Seneca Park Zoo - Bright and Weird

  I'll show you more of our zoo visit today. Too bad these beauties are poisonous. The yellow banded, and blue poison dart frogs are native to South America. Apparently they are not a danger to each other since they stopped for an afternoon chat.

If I were ever going to go to the expense and trouble of an aquarium, it would be a salt-water aquarium. I don't know the kinds of fish, but they are swimming among corals and anemones.

Here's another frog from Central America. This is the Panamanian Golden Frog. It's critically endangered. I know he's hiding, but at least I got a glimpse of it.

This one is totally weird. This is Henkel's Leaf-Tailed Gecko from Madagascar. There were two of them just plastered flat to the glass like this. From the top side, they looked like dead leaves. You know what's really weird? The front feet seem to have the suction pads in the right place, but look at the back feet. It an animal spreads its back legs out straight, the tops of the feet would be touching the glass. But these geckos seem to be doing just that and there are suction pads holding them in place.

Finally for today, I'll show you an animal which is native to the northeast U.S. But I've never seen one in the wild. This is a Hellbender. It's a giant salamander- the gray blob beneath the log. They are really unique in that they breathe through their skin. To be honest, I thought these were the same as a mudpuppy, but they are not. I'm glad it wasn't completely hiding. This one was only about a foot long, but they can get almost three times as big.

Today was our last day. We finished the book we've been reading together, we played our game, we ate whatever we wanted. It was a nice relaxing day. This blog is supposed to be only the good stuff, so I'll try not to tell you that I'm sad. Tomorrow we each head home although it will take me a couple of days to get there. It's been wonderful!

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Seneca Park Zoo - African Animals

  This is the zoo that Irene and I went to 2.5 years ago. We really had a spectacular experience today. Almost all the animals came out to show off for us. I'll just show you the African animals today. They were almost all indoors on our previous trip beause it was winter. Gotta love the giraffes.

I hadn't ever really grasped how much bigger they are than zebras before today.

The elephants are fed part of the time from high feeders to simulate what they would need to do in the wild.

The white rhinocerous was mostly just walking around, but it was startled by a small machine that was moving some materials, and I thought this was a more interesting picture.

The lions were mostly sleeping, but they were fun to watch- acting like any cat of any size. Finally, the male looked up. Check out the one on the hood of the bus in the background.

Finally for today, there were a number of baboons. They were playing and grooming themselves. I liked this one.

Here we are: Irene, Marie, and me. We had a really good time, and there are more pictures for another day.

One more day for Marie and me to spend together. We plan to just chill and enjoy it.

See Seneca Park Zoo- Mammals

George Eastman House

  We spent today with Marie's brother Steve, and his wife Karen. We went to the George Eastman museum and mansion in Rochester, NY. That's Eastman as in the man who made cameras accessible to the masses. Kodak.

This is not a mansion on the scale of some of the ones we've visited, but what there was of it was quite grand. This is the conservatory. Several years after the house was finished, Eastman decided to make this room larger. How? They cut the house in two and moved part of it 9 feet to the north!

This metal filagree ornamentation is also in the conservatory.

The "flying" staircase is found in the entrance foyer.

Eastman was music lover (think Eastman School of Music), and he had two pipe organs in the house. These are the pipes for one of them. One was destroyed by fire, but the museum managed to purchase a similar one and have it installed in the house. Eastman liked the stereo music of the two organs throughout the house. He would have music played all night by means of piano rolls- athough I guess in this case you'd call them organ rolls.

Personally, I love the bathrooms from many of the elegant houses of that era (this was built 1902-05). They are so clean and practical.

There were quite a few other public rooms, but I'll spare you. There is also a museum dedicated to photography. It was all very interesting. There are also gardens, but it's fall, and I think they haven't been tended too well for a couple of years, and one of them was undergoing renovations.

Nice day with Steve and Karen, and a perfect activity for a slightly rainy day.

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Letchworth 3 - the Gorge

  Today was the best day of this hike, and we completed the Letchworth Branch. The trail was mostly well maintained with fewer deep dips to creeks. The temperature was drop-dead perfect, and after a brief mosquito-y start, they even gave up.

But, as everywhere here, the creeks are all lined with shale. This is a good example.

The very best though, is that the trail gives a number of views of this portion of the gorge of the Genesee River. This is sometimes called the Grand Canyon of the East, but that name is also applied to a deep gorge in Pennsylvania. No matter what you call it, it's impressive.

This is a closeup of that bump in the rock wall.

And here is a view looking upstream instead of down.

Just to give you a sense of this valley, here is a longer view of the floodplain. You can barely see the river down there.

And what is the point of this? Here we are at the Mount Morris Dam. This dam is 215 feet tall, and was finished in 1951. The purpose is flood control. Downstream from this location is the city of Rochester, which regularly suffered catastropic floods prior to this date. Unless there are serious storms, the water is just allowed to flow through the dam. There is no reservoir. However, in storms, the water is held behind the dam and then released gradually to prevent the damaging floods. Twice, the water has risen to within four feet of the spillway at the top of the dam. Now glance back at the floodplain picture. And keep in mind that this valley is 17 miles long. Think about how much water was being held behind that dam!

And this is the thing my dad loved about this park. He liked to go and look at the dam. I think he had experienced one of the Rochester floods, and he understood what a big deal this is.

We have now finished the Letchworth Branch of the FLT.

Letchworth Branch of the Finger Lakes Trail. 9.4 miles, approximately Ridge Road to the northern terminus in Mt. Morris

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Letchworth 2 - Nice Trail

  Today, we hiked 10.6 hilly miles, and our legs are weary, but not feeling bad. Hooray! The trail was beautiful.

There were some really big trees. This is a white pine. It's the biggest one we saw, although we were supposedly within a mile of the largest tree in the park, a sycamore. The directions to it were sketchy, though.

Here are the upper branches of our pine.

Old turkeytail fungus is often as pretty as fresh.

The most significant feature of the day was the many gullies that had to be crossed (the source of the hills which were technically valleys). Water was not running in most of them. If it had been there would have been many, many lovely small and medium waterfalls. But it also would have been a lot more slippery. We'll settle for just seeing pretty rocks.

Just another gully that we walked beside and across.

We had dinner with Irene. Wonderful day.

Letchworth Branch of the Finger Lakes Trail, Livingstone County, NY, Access H to E (approximately Dygert Rd to River Rd a half mile north of Frost Rd).

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