So we've been a bit busy. We moved from Singapore to Syracuse, NY, got an apartment, bought a car, I started grad school and now have two classes under my belt and am gearing up for Fall semester, and Jacob has been practicing, working on finding students, and working 2 jobs. And brewing beer. In the midst of that, we welcomed Ari Henrik Lippert, our nephew, to the world on June 27th, celebrated our 3rd anniversary in July, and had a visit from my sister Heather! Lots of joy. Busy joy!
Amid all this, we got to escape for a few days of camping, and since pictures are the best part of most blogs...
We camped in site 100 at Delta Lake State Park, a little ways from Utica, NY. We arrived in time to eat our take-away burritos and then hurriedly set up our tent as it began to rain. And then it rained...and rained, and rained all night. We could have gotten wetter, but it was not a great night. Fortunately, the sun came out in the morning, our neighbors loaned us some rope for a clothesline, and we managed to get everything dried out. Plus we had blueberry pancakes for breakfast, which revived us.
We drove to Pixney Falls and took a short hike, crossing many footbridges, to the falls. Beautiful!
We then picnicked before making our way to Boonville. Unfortunately, we arrived too late to check out the Lumberjack Competition (we'd only just heard about it). BUT we weren't too late to go to the Boonville Black River Canal Museum. Yeah, that's right.
I'm fairly certain we now understand how locks work.
The " 's " on this sign appears to have been an afterthought - an important one.
Our bikes fit weird on our bike rack, which means I spend 50% of drive time looking back and hoping they haven't fallen off yet.
Our first night fire proved challenging. We tried the log cabin and the teepee method, but try as we may, the wood was damp and would not consent to burn. Finally, we tried the 'go buy newspaper and lighter fluid' method, which proved successful. And we made pie-iron pizzas (in the dark).
One of the best parts about camping is eating - with impunity. Here, a pensive Jacob fries up some bacon. It occurs to me that Jacob and Bacon are composed of almost the same letters...
I took a LOT of pictures of leaves and the forest. So much green!! And it was so nice to be outside in cool weather (or, at times, COLD weather)!
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| I want to blow this picture up really big and hang it on my ceiling! |
We shared our site with a little red squirrel.
We drove over to Utica and got to go on a fantastic tour of Matt Brewery, which brews Saranac and Lake Placid Beers, and was where Blue Moon and Sam Adams really got their start. Our favorite part was definitely the bottling floor, which we got to see in operation from the observation deck. SO MUCH BEER! I could have watched for hours. We thoroughly enjoyed the tasting room, and then made our way back to our campground where we laid on the beach for a good hour, doing absolutely nothing. Good vacation.
Our second fire attempts were much better, and we got to experience the magic of 'Mystical Fire,' a packet of powder that you drop in your fire and the chemicals make the flames turn all different colors. It. Was. Awesome. Very mystical. We tried to take lots of picture.
Then, as we were enjoying our Mystic Fire, Jacob says, "Hey, what's that over there?" and shines the flash light on a raccoon size creature. Only this creature had a big white stripe down its back! I realized I had no idea how to deal with a skunk walking into your campsite...so I decided the best thing to do was to vacate the campsite. We just ran straight to the neighbor's fire. They were so nice, and pulled up some chairs and invited us to wait while the skunk passed through. Fortunately, the skunk moved on and left the air fresh and clear - and now as I unpack the camping gear, I can be thankful that I'm just unpacking regular camping gear, and not skunky camping gear. I'll drink to that!
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| WHOA!!! TOTALLY MYSTICAL!! |
So that's what we've been up to. I hope to get back to blogging more, but with classes and a research assistant position, we'll see what happens. Please let us know if you're passing through Upstate NY - we'd love to catch up!
