Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
I continue to play with the video portion of my camera. I took a few more videos of the cats and dog, but I didn’t think any were worthy of the blog. I did get 18 views of the fat Simon cat one so far on YouTube.
I was going for a drive the other morning and I decided to take out the camera. I thought it would be neat to get a video of me crossing the Newburgh/Beacon Bridge. I am not sure why I did this…perhaps someone will think it’s cool. Either way, placing videos on YouTube is a great way to promote your website.
Here she is…
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Friday, October 26th, 2007
Last night, Laura and I had the good fortune of visiting “The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor.” I have seen this around and have always wanted to go, but never did.
I got some free tickets that allowed us in on either Thursday or Sunday nights. We chose Thursday because we thought things would be a little slower then. As it turned out, every half hour time slot was sold out, except for the 9PM one. You have to remember, they are marketing this event all the way down into Manhattan. With the tickets we had, it didn’t matter if the event was sold out, we were still able to go at any time.
We decided to try for the 7:30PM sliver. We drove down Rt.9 into Croton-on-Hudson. I have really only been in this area about six times in my life. It is all so foreign to me. Anyway, we made it to the event and parked in the Shoprite parking lot next door. We walked across the parking lot and entered the event. Things were busy, but not too much yet, which was nice.
So there we were, walking through the gates into about a million blazing pumpkins. I have to say, the setup was pretty nice. There were quite a few people, so the walking was kind of slow, but that gave us time to see what things were about. My nature is to bust through, take pictures and drive home. I was forced to relax. Also, I am not sure how Laura feels about her nights being rushed. She does know me well enough now to know what to expect. One word of warning to those people who want a less crowded evening…go to the later shows. The kids are probably in bed by that point.
I am just going to list the best pictures of the evening below. It was dark, so my camera didn’t do the best job, but Photoshop helped quite a bit.
This is the arch of pumpkins you walk through on your way up to the ticket people.
A pretty neat carving hanging from one of the trees.
These are both of the stone manor house at Van Cortlandt Manor. As you can see, the lights change color.
The rest of the photos are of what we saw during the walk through the grounds.
The whole walk probably takes between a half hour and forty five minutes. We had fun…just be careful, they funnel you through the gift shop at the end. So, if you have kids and you think they may want little trinkets that you aren’t interested in, be sure to shield their view.
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Posted in Autumn, Travels | 1 Comment »
Sunday, June 10th, 2007
If you are reading this post, you have probably seen Mount Beacon (Beacon Mountain). Maybe you didn’t even know you were looking at it. Just doing a Google Search surprised me…there are so many people interested in this mountain. Here are some interesting links…
- Beauty atop Mount Beacon
- Gateway to Mount Beacon Park
- Save the Mount Beacon Fire Tower
- Mount Beacon Amateur Radio Club
- Mt. Beacon Incline Railway
I always knew there were a bunch of radio towers up on the moutain, but I was not aware of how many people love this place. I once new a guy…yeah, I knew a guy who used to ride a quad up Mount Beacon. Boy, he told me it sure was a difficult ride. The bottom was easy to get up, but once he hit the old ski slopes, it was nothing but huge rocks. That is pretty hard terrain for a quad.
I have heard many stories about Mount Beacon, but I really don’t know what to believe. Here is what I do know…the mountain offers a view over the City of Beacon, NY. There are radio towers, among other towers at the top of the mountain. There are also some old fire towers up there too. It offers some really great ATV riding as well, but you didn’t hear that from me.
Here are the rumors that I heard, which may very well be true. You can see New York City on a clear day. There used to be an old ski lodge at the top of the mountain with ski slopes going down the face. There was a trolly type thing that used to get pulled up the mountain. Who knows…
One of the most interesting things to me is the reservoir at the top of the mountain. I have some photos of that below. Well, what am I waiting for? Let’s see the photos…
See, I told you there was a reservoir on the mountain. This old broken down sign tells us that the reservoir holds 125 million gallons of water.
This is a view across the reservoir to one of the old fire towers. This particular one is towards the back/side of the mountain and is not as well known as the one people generally talk about at the front of the mountain.
This is a photo of the Mt. Beacon reservoir dam. Yeah, this holds all the water back, so don’t jump on it.
This photo is a view from the top of Mt. Beacon. This view overlooks the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge and the Hudson River.
This is a photo taken from the same spot as the last one, but looking more North up the Hudson River, towards Kingston, NY.
Do you have any fables, myths or truths about this mountain? I would love to hear them.
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Thursday, September 7th, 2006
Every year, towards the middle of August, Laura and I venture to the Shakespeare Festival at Boscobel in Cold Spring, NY. This is one night a year we really, really have a good time. It reminds us of the culture in this world that we miss so much by focusing on work, day in and day out.
Last year, the show offered “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” I am not going to attempt to give a review of the show, as I am sure there are people out there who could write much better than me. Here is one from the Utah Shakespeare Festival. What I am going to try to do, is to sell the show and experience to you, and hopefully my photos can do that. You really do deserve a unique night out like this.
I have to say, the whole experience is a good one, from the drive over the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, through Beacon and down along the Hudson River into Cold Spring. It’s a beautiful ride. Continuing through Cold Spring and finally arriving at Boscobel is a pleasant surprise every time. The parking at Boscobel is even nice. The lots are shaded by trees and tucked back from the road. There is about a quarter-mile walk from the parking lots to the tent area and the mansion.
The gardens are especially nice on a cool, clear evening.
I always spend a good amount of time browsing around the gardens, getting good ideas for the future. I seem to forget that the fun is right around the corner. It is kind of like stopping and getting attached to the first ride you come across at an amusement park. You can’t stop there. I eventually snap out of it and wander onto the lawn.
This has got to be one of my favorite places in the world. Just being among people who are having such a good time with their wine and food makes me forget all about every day business. It reminds me a little of “Alice in Wonderland…”
We usually walk around for a while and wait for them to sound that the show is about to start. We have yet to set up camp and relax with our food and wine. This is a definate for next time.
When we hear them asking us to take our seats, we make our way to the tent to enjoy the show!
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Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
I happen live live in a very beautiful area of New York. The Shawangunk Ridge is absolutely spectacular and visiting the Mohonk Preserve has become a favorite activity. Unfortunately, it seems that the western side of the Hudson River has water that smells like rotten eggs. I know there are towns on the eastern side that have this problem, but I know of more over here.
We moved in to this house on the hottest day of 2005. I am not exaggerating. It was honestly the hottest day. I remember it well. We unpacked half the truck and I was sweating bullets. I stopped because I was out of breath. I asked anyone if they would like a glass of water, they accepted and I walked in the house to get some out of the faucet. I filled three glasses and walked back outside and handed my friends the glasses. We put them to our lips at the same time…and all at once we said…”Eeewwww, rotten eggs!” Boy, what a delight! We had sulphur in our water!
As with any problem I am confronted with, I immediately say that I can fix it and then my mind starts to go. I thought of the biggest and the best carbon filter I would get. After I put that baby in, there would be no more smell. Well, my friend Craig tried that up in Oneonta, NY, to no avail. My father also tried that in Wilmington, NC and he is always changing the filters. If that doesn’t work, what was I supposed to do?
We lived with the smell in the water for about a week. We weren’t too far past the closing on the house, so I wasn’t too thrilled with dropping a bunch of money. I asked around at work and got a nice wide variety of answers. No one seemed to know what they were talking about. Things were getting worse because when we got out of the shower, the smell would follow you until you completely dried. This had to change FAST!
The next day I got on the phone with a few water purification companies that I found in the yellow pages. Most of them said that there was iron in the water. I said, “No, you must be mistaken, I have Sulphur in the water.” They said, “Yes, but Sulphur is created by Iron.” What? Well, apparently, they were correct. The way it works is this: Water with small traces of iron enter the house through the well. Then, the water sits in the hot water heater. Somehow, the heat changes the iron in the water to sulphur and then, whalla, stinky sulphur water! I am not too sure of how this works. My friend Paul wrote a much more informative entry in his blog about water treatment.
The answer to my problem was to get a Whole House Iron Filter - a Manganese Greensand Filter. I was talking with my neighbor about this problem and he recommended a local water guy to do the job. He said he was the most reasonably priced in the area and new what I needed. I gave this fellow a call and he came out and tested my water. He said, “Yep, your water isn’t hard, but you do have iron in it.” I said, will the filter you install get out 100% and make every thing perfect?” he said, “No, but about 95% will be taken out and you won’t have the smell anymore.” That sounded good to me. My only concern at this point was how much I was going to have to give this guy to fix my problem. I had to have him install it because I didn’t know the first thing about it, didn’t know where to get the filter and had no way to get it to my house. He told me it would cost $1100, said and done. I told him that was fine, just get over here and do it ASAP. The picture below is the actual filter he installed.
The water guy told me that this filter was one of the best on the market. No shortcuts were taken and it would last for about 20 years.
He did a great job installing the filter. The soldering of the copper pipes looked good and he ran the backwash line to the septic pipe in the basement so it wouldn’t make a mess outside when it backwashed the greensand with the Potassium - water mixture. It does this about every 4 days at 2AM.
He also flushed out my electric hot water heater and put some bleach in there to kill any bacteria. He told me to put about 2 cups of bleach in our well every year. I have done this and it’s amazing how good the water smells after I do it. I am happy to say that ever since this very maintenance free water filter was installed, my rotten egg smell has just about disappeared!
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