Walking the Ridge

On a beautiful fall afternoon, Dave and I took the Thunderbird to Thatcher's Park and the Helderberg Escarpment.

There are several hiking trails, although we did not attempt to go down the Indian Ladder. Just be sure to stay on the trail side of the fences! It is a long way down to the valley and most of the paths are right on the edge...

These milkweed pods brought back memories of when I was a kid and used to pop them, getting all sticky in the process.

The trail along the ridge wanders through the trees which were really yellow, compared to all the rest. Yes, it really is autumn now!

We stopped at the new visitors center, which is quite impressive. As you can see, it was rather crowded that day.😉

In the spring we will be back to do some more hiking, some of which includes waterfalls. If we go early enough we might even see them still frozen. We did the Indian Ladder in May once and they were still like icebergs. Wish I had brought my camera that day, because we may never see it like that again. Thanks to the internet I found this...

Maybe I really would rather go when it is warmer though. 😉

All In Red

We took our last cruise on Lake George in Moxie this past week. It was a coincidence that we were all in red...

What a gorgeous fall day it was! Now both Moxie and Foxie are winterized and sitting happily in the garage waiting for next spring.

Starting Over

We now have a plan for this winter...and hopefully many more winters to come. Dave spent several days in Florida looking at places for us to stay. He started in Stuart, but ended up finding a lovely, newly remodeled mobile home in a 55+ community in quaint Jensen Beach. The park has a heated pool, lots of amenities, good biking and walking, and close to a US Sailing Center. This will all take some adjusting to, but we are good at doing just that. In fact, instead of towing down boats, we will tow down my PT Cruiser Convertible, since it looks like we will be spending more time driving around. Why not have fun doing it?! We will also have our kayaks in the van and use of sailboats at the sailing center.

Although our place is partially furnished, we still need to start over with everything a household needs like linens, towels, pots and pans, dishes, utensils, tools for Dave, etc. Bring on the yard sales!  We used to bypass pristine looking estate sales, because we were looking more for barn finds to add to our collection. Now all that has changed and we are keeping an eye out for those higher end, what we call 'sterile', sales for all the nice, gently used bargains.

The best part about being in this area is that we have many friends that live there now, including some other Hope Town Sailing Club members that have been displaced by Hurricane Dorian (we still don't know anything more about our roofless apartment or our boats). Plus my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew are less that 3 hours away in Daytona, so we will be visiting at least once a month.

Today we took our first step away from our winter season in Hope Town by retiring from our positions on the executive committee. I will continue to post updates on the sailing club website until a new webmaster can be found. Dave's Sunfish Fleet Captain isn't quite as imperative right now as the Sunfish fleet is strewn throughout the settlement in Hope Town following the storm, so there may not be any fleet anyway. It will be sad not to be a part of the community, as it was part of our lives for so long. However, we are staying positive and ready to head to another 'new horizon' and see what is in store for us!

Trucks Galore

This is the weekend of the much anticipated annual truck show at the Saratoga County Fairgrounds in Ballston Spa. This year there weren't quite as many vendors, but even more trucks than last year. It is becoming so popular that soon they will run out of room. Dave had two trailer loads of things to display, including the peanut roaster. Unfortunately he couldn't drive the Farmall or any of his bikes around this year, as it was prohibited. There must have been a liability problem, which is sad.

There was plenty to see anyway and the day was gorgeous! Here are a few samples of vehicles, starting with a '53, just like me...and what a coincidence that Euclid was my elementary school!

Fireboat!

We recently went to the Tugboat Round-up Festival in Waterford. This annual event is one of our favorites of the fall season.

This year we were thrilled to see the John J. Harvey Fireboat there from New York City. Launched in 1931, it was retired in the mid 1990's but brought back into service temporarily during 9/11.

Down in the engine room was exciting, even for me. It was so different than most tugboats. There were actually 5 engines used as generators and pumps.

There is no battery to start the engines, so they use compressed air. Plus these two huge electric motors, that look like gigantic motorcycle stators, turn the propeller shafts.

Gauges and pumps were everywhere...

Every hour, on the hour, they fired up the hoses and did water demonstrations. Dave just happened to be down in the engine room (for the 2nd time 😉) when the engineer was getting ready to start the demonstration, so he was enlisted to help with the pumps!

It can pump 18,000 gallons of water a minute. Now that is impressive, as was the whole ship. What a treat to tour it.

Cars!

It has been over a week since we went to the last car show of the season at the Albany Saratoga Speedway. A group of us got together for the ride over and I think we look like we could have had our own show...

Here are just a few of the many kewl cars we saw that evening...

Wow, is it get dark early though! Where did summer go? At least we are still working on our winter plans. More to follow.

A Little Normalcy

It has been a busy and sad two weeks. We still don't know any more about our apartment than we did before. Everyone in the Abacos are just trying to survive and start to clean up. I have spent many hours reporting on the HTSC website about progress. Only essential/local persons are left in Hope Town at the moment. However, once in a great while we try to get away and do something normal in our lives. This is the time of year that we have all sorts of events to attend. Today we went to the Schroon Lake Wet Meet and it was one of the best ones so far. Conditions were perfect for the hydroplanes to go out and race around for demonstrations.

Different antique and classic outboards and boats were on display also...

What a great day to get away from it all, even if for just a few hours. We are working on plans for the winter, but I will go into that soon. Stay tuned.