Ashokan Reservoir Hike

 
Today Marie and I had a chance to take an outdoor hike along a section of the Ashokan Reservoir, built in 1913, which is part of the New York City water supply. This is on a closed portion of road, but it makes a nice safe place to take a walk. We did three miles.

This bridge is the one that is open to traffic. The hill in the background is (I think) Ticetonyk Mountain.



These lower hills are looking to the east toward Woodstock and Hurley- just part of the lovely landscape.



This is the view down the closed road which can be walked (across the dam). I believe the jagged peak in the distance is Snake Rocks.



One thing I learned for sure is an additional piece of information about the view I showed you a few days ago. Right near the middle of this picture (zoomed in on Balsam Cap, Friday, and Cornell) there is a little pimple you can see beyond that ridge of foreground peaks. That is Slide Mountain, the highest peak in the Catskills, at 4,180 feet. It's about 5 miles beyond the foreground mountains.



High Point, which I also showed you before is just south of there. Today, the sun was setting over it. It's not a great picture, taken straight into the light, but because of another piece of info I looked up, it seems fitting to share it. Straight west of there, by about 10 miles, is the eastern terminus of the Finger Lakes Trail. Marie and I have hiked to there from the west. See May 26, 2014.



The deer are well aware that no people are allowed in to bother them.





And, just to keep a little magic in this post, we spotted a tiny ice dragon.



Nice hike, but we about froze!

Tomorrow I'll be on the move again. Stay tuned.

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More Reconnections

 
I have a few more pictures to post from Saturday of people I knew long ago. All these people are a few years younger than I am, which makes a huge difference in how well you know each other when you are still kids. They were just coming into youth group when I was leaving for college.

This is friend, Dick Ross, who was also at the funeral. We think we hadn't seen each other since 1974. That's a bit better than the full 50 years since I've seen most of the others. He's now an Elder at the church. Dick and I have reconnected on Facebook, and we seem to have quite a bit in common.



Jon and Eda Baldwin- My apologies for not getting better pictures.



And Becky Fulkerson.


Quite a bit of visiting with Marie's friends today, but I wrote 1500 words in the morning, and we also walked 3 miles at the mall.

And, speaking of writing on North Country Quest, look what word I got in our favorite game, Quiddler, this evening. Portentious? or Coincidence?

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Home Church

 
This is the church I grew up in. This picture is before my time, but I didn't take an exterior one yesterday because the snow wasn't even pretty. We found some historic photos in a box, so this is more interesting anyway. The white top of the steeple is gone (I think it was hit by lightning or something), and the trees are fewer and much bigger. I'm thinking this is maybe from around 1930. Romanesque style.


I found out yesterday that the 200th anniversary of the church will be this summer. This building was built in 1860, but the church was founded in 1819. Wow. Not sure I can manage another trip east this year, even if I'm free when the date is set.

This is what the interior looked like sometime before 1911. We found a box of photos yesterday, so I took pictures of a few. That pipe organ was still there when I was very small.



Here's what it looks like today.



The Bible verses in the front were added when I was about 10.





One has to wonder where the money came from to build such a beautiful church in such a small town. The congregation has never been able to afford the building for as long as I can remember. Currently they don't use the sanctuary at all in the winter because they can't afford to heat it.

Many mixed feelings about the whole place.

I stayed overnight with Elaine last night, but now I'm back at Marie's.

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Celebrating Elaine's Mom

 
Strangely enough, Elaine's mother died while I was still in New York, so I came to the celebration of her life today.



Many of my pictures didn't turn out very well, but I did get pictures of some of her cousins. Here she is with Nathan.



Sharon, whom I reconnected with two weeks ago was there. She's related by marriage. And two other cousins, Patty and Linda. I also reconnected with Linda two weeks ago. This was all very odd... to not see people for 50 years and then see them twice in the same month.



To complete that family of cousins, here's Elaine talking with Dan.



Apologies to any other relatives that were hoping I'd get good pictures of them. We would have needed to slow down and actually pose. The candid shots are a little too candid.

Maybe you'll see more of the church another day. It's the first time I've been back there since my own mother's funeral in 1995. Very weird feelings.

Several of us that were schoolmates and youth-group friends discussed that we think there are only three women left of our parents' generation. "We" are quickly becoming the old people. There were so many great people that helped shape us and guided our lives, and they are almost all gone. No one will really know what they were like. Soon, they'll just be names in church record books and pictures, which hopefully will get labeled.

If you a keeper of family or semi-public pictures, please label them!

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Rocks and Tea

 
The highlight of today's activities was a visit with one of Marie's friends who collects rocks, minerals and crystals. I'll lead right off with the spectacular ones, the ones that are fluorescent. Can't name anything except that some of them are wolframite, and some are fluorite.



She has a lot of them arranged in nice cases, and grouped so they are really pretty.



The deep blue in this one is azurite.



The other fluorescent ones respond to different wave lengths, but I didn't catch the entire explanation. But they sure are pretty.





She's also an artist, and we got to see her studio and a bunch of her art work. She likes bright colors, so a lot of what she does really appeals to me.

We ended with a "real" tea, with homemade scones, homemade black currant jelly, and a sip of homemade black currant cordial. And of course, tea.



Oh, and she has quite a few succulent plants, too. We definitely had plenty to talk about.

In other news, I wrote 1000 words this morning, and we did a 3-mile walk at the mall.

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