Woodswoman Extraordinaire

I just had the fortune to spend an absolutely wonderful week in the Adirondacks with my family. My father and his friend S have friends who own a beautiful home on Chase Lake, which is a small, private, motor-boat free lake. The home owners were away for a few days and generously invited us to use their home. So my husband and I found a pet/house sitter (God bless her for putting up with all seven of them!) and joined my father, S, my sister, brother-in-law, and seven year old niece there for the better part of a week.

Depending on whom you ask, it could be considered a "camping" week. My niece has had the most wonderful world traveling experiences. If you ask her what her favorite city is, she answers, "Paris. But I liked Amsterdam a lot." Yet her travel experiences invariably involve room service and museums, not nature. So my sister decided it was time to introduce her to the woods and lakes. My Dad's friend S also considers Chase Lake camping. But to my husband and me who regularly sleep in a tent in the middle of nowhere, a gorgeous home with two full bathrooms, a kitchen, and wi-fi isn't quite "camping", though it's considerably closer to nature than our own home. In fact, it's pretty much my ideal home - comfortable and peaceful, surrounded by nature and on a lake. Perfect! I need a driveway like this:

Regardless on the definition, it was an absolutely splendid time. We swam and canoed and sat on the dock. My niece and brother-in-law caught a whole lot of sunfish. My niece and I got dive bombed by humming birds and caught bugs to put in a mesh bug house to examine, including this bumpy elm sawfly larva.

My husband got lost on long rides on his mountain bike. I slept late, took photos, went for runs while being serenaded by wood thrushes, and ate desert twice most days.

We even had a few piano recitals by a splendid pianist who lives on the Lake and comes to practice on the baby grand in the house. She was practicing some Romantic pieces for a recording and provided us with some deliciously peaceful interludes.

While we spent plenty of time hanging around enjoying the Lake, we also took a day trip to Old Forge to play on the water slides at Enchanted Forest, where I got a sunburn, a water slide burn, and a nasal enema. I can't even guess when I last had that much fun. My Dad and husband even raced each other in go carts, and soundly beat the rest of us at mini golf.

The time away was so badly needed. I love spending time with my nutty family, and with my husband having been working two jobs we haven't had many breaks lately. I am incredibly grateful to the generous souls who let us take over their home for a week.

Anyway, as usual, I took a ton of photos. Hope you enjoy them!

Flopsy very much enjoyed watching nature from the indoors.

I seem to have had a major theme with light and shadow throughout the trip. I guess that's not unusual for me.

This sums up the weather for most of the trip. Absolutely glorious.

I made quite a number of amphibious friends, which again isn't at all unusual for me.

This is a fantastic name for a road. And I did indeed get quite lost on it.

Any of my plant loving readers know what this is? It was growing throughout a wonderful bog my husband and I found.

I love how disorienting the reflection is in this.

Woods after a rain.

My Dad and I could only guess that this is some kind of juvenile sparrow.

For some reason, Chimney Bluffs State Park recently came up in a conversation among my Dad, my husband and me. I think we'd been discussing the geology there because my Dad had just taken a course on glaciers.

I like Chimney Bluffs - it's a neat place - though I tend to forget about it when I'm looking for a place to go for a walk. Since we'd discussed it recently, when I found myself (briefly) at loose ends on Saturday I decided to take a quick trip out there. Mind you, I have been wanting to take my husband there since he's never been and the discussion about it had piqued his interest, but he was unfortunately working Saturday and still hasn't experienced the place. Oh well - an excuse to go back again soon!

I had partially chosen to go for a walk up by Lake Ontario because Saturday was blisteringly hot and humid. I thought, gee, it will be cooler up by the lake, there will be a nice breeze. Not so much. Instead, it was still 92 degrees and suffocatingly humid up there, and all that heat was just making the Lake stink to high heaven. Lucky for you, my readers, odors don't come through on blog posts, so you're spared the reek of giant dead carp and rotting seaweed. Frankly, Lake Ontario is kind of nasty most of the time - there was a ton of garbage on the beach, as always, and a lot of dead things.

Too, it was ridiculously crowded. I had never seen so many people there. There were long strings of motor boats tied up together and floating in the bay, and dozens and dozens of people walking on the beach. It made getting photos of the cliffs difficult since I didn't want random sunburned strangers in my photos. I'm picky that way. But despite the crowds, the heat, the stickiness, and the stench, I still got a few cool shots that I like.

The "cliffs" are essentially eroded dirt. They were formed out of glacial till that was deposited there during the last ice age, and because they are just dirt and small rocks, they are constantly changing and eroding. The ice on the Lake plays a role in their formation and erosion too, because it breaks up in huge, powerful, churning chunks in the spring. I am not certain whether the rocks in this embankment are naturally in the embankment and slowly drop out as the dirt around them erodes, or whether the ice and/or waves smashed them into the bank. Regardless, they're cool.

I liked this section of cliff, too, since you can see such clear striations in it.

As I strolled along the beach I encountered a small, well-camouflaged friend. Can you spot him?

Here he is.

He just sat and let me take his portrait without complaint. I'm not entirely sure how healthy he was - the beach of the Lake doesn't seem like a very frog-friendly spot. He had little flies walking around all over him, including across the surface of his eyes. (I kept wanting to tell him to lick himself for a snack!) But when I finally reached out a finger to touch him, he gave a great healthy leap, so he can't have been too bad off.

Alas, I only had a small window of time for a walk, and had to leave before I got too far down the beach. It was nice to have a little bit of time there, though, with the blue sky and waves. I shall leave you with the rest of my photos.