Sunday Walk to The Hook

I took a whole load of pictures when Erica and I spent an afternoon on a walk from the Upper Nyack village hall to the Hook (Hook Mountain if you are not a native).

From Walk to the Hook

I used to go to the Hook to play in the sand when I was very young. The river is not really clean enough to go swimming anymore, but it is much better now than it has been.

I discovered that the images from my blog, when I use Windows Live Writer, go to a Picassa.com Album. I stopped using Picassa a few years ago because it was buggy and wanted to control all of your images. I am trying it again because I took 67 pictures and I need a good place for them. Uploading the images was a snap and you can view them by clicking the "walk to the hook" link under the picture.

The pictures are of the mansions along the way, like the Falker mansion (German Airplane maker) and some of the houses that I have been in. There is a beautiful wrought iron willow gate and other interesting things, including views of the river and Sing-Sing, the famous prison (up the river from New York, hence the phrase sending someone "up the river").

Upper Nyack was always know as Goose Town or Van Houten's Landing. It was named Upper Nyack to associate it with Nyack in the early 1900s, when Nyack first started to be a fashionable getaway from NY.

We only saw one cat. It was down by Peterson's Boat Yard.

The Nikon 775 pictures

As long as I am cleaning out pictures from the cameras....

I cut up a downed green ash and split some of the billets. That is my grandfather's wedge that he used to split the wood that heated his cabin in the last 25 years of his life.

This is a picture of the back 40 where I was working on the cordwood.

The face I put on the Beech tree always startles me when I walk back.

Gracie, of course, had to supervise me.

Erica bought a 1950s quilt. It was not valuable, just some cotton and polyester squares machine stitched, but the quilt lining was a much older quilt. The quilter covered an old worn quilt with a new one, but the old one may be much more valuable.

Here's a picture of Max after the hurricane passed, sitting in a patch of sunlight in the back.

Cleaning out the Cameras

I have three cameras. I use the little Nikon (free at a garage sale) most of the time because it fits in my pocket. It is about 8 years old so it does not really measure up to the quality of cameras today. Second, I use the Kodak that Justine sent one Christmas. It is an excellent quality camera that takes good pictures, but it is a little large and won't fit in my pocket. I also use the big Nikon DX-70 that has the SLR lens and all the bells and whistles. This is especially good with the telephoto lens, but I can't bring it anywhere where it might be stolen because it is so expensive and it is very very big.

I cleaned out the little Kodak today and found a bunch of pics that I've taken, but never done anything about.

First there were cute Gracie pictures (see the cat blog for more).

Next, the truck went over 175,000 miles. I wanted to catch it in the act, but as you may know this is against the physical laws of the universe.

Next, I found an odd windmill at the side of the road. This was used to aerate a pond, but it was sitting in the corner of someone's yard.

The virginia creeper vines grew up the side of the house in the back and I was shocked to see them. I have no idea how they grew so fast.

Here are some flowers. A couple are from the back yard, but I don't where the red one is from.

I found a strange machine on the side of the road. It had about $20 worth of vacuum tubes.

I took pictures of a publication from and H.P. Lovecraft symposium that I may blog about. I have a readable version of this on my hard disk. This article describes about how his friends got HPL drunk at a party and he recited lines from the Mikado.

Now I'll clean out the Nikon.

Cleaning out the Camera

I've got about 5 blog posts worth of stuff here so let's start with a picture of a very hot Max on the glider on the deck.

I took some pictures of the Blueberry Bushes. These will mostly be eaten by birds before I can get at them, though.

Last weekend we went up to Haverstraw for the Farmer's market. It was disappointing as there were only three stands. I bought some Blue Potatoes, which I love.

I took some pictures from the Ferry dock. $10 to go to wall street from Haverstraw (30 miles). This is the way to go if I get another job in the big city.

The hill there is Hi Tor, famous from a play by Maxwell Anderson. I worked at Hogan's Diner one summer with Maxwell Anderson's grandson. He was amazed that I had actually read some of his grandfather's plays.

The mountains on the Hudson river have cool names, although they are hardly mountains, just hills. The names, starting at Nyack going north are Hook, Tor, Bear and The Storm King.

I wanted to show how hard it is to type on the Bus. No room for my knees and no room to put my elbows when I type. Last week I finished my second week of bussing. On Thursday the bus driver got lost on the way home and it took an hour and a half. On Tuesday I got involved with a program, missed my bus and didn't get home until 6:30pm.

Here are some bus pictures of the TZ bridge.

The Illustrated Cat

My brother Larry found this searching eBay for obscure guitar parts. This picture was included with an auction for a Gibson ES-355 pickguard. He called me three times to make sure that I blogged it.

The pendant must have been a tricky paint job.