Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Tahawus Camping Trip

Last weekend I went camping with some friends in Tahawus, an area that was once a mining town down at the southern end of the High Peak region...it is a rugged and beautiful part of the Adirondacks, which is saying something...


Even though spring is slow to come to this part of the world, it is slower still to come to Tahawus, and there was still a considerable amount of snow back in the woods where we camped...


There are apparently lots of bears in the area, but with proper precautions, we didn't see any during our weekend camping trip...


I fit all of my gear for the weekend: clothes, shelter, food, gear, booze, cigars, in this pack, and we walked in to our camping spot back behind the ghost town...back in the woods, not too far from some of the abandoned buildings that are set back in the regrown forest...


I slept the weekend in my Hennessy Hammock, a camping hammock that provides me with an incredibly comfortable night's sleep...


Once we had set up camp, we explored the buildings around us, and all over the town...I found this hatch covering a tank by stepping on it, and feeling the lid give a little under my weight...it was hidden under the leaves, and could have been a nasty surprise, but we were careful...


One of the buildings had the remnants of cedar bark siding on it...something that makes sense, although it had never occurred to me...


We explored a dramatically collapsed building with a phenomenal fieldstone fireplace...


This child's cart/toy outside one of the buildings reminded me of "The Godfather II"...


This beautiful brick fireplace was in great shape, as was the rest of the house, except for the right half of the room...


Exploring the upstairs of one house was really neat, until we came on a gap in the floor that ade us wonder at the overall stability of the building...


After exploring Tahawus pretty extensively, we headed over to the blast furnace, from 1850, which is almost 100 yards tall and constructed from massive stones...


I was able to crawl inside, through a hole in the base, and get a view up through the center of the stack...


There are also massive bellows still in place on the ground outside of the furnace, used to feed the flames...these gears would have made a wheel about 60 feet in diameter...


We all climbed a nearby hill for a group picture...


The next day we took a walk in the factory zone, which was beautiful and incredibly quiet...we scared up a huge group of white-tail deer...afterwards, we set up a range and did a bit of shooting for a while, until the rain started...

Once the rain began in earnest, we found an intact building and set up a movie theater and picnic zone...yes, it was a zombie movie...


After the movie, we moved back to camp and set up some tarp-based shelter and got out fire going to ward off the cold and damp as we headed into our second night in the ghost town...


There was just one more challenge awaiting a select few of us...crossing the Hudson river to explore a few buildings on the far side that have been less picked over/through than the ones on our side of the Hudson...the snow in the High Peaks is still melting, and it had rained most of the day Saturday, so the Hudson River was full and fast and freezing...

Two of us went into the water, and although the water was thigh-deep, and the current was very strong, we both climbed out on the far side a few minutes later...we warmed up in the sun and ate some snacks to replenish our bodies before bushwhacking the rest of the way to the buildings...


They were in great shape, fixtures and an amazing amount of detail still intact (note the drapes in the far room...all of the main doors were missing the stairs leading up to them, so we had to climb in through this window...


This room was likely a dining room at one point...the woodwork and glass was still in place throughout the room...


In another spot though, some water had leaked in, and over time had soaked the insulation layer between floor and ceiling, and the weight plus time resulted in a collapse...


The kitchen was in great shape, with some pots and pans still present, and a towl waiting by the sink...


There was a great breezeway behind the kitchen that led up and away towards what might have been a pantry or storage area, or servants' quarters...it was a raised walkway with some great Adirondack details...


My friend Kevin and I found a place that was more shallow, but significantly wider, for the crossing back over to the civilized side of the Hudson...we traded an easier/safer crossing for a longer time in the extremely cold water...we posed, in the water (up to about our knees this time) for a victory picture...the crossing and exploration on the far side of the Hudson was a remarkable adventure...


We had a great time in Tahawus!

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Spring Break Trip to Washington, DC

Gail and Ben and I went down to Washington, DC last week to celebrate spring vacation, and try to find spring (it's snowing in Lake Clear today as I type this!)...we had a great time, and can't wait to go again!


On our first day, we went to the National Zoo and met my Auntie Ann there...we had fun exploring the "Wild Asia" exhibit...


We were there before the official opening time (since most of the exhibits are outdoors, you can see all but the inside stuff as soon as it's light)...it was much too early for this fishing cat (Vinnie and Thumbelina still don't believe in a cat that swims for its food, they only reluctantly move for their food, and would prefer it if we would deliver it to the couch for them) to be showing off his stuff in the pool in his enclosure, but he did some nice stretching and grooming and nest-tending...

We were lucky to get to the zoo early enough to beat the crowds to the panda viewing locations, and had great luck seeing the pandas engaging in all of the most common panda-esque activities (I tried to use pandemonium in that sentence, but just couldn't manage it...they're too mellow)...in descending order of likelihood:


a) sleeping


b) eating


c) gently ambling a short way in their enclosure before stopping for rest


By the time we were done checking out the pandas, some of the buildings were opening, and we found this room filled with captive scientists and web-geeks who study the pandas and set up (and choose) the shots for their webcam...it was neat to talk with them and see these reclusive creatures in their natural habitat (dimly lit and dank rooms with flickering computer light and caffeinated beverages all around)


We stopped by the elephant house, which is undergoing an extreme makeover...although this may look like cruel overcrowding, the animals had free access of a whole suite of rooms, and chose to hang out together in this tiny one, throwing dirt on themselves and each other...


There was a baby gorilla in the primate house, but it was tough to get a picture of it...I liked this pensive gorilla though...


While visiting the Gibbons, Ben and Ann did some Gibbon impressions...



Ann did some nice ones, including some sound effects...


This caiman never moved (and may, in fact, have been plastic), but we enjoyed the reptile house nonetheless, and I liked the reflected skull and bones in this picture...


We had a super lunch...Ben's came with an awesome panda-tastic lunch bag, which made all of us want to change our orders...


After lunch, we visited the big cats, which were not surprisingly big, languid, and graceful...


It's amazing to see these beasts lounge around and then effortlessly stretch their way up a smooth 9 foot wall...


Ben loved the idea of the tiger tracking collars...


One of his favorite things in the whole zoo were the seals and sea-lions...the seals were playing an awesome game of tag in and out of the water the whole time that we were there...the sea-lions stretched their flippers (once each) in the whole time that we were there...


It was a great visit to the zoo!


There's a Starbucks right across from the main entrance, and we stopped off for a tricky beverage after the zoo-trip to debrief...


Auntie Ann bought Ben this great panda, named Tai-Shan (and nicknamed Winny)...


We rode the metro all over town the whole time that we were in DC...there was a station only a short walk from our hotel...the only downside was the daunting escalator ride down into the depths of the Earth...


The next day, we headed out to the Mall, excited and primed for another fun day...


We got off at the Smithsonian Station, and walked from there to our stops for the day...


The first stop was the International Spy Museum...it was a really great and immersive experience for all of us...there's enough to see and do for a couple more visits...in the picture above, we were crawling through some ductwork over the main floor of the museum, eavesdropping and spying on the people below us...


After the Spy Museum, we headed over to the Air and Space Museum, and had a super time exploring the incredible exhibits and displays...the fact that we could touch a rock from the Moon blew Ben away, and he kept coming back to the moonrock...


We saw 2 Imax movies while in DC...a cool one on a new NASA program doing stereo mapping of the Sun, and the best Imax I have ever seen...a superb movie on the deep ocean...


Back at the hotel that night, Ben got out his spy kit, and showed us some moves...


The next morning, we got to the Natural History Museum a little early, and Ben used the time to write some postcards...


The museum has a great new ocean exhibit, which included some great displays...this huge shark jaw, an intact Architeuthis Dux, and some other truly bizarre examples of deep-sea life...


Back outside, we enjoyed walking around the Mall, taking in the sights and sounds of spring...there were lots of cherry blossoms still in the height of bloom...


We walked down the Mall to the Washington Monument, then down to the WW2 Memorial, along the Reflecting Pool, and to the Lincoln Memorial...after a sitdown on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, we headed down to the Vietnam and Korea memorials...it was beautiful and Ben loved seeing and talking about and touching all of these memorials and monuments...


One of the key criteria in looking for our hotel for the trip to DC was that it had to have a pool...we spent time in the pool every day, and it was a great way to unwind and unkink after all of the walking that we did in DC...


Ben took this cool pitcure in the pool, using my camera...