Back from the Finger lakes

We went to the finger lakes this weekend - up in Bristol, New York for this:

Meg and Travis got married. Megan was one of Harland's buds in college.

It was a really beautiful day, and they got married on a hilltop overlooking Canandaigua Lake.
This is the view from a small park about a mile down the road from the wedding:

Beautiful.


Here's us mucking up the view:

We had a really nice time, we stayed at a beautiful and wonderful Bed & Breakfast. It was romantic and the innkeeper, Sheryl was really super nice. It was hands down the best bed and breakfast we've been to. If you are ever in the area, you should check out the 1795 Acorn Inn I can't say enough good things about it.



The area is well known for its vineyards.



We also went to see the northern side of Canandiagua Lake... and took a tour of the NY Wine and Culinary Center. At the Wine and Culinary Center, we tasted several area wines including rhubarb wine (although it was crazy sweet - like juice).

Shenandoah!

Hello, We went to Shenandoah again! (if you want to revisit the entries for the last time we went click on October 2006 in the right panel). This time we dragged Harland's sister along. She is not much of an outdoors person but as fate would have it, the treadmills in our Gym didn't work yesterday morning so we convinced her it would be good exercise.

It rained a little on the way there, and so the views were quite foggy/smoggy/hazy. Here is a picture at one of the overlooks.


We walked part of the Appalachian Trail (the AT for short) and then hiked up to a "day shelter" called Byrd's Nest 4. When we got there - there was quite a field and there were two deer. The shelter was occupied by a bunch of Carpenter Bees, so we turned around.


Along the way to the Byrd's Nest #4, we saw some pink lady's slippers.


It was a nice little hike, there was also a mystery bush that the bees love and it was very pretty but I have no idea what it is. I consulted my Newcomb's Wildflower guide, as well as my instant wildflowers and my Peterson First guide to wild flowers I had when I was a kid, but to no avail. Does anyone know what this bush is??


Here are some more pictures of us at the overlook.



And then while driving on the way out, we saw a mama bear and a baby bear (who was clinging to a tree). I tried to get a picture as we drove by but it was unsuccessful. There were a bunch of idiots out of their cars blocking the area and taking pictures (hello, BABY BEAR AND MAMA BEAR - NOT SAFE!!). Unfortunately, I totally got a terrible picture. See that dark blur behind the tree in the middle? That's mama.

Haha. Oh well at least I got to see it, Poor Harland and Teresa in the front didn't get to see the baby bear hanging.

Stove Review

Hey There!!
Well I finally had time to write a little blurb about our gear. First up (on request by my dear Uncle Buddy) is our new stove.

We had quite a time deciding on a stove. There a lot to choose from and the technology these days really has made them be quite durable, easy to use and light. After a while we were down to three: The one I liked was the MSR Whisperlite (because it white gas which you can get in a lot of different countries and eventually we want to backpack in Australia), Harland liked the Primus Etapower (he liked the convenience of the canister fuel and the pots), and we ended up compromising with the Jet boil, which is awesomesauce (and it was on sale which was a bonus).


First of all everything packs into the pot which is nice.

It is easy to set up and with the little feet on the canister it is very stable.

You don't need to prime it (yay since I am a bit scared of setting my eyebrows on fire) and it starts with the push of a button, literally.

It also boiled our water in less than 2 minutes.

Cons... well this isn't really a con for us - but if you hike in very cold mountains, sometimes you can have problems with the gas being cold. But I think that happens with all canister stoves.

So that is the end of the first review. I give it two thumbs up.

BTW, my cilantro and dill finally sprouted new leaves. Their first real leaves that look like grown up plants. The rosemary and mint never did come up. I am going to have to purchase a rosemary plant and steal some mint from my dear Mom's herb garden.

Camping Again!

We went back to Prince William Forest Park again this weekend. First we hiked around the park (this is what I have pictures from, I forgot to bring my camera to the campsite).

First we hiked to the old Pyrite Mine. They used to mine pyrite for sulfuric acid. And here I thought it was only used to trick people into thinking you had gold. :) The mine area was being worked on this weekend - they are planting trees to encourage the growth of a hard wood forest. 70 some years later and the water and land here is still polluted from the mine. If you look on the hillside you can see volunteers planting.


Then we hiked down to the falls of the Quantico Creek. They are about 2 feet high at the most. Still it was a very nice day for a hike (cool and breezy) and although the hike back up was rough on poor little out of shape me, it was all worth it. Here is a picture of the falls. Lovely, no?


The if you look closely in the second photo, you can see some laurel. I took a close-up shot on the side we hiked down. (editor's note, I have no idea why but this picture disappeared).

I also took a picture of us. Don't we look happy to be out and about?

And when we were resting a bit on the rocks, we noticed a little still pool in between some rocks! And there were little polliwogs! Maybe tadpoles? It's funny - you can see the clouds reflected in the pool. That why it looks kinda odd.

So the deal with the Park is there is a backcountry area. You have to file for a permit (permit's free) and then get a key and go over to a section of the park that is next to the Quantico Base. But I guess the Marines cut the locks and replace them to keep the National Park Service on their toes. And so we (and two other sets of people) had keys but they didn't work. And there is nothing the NPS could do - so we had to hike to the start of the trail. It probably added something less than a mile (and it was all downhill on the way in) but I was already tired. But Harland encouraged me and so we hiked in and camped. Carrying all the stuff... well... let's just say that my pack has made me very aware of certain muscles. I'm on the wrong side of sore.

It was a very peaceful night - no thunderstorm like they predicted (yay!) and I am fairly well rested. The birds were quite chirpy this morning, including a very close-by and rather loud cardinal. We also saw a deer grazing on the hike in last evening.

I'll start posting reviews of our gear this week, hopefully starting tomorrow. I wish I had some action shots... but I forgot to take the camera out of the day pack when the whole key thing got me flustered. We might go **somewhere** next weekend hiking, but I dunno where yet.

Important news flash!!!

So I only have a minute before I have to hit the shower and then got to work (so much overtime lately I have been too tired to blog at night about my gear, sorry! I'll hopefully get to it this weekend).

I'm not going to Denmark.

Anyway remember that game when you were a kid where people whispered into each others ears some silly sentence and it went around the room and then finally got back to the 1st person and it totally changed? Like "Sally sells shoes at Subway" tuned into "Sally wears bells to the Safeway"? Some people call the game telephone while others called it whisper down the lane.

So something happened to that effect. Denmark was the end result.
Really it should be The Hague (Den Haag)


hahahaha. So The Netherlands it is!

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

This title is a quote from T.S. Elliot. Apropos for the week.

I know a lot of people right now who are very stressed or depressed or just plain unhappy. People are lonely, sick of their jobs, sick of spouses, sick of moving, sick of worrying, sick over money, sick of kids, sick of ___ (fill in the blank). I'm not sure why this is all happening at once. I'd say maybe it is something that happens at a certain age, but it's a wide age range. I'd say it was regional - but we're spread across the world.

What's going on?

Where's the Life?

I dunno - life is rough. There is a lot to be unhappy about if you think about it. Of course there are happy things to think about too. It's hard to remember them sometimes. And sometimes the bad things seem to heavily weigh more than the good. I certainly don't have answers. But this week I decided (again) to concentrate more on the good than the other. And to concentrate getting the most out of my free time. I've heard more than one person say to me this week "I'm not where I thought I'd be." I know I'm not either. When I was a kid I thought when I grew up I'd either live in a city flat with a cat having some high powered career... or I'd be backpacking around the world helping people as some kind of mini-version of Mother Theresa. Obviously I'm neither of those. But I never thought about all the incredibly cool people I'd meet and know, or that I'd get married to one of them. And I have traveled a little bit.

Speaking of traveling.. One of the reasons I get excited about camping and backpacking is because now that we have the gear it will enable us to make more trips for less monies. This makes me happy because there are a lot of places I want to see in the States. Heck even in Virginia!

It was supposed to be really sunny today, and we bought a bunch of equipment at the REI annual sale last night(if you need outdoors stuff - get yourself there this weekend, a lot of essentials are 25% off!! We figured yesterday we saved around 80 bucks). I thought maybe we could go hiking and camping and try out our new stove. We now have everything we need except for a shovel (for the, um, outdoor business). That will be our last purchase and then we are free to hike and camp anywhere we want (some restrictions apply). But it is not sunny here, it is threatening some serious rain - the sky is crazy black.

So there. Traveling is part of the Life for me. Now I just gotta figure out the rest.
If you're reading this I probably owe you an e-mail or phone call. Sorry - I worked a mess of overtime recently. I'm not ignoring ya on purpose. Honest.

Also I had an inquiry about my gear (hi Uncle Buddy!) and so I'll be posting about the gear we got. Stay tuned.

Seed Update: I think I see a mint sprout trying to poke through - but still no rosemary, which is the 2nd most desired of my herbs that I wanted for my outdoor garden. (1st being basil, 3rd being cilantro). I really hope it pops up soon.


Loves and hugs.

Wake up Sleepyheads!

Well - Look what sprung up recently!
Here some of the little seedlings. There are basil and cilantro here...

And here are the dill seeds, I love the way the way the water droplets collected on the top of the sprouts this morning. The dill sprouts are sooooo incredibly thin and tiny.

I left the seedlings near the window today and when I came home they were all bent over trying to reach the window. I turned them 180 degrees today so hopefully they will lean the other way tomorrow.

The rosemary and mint have not yet sprouted. Should I be worried? Or do they have longer germination periods?