bonus cache.... there were just too many people.  Oh well.  This is definitely a spot we won't mind visiting again.

  Thanks for the cache!

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At home, after the cache... Swept leaves off the driveway (so you could see it) & found these five beauties while working... they needed a spot on the blog.