Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Brigantine Beach

We stayed in the cutest little house.



There were lots of instruments, so we had Family Band Time.
Reunited!
Luke was not afraid of the waves.

A little blurry.

Jenny and I made a sandcastle!!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Best. Campground. Ever.


We went camping in the Adirondacks, at the most beautiful little backwoods campground that I am not going to name here because we met a nice guy there who'd been camping there in the summers for 34 years and who told us, "The Internet is the worst thing that ever happened to this place!" I don't want to make things worse by spreading the name around. However, anybody who wants to know about a quiet little campground in easy driving range of home with two perfect, peaceful little lakes, an island in close canoeing distance, loons, ducks, sunsets, and dozens of lovely campsites right on the water just has to ask me. We camped at two sites there, one close to the boat launch, more or less in the middle of things, and the other farther off on a dirt road in the midst of evergreens and peace and quiet. This is the second site, high on a bluff above the water. We set up camp so close to the edge of the bluff that, inside the pop up, it felt like a tree house.


That's the lake beyond the trees.

You can see the bluff beginning to drop away.


Here's how the campsite looked from the lake.
We paddled out to the island in the middle of the lake. It's ridged and rocky and overgrown with blueberries and tall trees. There are cliffs along one side and a mass of huge boulders at one end that form, in one spt, what's almost a room on the island, with rock walls and a sun-warmed pine needle floor. There are also warm rocks along the water's edge for basking on.



Dad went scrambling up the boulders.
He looked very scenic up there.

One of the boulders juts out into the water where it's deep enough to jump off. There are two ladders for climbing onto it. You can see them both in this picture: a tall one on the right, and a shorter one reached from the deep water on the left.


Here's the jumping-off rock as seen from the lake.


While we were there, a family with two little boys and two great big dogs came paddling out to the rock. They all climbed on, even the dogs. Did you know dogs can climb ladders?


They can jump off rocks into the lake, too -- or at least, this one can. This dog plunged blithely into the lake, swarmed back up the ladder, plunged in again, swarmed back up again, and plunged in again tirelessly, while the other dog swam around anxiously beneath him and whimpered and the rest of the family cheered him on from on top of the rock.

It was really a great place. Here's the sun setting over the island from our campsite.


Here's a wider view.

Registered Jersey Cows for Sale

FOR SALE
25 REGISTERED
JERSEY COWS
22 years of top bulls.
JPIs to 171.
Scored to 92 points.
Foundation stock.
$800-$2500 per cow.
Pick one or more.
Tom,
315-691-6723

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Philly is an interesting place...

for the Fourth of July.


There is a parade and everything.

The colonial militia came.

And some Civil War soldiers.

Even Abe Lincoln was there.

I wish I knew what this was all about.




How exciting.


We had 7 different kinds of ice cream. It was great.

Impressive fireworks.

The Phillies are lame, but I sure like their ballpark.




The Savoy Company singing the national anthem.


Trash on the field. Classic Philly.

I'm a little bored. Can you tell?