Dragon Dreams

 
Enjoy a dragon. I forgot to share it when I took the picture, and ran across it today. It's somewhere in a park in the Upper Peninsula.



I was so boringly good today. Not sure how many days I can keep this up, but if I can, there's hope for some fun later. I worked on accounts. I worked on volunteer stuff. I worked on cleaning the house. I started another of the drawings I'm re-doing. Not ready to show you the drawings yet, and nobody in their right mind wants to see pictures of accounting stuff.

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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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Onaway Steers the World

 
The place I stayed the longest while hiking was the city of Onaway. It has quite an interesting history. Its slogan is "Onaway Steers the World."

This comes from the former industry that made wooden steering wheels, and before that, wooden bicycle wheels. The American Wood Rim Company was founded in 1901 and burned to the ground in 1926. They used fine-grained hard rock maple to make outstanding products.



Now the local industry is Moran Iron Works, a national leader in custom metal fabrication. They have created a park on the site of the former Wood Rim factory with walkways, sculptures, and interpretive signs.

Many of the sculptures/constructions are made by Thomas Moran.



Counting the bust outside town at the Moran building, there are four famous heads: Washington, Gerald R. Ford, Lady Liberty, and Abraham Lincoln. I had seen the one of Ford before, at ArtPrize a number of years ago.



I don't know the artist for this catfish, but it's not in the park, but downtown. Northern Michigan seems to have a thing for big fish- Kalkaska has a rainbow trout and Baldwin has a brown trout. There's one I often pass in Ontario too.



This park connects to another city park, which was in full autumn splendor.



One of the really interesting places to me was practically across the street from the motel. This building appears to be abandoned. Most of the people I asked about it didn't know what it had been, but one person thought it was a former Masonic Hall. It's just a shame that places like this cost way too much to save.



Just a sampling of my recent trip that wasn't directly related to hiking. That said, I'm making a fast trip back tomorrow to hike those last few miles. It has to happen!

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