"Kind of An In-Between One"

Today was kind of an in-between one, to quote Dave Matthews.  It started out warm and sunny, although cooler than yesterday due to the thunderstorm that drove through yesterday evening.  This morning we decided to take a hike at Glimmer Glass State Park, situated on the Northeast shore of Otsego Lake.

The park has two hikes:  a 3.5 miles hike up and down Mount Wellington, and a 1.6 mile hike around the beaver pond.  As we planned it, we would hike Mount Wellington, then have a little lunch on the beach of Hyde Bay.  After lunch we would hike around the beaver pond, and then stop for ice cream at Banana Dan's on the way home. You know what they say about best laid plans....

The hike up Mount Wellington was a beautiful, humid forest hike.  The ground was still damp - and in places very muddy - from the storm last night.  The only person we saw was a local woman walking her black cocker spaniel; we encountered her as we neared the summit of the mountain. Upon seeing the small black shape running through the woods, Kathy immediately thought - bear! All because of the practical joke our brother-in-law Tom played on Kathy on a similar hike through the woods on Memorial Day Weekend about 10 years ago. This little black bear was more interested in chasing chipmunks.

Here's a photo of David on the hike:

The hike ends at the service road entrance to Hyde Hall, at the gate called Tin Top.  We passed through the gate and the mansion on our way back to the truck.  Arriving at the parking lot, we saw not one, not two, but THREE New York State Police SUVs parked around our truck, looking surely as if they were intentionally blocking the truck.  Uh-oh.  This could mean trouble. The closer we got, we could hear the engines running and dogs barking. Now, I know we didn't pay the $7.00 entrance fee to the park because there was no one in the gatehouse to collect it (budget cuts), but I didn't think that warranted three state troopers with attack dogs. Our fears were put to rest.  They were just there for a training exercise.  In fact, it was lunchtime and they were just wrapping up.

Before leaving the trailhead parking area, we logged out at the trail register, and who should we encounter but the woman with her cocker spaniel!  Now we felt like old friends.  This time, the dog let David lay a passing hand on him as the dog walked by, but even so, the dog didn't linger.

We drove down to the beach for lunch.  Just as we arrived, it started raining.  This had not been in the forecast.  Nevertheless, the sky was darkening and there were large grey clouds looming overhead.  We decided to seek a picnic table under cover for our lunch.  Here's a view of the beach:

As we finished, a group of young people had come down to the beach and were trying to decide whether to go swimming.  They may have initially mistaken us for park rangers, because they elected one of the guys in the group to come up to ask us whether it was okay to swim.  David said, "I don't think they want you to swim, but I'm not going to stop you."  It was clear from the young man's face that he found no trouble interpreting this to be a complete and unconditional authorization for them to swim, and he ran back to the group of young women and men, who all immediately tore off across the beach and splashed into the water.

Because it was so rainy, we decided to skip the shorter beaver pond hike (our first disappointment of the day), and instead drove home, anticipating our reward of ice cream at Banana Dan's.  This was to be our second disappointment today, because when we arrived at Banana Dan's and looked carefully at a sign on the front door, it read:  "Private Residence - We Do Not Supply Ice Cream or Directions." (This will make our brother-in-law Tom somewhat happy. He was looking forward to having ice cream at Banana Dan's, but we were too full to stop last week. Good thing we didn't.) Now, you would think that if the ice cream store is no longer in business, that they would have taken down the road signs that are at least 1/2 mile from the location on both the north and south sides of the highway. You'd think they would have also taken down the Banana Dan's sign in the parking lot or at least put a "gone out of business" sign up, or something. I think it must be someone's idea of a cosmic practical joke just to see how many tourists stop for ice cream when all the locals know that Banana Dan went out of business 10 years ago!

Back at the RV, it turned out that there had been a severe thunderstorm at the campground while we were gone, and it dumped even more water on the site than last night's storm had done.  The weather was still threatening, so instead of going for a swim (our third disappointment), we decided to retire into the RV and do some indoor chores.  David worked on arrangements for inspection and maintenance for the truck when we're in the Bennington area, and Kathy did the laundry.  Later in the afternoon, we tackled restringing another one of our window shades.  While not very exciting, the afternoon was productive.

Blogging has become a family hobby. Even Lucky gets into the act. He insists on putting both paws on the track pad of Kathy's laptop.  If you look closely at the Mac screen, you will see that it is this very blog.

I think it is time to stop when you start blogging about blogging.

This blog entry was brought to you by Dave and Kathy and Luckie!