Greetings from the Pocanos

Despite the rain that followed us here we're enjoying ourselves. Read a couple of books, hiked enough to be sore and visited the Eckley Miners Museum.

Home Again

We enjoyed our week in Florida despite my being in pain for most of the week. I finally stopped hurting by the end of the week but as soon as we hit cold weather the pain was back. It's really more of a constant ache now but it is darn annoying. I saw my NP just before we left and I'm trying to decide if I should get back in to see her our just wait until my work physical on the 10th.

Anyway, we enjoyed the warmth and the sunshine. We took a day and went back to Blue Springs State Park to see the manatees again. It was a cool but not uncomfortable day.

Gar that seemed suspended in the current.

Just pretty shadows on the stream.

After our morning at the park we went to see Mary and Hugh, John's sister and brother-in-law. They have a very nice winter home near Orlando and we enjoyed our visit.

Around here we see Robins in pairs so I was surprised to see a flock of them flitting from palm tree to palm tree. It seemed wrong somehow to see Robins in palm trees. I took several pictures but I find birds impossible to photograph. I'm very jealous of those of you that not only do it well but make it look easy!

Here is a picture of a woodpecker that was in a tree at the edge of the parking lot. It was quite unconcerned by my presence and just kept working away as I took snap after snap figuring surely one of them would come out. This is the best of the lot :(

We also had a visit at the condo by a raccoon which we found surprising until we realized that the people in the unit next to us had left a bag of trash just out side their door. He traveled from door to door, wandered the parking lot and even checked out the pool before he moved on. I also took several pictures of him but I'll spare you you having to look at them.

I found this flower at one of the rest areas in Georgia. I have no idea what it is but flowers in February are just amazing to me and I was thrilled by the number we saw.


Mostly we just relaxed. I read several novels, a pleasure I never seem to have time for any more. We ate out every night :) and one night we went to a dinner theater. It really wasn't very good but it was a fun night out anyway. A one week vacation never seems long enough!

I can't recall another trip south where the traffic was so light and the weather so good. We didn't run into any bad weather on the way home until we were back in New York. We arrived home to a driveway with two feet of new snow that had drifted higher in spots. B had come over the day before we came home to snowblow it for us but the gas line had frozen while we were gone. He did shovel the end of the driveway enough that we were able to get off the road. John shoveled, B came over and shoveled some more and then the next door neighbor came over with his blower and got us cleared out.

It was tough going back to work on Tuesday but the kids were great and I thought how easy my route has been this year compared to years past. Such thoughts are dangerous! On Wednesday my secondary kids thought breaking up pencils into little pieces and throwing them around was great fun. Not expecting trouble I was oblivious to the mayhem for several minutes! They're a sneaky bunch. The ring leaders spent Thursday before the bell cleaning the bus rather than visiting with their friends. The elementary kids gave me fits starting on Wednesday too. By Friday afternoon I was really ready to head home. Hopefully next week will be better.

Mike and Alex were here for the afternoon and Alex is one sick little boy. He has both a sore throat and a tummy ache. I can't recall seeing him so miserable since he was a baby. I'm hoping that whatever he has is just a 24 hour thing and that he's back to being his usually busy self tomorrow.

I feel like I'm always trying to play catch up with this blog and I don't see that changing any time soon :( Garden club starts up again this month so I have to work on that blog some and I have fallen way behind transcribing letters for Apple's Tree. Busy is better than bored I guess. Maybe I'll make you all feel better later in the week and share some pictures of our snow.
*sigh*

Old Forge

With summer school over, John and I decided to get away for a couple of days so we headed to Old Forge. It had been years since we'd been there, the last time was a day trip when the kids were young and we took them to Enchanted Forest.

It was an interesting trip. We were robbed before we made it all the way into town!

We took the train out of Thendara and it was held up by the Loomis Gang.
Guys on horseback and with shotguns stop the train.

The characters move from car to car.

I have ridden on the Adirondack Scenic Railroad a couple of times before and this was certainly the most fun I've ever had. A tip if you go, sit on the station side of the car to see the action outside.

We moved on to our motel, right on the pond.

We were pleased with the views from our balcony.

At check-in the key to our room was missing and they had to get a spare. We were told the key was probably in the room. It wasn't. I had no trouble opening the door. When we went to go out for dinner John tried it and couldn't get it to work. I tried it and it worked just fine! I told him it was just pay back for all those times that I've told him something was broken and it worked just fine for him.

Of course I could no longer get it work when we returned... We had to go get a new key and were told it was no problem they had several sets.

The door to the adjoining room had just a bedroom type lock, with the lock on our side. I don't think I would have been happy in the other room knowing that the folks next door could pop in when ever they wanted! There may have been a chain or something on the other side but we didn't try to open it and find out. There was no bolt or chain on either of our exterior doors which made me a little uncomfortable at night. We've had a couple of odd experiences in similar situations not to mention the missing and surplus keys.

There was a free lawn concert that we were able to enjoy from our room.

The lake was pretty at night too.
I loved this bright yellow boat house.

Old Forge Pond sits at the beginning of the Fulton Chain of Lakes. Rather than rent a boat we decided to cruise the first four lakes with Old Forge Lake Cruises.
The boat had a nice open top deck. There was a group that had come up on the train from Utica. We happened to pick the time when they were filming a tourist piece and we got a staring bit walk on roles. OK we actually just got to sit in our seats while the video was being shot.

The videographer was on the mail boat which was keeping pace with us just outside the main channel. If you see the video look for me - I'm the one taking pictures of the camera. We were all watching him and waving when all of a sudden he just about fell out of the boat as it suddenly slowed! I think they just hit a sand bar and everyone was OK but they didn't follow us much further.

Now I love kids. Maybe that radiates off of me or something but it seems that small children are always seated behind me on buses, trains, planes and boats. The little guy behind me was cute as a button and bored to tears. I started cracking up when he was whining and his father, after several attempts to figure out what he wanted (the boy said juice three times) told him to tell his mother what he wanted because dad couldn't make out what he was saying. As much as I like kids, I do not like having my chair kicked repeatedly or being hit in the back of the head by flailing arms. When we got to the turn around point we headed downstairs where the view wasn't nearly as good and I wish we'd stayed up top.

In one of the narrows we passed a kayaker and his dog. Yes, the dog was in the kayak and if he'd had his way he would have chased our boat right out of the water. The dog was barking and lunging and the guy was holding onto the dog to keep it from jumping in after us. I was cracking up. As far as I could see the kayak stayed upright. I wonder if the same rules apply to dogs in kayaks as dogs in canoes? LOL Naturally, I had put the camera away so I missed out on a great picture.

The rest of our trip was fairly uneventful. We read a couple of books, enjoyed the wildlife and relaxed.

Home Again

We had a great time on vacation but it's good to be home again. We enjoyed seeing an area of the country that we'd never seen before. We enjoyed a lot of country music and great scenery.

Never one to pass up an opportunity to drive something new I got to drive a duck (DUKW) on our last day there.

They made me let all of the kids go first! lol Our driver was Captain Crunch and we had a great time. He only let me "drive" out on the lake but I had a blast.

I'll be going into work tomorrow to check out my bus. I'm really looking forward to seeing all of "my" kids again on Wednesday!

Happy Labor Day

Bathroom Follies

(This is what you get when blooger won't let me upload pictures!)

John and I aren’t quite yet to the point where we need to buy a trailer to tow a blue-boy when we travel but we do make fairly frequent stops. I dread the filthy gas station facilities so we usually try and stop at public rest areas.

Most of the places we’ve stopped have commodes that flush for you. Are they on a timer or something? It’d be really nice if they’d wait until I was done! Am I the only one that this happens to? Then you get out to the sinks. Nobody else seems to have any problem but there I am waving my hands all over trying to get the water to start. At one stop I gave up and moved to the next sink and started waving again only to have the first sink turn on. Then I have to make the huge decision – paper or air dry? I have yet to get one of the new “no touch” paper dispensers to work without touching the red sensor. The air dryers involve more wild hand waving. In the interest of saving both trees and energy I usually opt for the seat of my pants. We stopped at one rest area that had a little cut out in the wall and was labeled that it would give you water, soap and then air all in one spot if you’d simply place your hands in the wall. It must have been designed by a tall man but since there was nobody else around I decided to give it a try. I lifted my hands up to shoulder level and plunged them into the wall. Of course nothing happened so I started wiggling my fingers and then waving my hands as much as the small space would allow. Luckily for me they had an old fashioned sink. John said they had the same set up on the mens side and it turned on after he’d moved on to the regular sink, so it’s not just me! We’re lavatory challenged as a couple!

At our first hotel things were pretty straight forward. I was quite pleased that I didn’t need an instruction manual to turn on the shower. My luck changed when we got to the resort. The commode worked fine but I could not get water to flow from any of the three sinks. I called the desk and they sent maintenance down. Seems they’d turned off the water to the unit earlier in the day but failed to turn it back on. The unit has a really pretty corner unit - combo jetted tub/shower. I can’t reach the water controls until I get into the tub first! The water was scalding hot so I kept moving it towards the blue. Red for hot, blue for cold right? Wrong! I finally got the temperature right but there was nothing there to switch over to the shower. I pushed and pulled on everything until I gave up, got out of the tub and went in search of John. He got in the tub and proceeded to push and pull on everything to the point that I thought he was going to pull the thing right off of the wall! He finally pulled down on the ring where the water was flowing out and eureka! I later tried to take a bath but couldn’t get the jets to work. John to the rescue again. I simply hadn’t held the button down long enough. A couple of days later John went to take a shower and after getting in the tub discovered that we had no hot water. Hopefully I won’t run into any more new designs on this trip but I have a bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse just in case!

This is also the first trip where I have been provided reading material in the stall. At the resort they have “mini-billboards” on the stall doors so I can think and think about what shows I want to see. At the one of the visitor’s centers they had the schedule of events posted there and that was how I discovered they had a butterfly garden. With informative reading like that you better hope the line doesn’t get too long!

Postcards from the Ozarks

Here are some pictures from our picnic at Bull Shoals – White River State Park in Arkansas. We had the picnic area at Big Spring all to ourselves!

Having a great time! Wish you were here!

St Louis

We left fairly early and headed across the Mississippi into St Louis. John was driving so occupied myself taking too many pictures so that I wouldn't have to think about the traffic. I was surprised at how far out you could see the Gateway Arch.

There were very few people visiting the park today. The combination of heat, the threat of rain and the fact that most kids are back in school already worked in our favor.

We decided to take the tram to the top. There was no line and we got a car to ourselves. This was a very good thing. The tram cars are very small. Because of the shape of the arch they are a combination elevator - ferris wheel.

The observation area at the top is designed to hold over 100! If there had been 100 people up there you wouldn't have been able to see anything but the person next to you.

This is the Historic Old Courthouse.

Barges moving down river and a Casino barge in the background.

We toured The Museum of Westward Expansion. This was a sod house display. Can you imagine living in a house like this?

Then we headed down to the riverfront for a 1 hr boat tour. What a disappointment! There were only about 20 of us on the boat and you really didn't get to see much. Not nearly as much fun as a the tour I took on the St Lawrence.

I was facinated with the architecture of the Eads bridge. Completed in 1874 it was refurbished in 2003.

After lunch we headed to Confluence State Park. To reach the point where the Missouri and the Mississippi join you have to drive several miles down a gravel road through cornfields.
When we finally got to the park we were surprised to find a concrete sidewalk leading right down to the river. We were the only ones there and we just enjoyed the quiet. We should have packed a picnic!

I've only seen the Mississippi once before, when we went to Tunica, MS. Both times I expected to be mightily impressed with the river and both times I was disappointed. I guess growing up in NY with our rivers has spoiled me. There was very little river traffic and both rivers, though peaceful in the park, were lacking somehow.

Thunderstorms rolled through this afternoon and evening. The hotel lost power for awhile. Tomorrow we'll be heading to Branson. I'm not sure whether or not I'll have internet access there.

What's the Buzz in Illinois?

According to the desk clerk here it's locusts and they are quite loud. We started to hear them at dusk along the highway. We traveled 14 hours through 5 states. Vacation has begun!

Our first vacation sunset was a pretty one.

Vacation Has Begun!

I finished my job cleaning buses on Wednesday. Yea! It was a tougher job than I thought it would be. If I never see another piece of gum again it will be too soon. lol. The fleet looks great and I think the drivers will be pleased. The last bus I did was the one I'll be getting. It is so nice! I went in and did some office work on Friday. Nearly everyone one commented on the fact that I was wearing a dress. It felt soooo good to look good. I'm looking forward to the first week in September but I'm going to enjoy my three weeks off first!

I went to the eye doctor on Thursday. I'm unhappy to report that I'll be getting my first pair of bifocals. :( I've known for awhile that I needed new glasses and decided to give myself time to get used to them before September.

The kids were here last night. Liz had asked us to get the movie Robots so that's what we watched. It had a lot of grown-up stuff that seemed to go right over the kids heads. It was a fun movie and they really loved it. The DVD had extras on it and we all were up dancing to to Robot variations of old disco dances.

The weather today was absolutely perfect. Country Girl and I went to see a garden that is only open to the public once a year. It was really quite amazing. You'd never know it was there just looking at the house from the street. On our way to that garden we stopped at a friend's, as she and some thers were going too. She gave us a quick tour of her garden, which is very beautiful too. Before we left she had given Country Girl a large clump of rasberry beebalm and I ended up with some of that. She really didn't make me beg too much. I spent the afternoon planting and weeding and just enjoying the day. Right now I'm sitting on my old glider trying to catch up on blogs while watching the hummingbirds and butterflies. It doesn't get much better than this!

Time Flies

Why do the days seem to pass so quickly when you're on vacation? I can't believe my three week vacation only has four days left! And I don't have much to show for the time off. I've spent time in the garden and it is coming along nicely. The two painting projects I have planned for the summer remain in the planning stages. I have done some scanning for a project I'll write more about later.

I took Mom to her eye doctor appointment today and I'm very glad I did. The doctor didn't see her until almost two hours after her scheduled appointment time. She told him that the vision in her left eye had been getting steadily worse. He looked and sure enough a film had developed on both eyes around her lens implants. No problem - he can fix that with the laser. I was picturing a trip to the outpatient surgery center sometime next month. It happens that just down the hall in another room is a laser. We were taken down there and before she had time to get too nervous he was done! Her vision was back to normal almost immediately. We spent some time this afternoon going through old photos that I ended up bringing home to scan.

Thousand Islands

My sister, Country Girl, and I decided to head up to Alexandria Bay yesterday. We decided on the Castle tour. I really enjoyed Singer Castle, which was a guided tour. You couldn't see everything and the castle seemed smaller than we expected but it was neat to see all of the old furnishings. Our tour guide was a pleasant young lady and we learned quite a lot about the castle, it's secret passages, previous owners and bootlegging. The day started out beautifully sunny but the clouds moved in about the time we returned to the boat so it was a rainy trip onto Boldt Castle. We had recently had a guest speaker at our garden club that talked about all the work that has been done at Boldt Castle. We were very disappointed. The main floor and grand staircase have been restored but that was it. Not much was new to us as we'd both been before. The grounds didn't enthrall us as we'd expected but that may have been due to the weather. We felt bad for the bridal couple whose ceremony had to be moved indoors. With all of the tourists and weeding guests the place was mobbed. I have never seen the yacht house and the weather kept us from going over this trip too. Maybe next time. I took over 100 pictures of our day but I'll only subject you to 25 of them :)

Getting Paid to Lose Weight

My three week vacation is only three days away! The kids have been pretty good but there is that end of the year excitement. (That is they have been very LOUD!) We started half days today and miraculously everyone had someone waiting for them even though I was earlier than I had told them to expect me.

So why am I getting only three weeks when the kids get ten? I was the last person on the list to get summer work so I will spend four weeks cleaning buses. I'm still trying to decide if that was good luck or bad. lol I'm hoping to lose at least 10 lbs so I'm looking at it as getting paid to lose weight. The new, larger me has no clothes to wear for a such a dirty job so I got to go shopping at Kohl's as they had a great deal on knit shorts and tops. Shopping for new clothes is always fun even when you know you are going to ruin them! Of course I had to swing through the children's departments so my $30 trip cost way more than that but the clearance prices were too good to pass up and I even started my Christmas shopping!

After cleaning I'll get another three weeks off. John found us a great deal in Branson, MO so we're looking forward to going someplace we've never been before. I've also always wanted to visit St Louis, which is right on the way. I'm having fun ordering travel brochures for other places we may want to see along the way. Suggestions welcome!

Sunnier, Happier Days

Theme: ARCHITECTURE | Become a Photo Hunter | View Blogroll

I was going to go out and take pictures of some of the interesting barns I see see everyday or maybe the old huge victorian farm house down the road a piece but the weather here has not cooperated!

So I decided to post something from sunnier, happier days and couldn't decided between fancy and simple architecture so I decided to share both.

This is the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City. We went one very warm summer and enjoyed walking the boardwalk, the cool breezes and our favorite vacation activity - people watching. We only live about 6 hours from Atlantic City but I have only been the one time. I always love to see onion domes; these are the only ones I've seen that weren't on a church.

One of our most memorable vacations ever started out in the little cottage on the left. We traveled to Jamaica with our best friends and had some of our worst vacation hassles ever but since they were with us some of our best memories are also from here. I have no desire to ever visit Jamaica again but can't wait for our next vacation with friends.

Our Bags Are Packed

Snow = exhaustion, frustration, depression.

We used our 5th and last snow day today. If we use anymore we will loose days from our April break. So I am on vacation a day early. We were open the last two days and they were stressful. I've driven in worse but ............

The hood of my bus is 5' off the ground so clearing heavy snow off is physically hard for me. My lights and wipers have had to be cleared constantly. The kids behavior is always worse when the weather is bad. Wednesday I managed to get my car stuck twice. I was able to rock it out both times......frustrating.

John spent over two hours shoveling and raking again today in a bitter wind. Just after he had pulled all the snow down on the kerosene tank the delivery truck showed up and he had to dig the tank out right then. All that was on the truck was 32 gallons so that was all we got. That put us back to 1/2 a tank so we're good for awhile but it was frustrating for John to work that hard and not get topped off. He also had to dig out the propane tank.

We only had to have the plow come once today. Our mail hasn't been delivered the last three days. The box is finally cleared to where they can get to it again. Our newspaper box is totally demolished we'll have to get them to give us a new one.

The snowblower is fixed but we can't have it back yet. It's actually been fixed since Tuesday but they won't let us have it back until Arien's authorizes the warranty payment. They finally told us today that it takes about a week to get authorization. Does this make sense to anybody else? They get to take a week to pay while we have to pay to have the driveway plowed 2 or 3 times a day? Another week of plowing bills and I could have bought a new snowblower!

We are planning to head south in the morning. The last I heard route 81 is closed in PA so it may be a longer trip than usual but by tomorrow night I should see grass! BJ is going to house sit for us and everything seems to be in good shape so I won't have to worry about anything. Hopefully Sunday I'll be sitting in the sun reading a good book!

Count Down To Vacation

I'm sick of writing about the weather (and sick of dealing with it to!) Suffice to say that it snowed again today and we expect more tomorrow and the day after, and the day after that etc, etc. It has settled down some; school was on time today and the roads were good.

Winter break starts as soon as I get home on Friday! We're getting out of town. We love to travel and have been many places.

A week is not long enough for a trip to any of the foreign places on my list left to visit so we will be revisiting one of the states we've been to many times. There will be no snow and we've seen a couple of giant mice there. But it's a manatee that I hope to see.

How much of the world have you seen?

The Island of Hispaniola

We had a nice relaxing vacation in the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola. This was our fourth trip there but first at this resort. We stayed at the Fun Royale Resort in the Playa Dorado complex on the north shore. Tropical storm Ernesto sailed by the south side of the island our first day there giving us warm rain and was here to greet us again on our return with very COLD rain!

After Ernesto had passed by we had hot, sunny weather for the rest of the week. We spent a day lying on the beach and the other days at one of the pools at the resort. In years past we have gone on various tours but this time we just relaxed. I reread a favorite book, we played several games of On the Rocks and Cribbage and ate way too much. As this was a last minute trip I hadn't brushed up on my meager Spanish but it came back as the week went on. This was the first resort that we have stayed at where it was totally unnecessary anyway. Overall we were quite pleased with this resort. With the exception of one bartender and the Internet vendor, the staff were all quite friendly and ready to do whatever they could for you. The couple of problems we had were taken care of very quickly.

There was family of peacocks that roamed the grounds and quite a few cats. I loved watching the swallows soar over the pond, it was like watching a dance. My tipsy looking pics were my attempts at capturing them and not the effects of the rum! You had to watch out for the blackbirds that sailed through the restaurant that would steal from any unattended plate! The grounds were pretty. John enjoyed watching the golfers try to carry the water hazard right by the pool bar.

There were several others from the United States there which was a pleasant surprise for us as in the past we have rarely met anyone else from the US. There were also lots of folks from Canada, Germany, England, Ireland and Scotland. We both enjoy "people watching" and we weren't disappointed with this group! What a lot of people don't seem to realize when traveling is that they are ambassadors of their countries. We know from our travels that Americans are not always well thought of and work to change that. Almost all of the children were cute and very polite. Unfortunately too many of the adults, no matter what their nationality, felt that the F word was perfectly acceptable to use in every sentence. We love to travel with Canadians, we always have a good time. The Scots all struck me as very nice. The Germans were a contradiction, at the same time both reserved and happy go lucky! I'm sure the language barrier was at work here. The Brits were to largest group and their personalities were quite mixed. We enjoyed meeting some of the older couples and could have done without the younger ones. Almost all of the Irish we met were obnoxious which is too bad, as they left me with an unfavorable view of their county. I'm sure they were not representative of their whole nation and hope to meet others in the future.

I don't know what others felt it was necessary to pack for a week or two at the beach but everyone else seemed to have huge suitcases. Our tour rep was warning that heavy cases would be assessed a surcharge on our return to the airport. When we were leaving the rep that met us commented on the small amount of luggage that we had. So why then did very few of the men have appropriate clothes (dockers and a nice shirt!) for dining out in the evening!!!

If you'd like more information on our stay at the resort, tips for what to pack, or tips for Americans wishing to save money by traveling on the charters out of Toronto leave a comment.