Vacation - Virginia Beach

It was all pretty crowded on the day we got there - Sunday of Labor Day Weekend. The next day - not so much. Great people watching! Beach, boardwalk, road for bikes and carts, and then the hotel property. We were close to it all from our second story oceanfront balcony. On Monday morning we did see a some runners from the Navy base just down the road. There are usually lots of fighter aircraft over the beach but none on the holiday. Always a few ships at sea. When we went to see the light houses at Old Fort Henry we found ourselves subject to the scrutiny of people entering a military base because that's what we were doing - but didn't know it as we started in.

Vacation - Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel

I first learned about this structure several years ago and when I noticed that our vacation plans were taking us very near it, decided that we should go across it! The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is almost eighteen miles long. In two places it goes underground for about a mile to provide open waterway overhead for ships to sail into the bay. We crossed the bridge in the very early morning going from Virginia Beach to Longwood Gardens and the sun came up over the horizon as we were driving! The second picture is on one of the islands where a tunnel starts. (I borrowed a picture from the internet so you could see what it looks like from above.)

Vacation - Deanna & Cody and Wilkes-Barre

This is one of the signs on the Market Street Bridge. Pretty funny. I wonder if the sign was made in Japan. (The link also refers to the Frick Collection on 71st St. and 5th Ave. in New York City. Our guide pointed this out to us as we went by and said that it was the most prestigious piece of property in the city.)

This is from the bridge. Deanna and Cody live just a block or so from the church with the green roof in the center of the picture.

The day after staying at the B&B in Wilkes-Barre, we continued our rest day by putting in a load of laundry at Deanna and Cody's and then exploring the town. We'd had a continental breakfast that morning and decided to have a real breakfast for lunch. We started to look for a place but pulled in a parking lot to mail some letters first and saw this old gentleman with a white cane moving very slowly along the sidewalk across the street. I decided to see if I could help him and he grabbed my arm as soon as I made the offer. It took 20-25 minutes to help him to where he was going (Tony's Deli) and I knew a lot about him by the time we got there - and by then, he was expecting us to have lunch with him (Tony makes breakfast all day), which we did. His name is Robert Stein, he's 83, lives alone in a high-rise nearby, and walks to Tony's everyday for lunch where he eats Belgian waffle with gravy. He lost his eyesight in 1968 in an automobile accident. Wilkes-Barre is an interesting place. As with most cities this age, it has an "old town" and that's where Deanna and Cody live - for now, but not much longer. They're being transferred to the southern part of the state. Thanks again to them for the accomodations - we stayed at "Swopes Suites" two nights and it was good visiting with them (and Beverly) and good to be able to pet the dogs.

NYC - Greenwich Village - Washington Square Park and Cafe Reggio

I'm a child of the 60's and back then all of the musicians came through Greenwich Village. Peter, Paul, and Mary started here at the Bitter End, Bob Dylan first played at Cafe Wa. The Gaslight Cafe (I went there back then) was a stop on the way for many of the folk musicians. Washington Square Park was the sight for a lot of folk music gatherings. Most things then happened on Bleeker Street or MacDougal Street. Caffe Reggio has been there since 1927 and was the place I wanted to visit this trip. Although it was a Saturday morning, it had the ambiance I expected and Glynda bought me a T-Shirt there! Glynda and I had two tiny espressos, Beverly tried a Sanbitter, and we shared an eclair. Lots of interesting shops! Bet it's really nice when they're all open! This was an enjoyable couple hours!

Longwood Gardens in Kennet Square, PA (but less than 10 miles from Delaware)

I posted a bunch of pictures from Longwood Gardens on Facebook. This is a huge and incredibly beautiful place. We spent 6-7 hours there and couldn't begin to see it all. By taking our time seeing what we did see we missed a lot. But I'm glad we did it that way!

One of the Central Park walks:

We all really enjoyed Central Park and made it into the park three times. On the first day we walked along 59th Street and stepped into the park from there just to get our first look at it. The next evening we went there because it worked out to do so. It was on the itinerary for Sunday morning and we walked across it then to get to the MET. These pictures are from the Saturday evening walk. I'll do another post later on the people in Central Park!





Bethesda Fountain is on the 72nd Street transverse and it's one of the sights I really wanted to see. There's a picture here of the whole area, a close-up of the fountain, and one of a guy making huge bubbles!


Walking along the mall from 72nd St. towards 59th. All sorts of things happening here.



It was getting dark and we grabbed a snack from a vendor and then followed the music to the tango lessons in the park.

Then we found a carriage and took a long ride - but that's another post. Bev REALLY wanted to do this!

Vacation - NYC - Fifth Avenue

It's a good thing I was there. Kept them on the sidewalk and, in a couple cases, across the street!


Louis Vuitton


Tiffany


Prada


Cartier


Versache

Some vacation pictures

I'll have to do quite a few posts and they'll likely be in no particular order.


The last scheduled stop on our vacation was Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright house near Mill Run, Pennsylvania. Water was falling when we there and we did our tour under an umbrella. There's a very standard picture of Fallingwater that you've probably seen but with the rain and a landscape format, I got a very different look.

Going back a couple days, here are some pictures here from our "rest day" after returning from New York. Deanna and Cody had reserved a room for us at a B&B a couple blocks down the street from their house. Ostentatious is a word that comes readily to mind! The Amelia's Suite at the Fredrick Stegmaier Mansion. Thanks!! It was the most restful day of the vacation! Enjoyed spending time with Brinkly and Sadie too.


Glynda on the front steps.


Glynda in the bed - the same one you see on the cover page of their website!


This is the ceiling in the bed room.


It was a suite and this is the adjoining sitting room.

The B&B has also been written up in Victorian Homes magazine a couple times this year. Here's the one from February.

We stayed here until check out time!!

Bev says I should update my blog

The trip has been great so far! Day one was travel and we got the required 570 miles in. Day two was Lookout Mountain, a visit with some friends in Cleveland, TN then travel on to Asheford, NC. Day three was Biltmore house and gardens and it would take a long post to cover that incredible place. Day four took us to Virginia Beach and two nights there - the first day being the Sunday of Labor Day weekend and wall-to-wall people. Monday was much better! Day five was travel and a half day on the Mall in DC. That gets us to today when I talked to Bev and she asked if we'd done everything we planned and I asked myself why not? Thne I found out. We were delayed this morning by an accident on the Baltimre/Washington Parkway. Then, when we did get to Baltimore, we decided to take a short cruise on the bay so that was a little more delay. But we'd planned on lunch at Jessops Tavern in the historic district in New Castle, DE so we delyed eating until we got there. It was a wonderful old place with great food and a good local beer and some really nice music. It made us feel our tiredness and we decided that we might postpone Longwood Gardens until tomorrow. So we walked around a bit and were admiring an old house when a guy older than me asked us where we were from. That ended up in an invitation! He owned the old house and asked us if we'd like to see his garden and house. Too much to go in detail but his garden was a wonderful space. The house is a three story, 189 year old structure, filled with amazing antique furniture. Calvin Elliot Marshall lives there by himself. He was a WWII pilot - bombers, has a fascinating family history and antique family art to go with it. He took us on a tour of the whole place and shared lots of things with us. The basement used to be a tavern and still had some bottle from the 20's - that were still partly filled. That was a fascinating experience. And now were in the best hotel, by far, of the trip and are about to enjoy some time here before heading to Wilkes-Barre tomorrow!!

I'm going to plant more Dreamland Ivory Zinnias next year!

They've got a beautiful creamy ivory color, very lush foliage, and they stand up to the very hot temperatures. As you can see, the butterflies like them too! I've saved some seeds and will hopefully be able to start them that way - but I bought the ones I have this year at Hughes Plant Farm south of Tyler. They've got many greenhouses, sell in volume, and sell flats for around $10.

Mentally challanged blue jay

We really think it is! In this picture though, just a little strange and the feather colors are not right either. Sometimes this bird will just sits there more laying on the rail than standing, sorta lopsided, with his head twisted and beak open - for a long period of time. I'm surprised he hasn't become cat food already!

Here's an older picture -

Another post about the facial recognition software in Picasa

Still pretty amazed at the accuracy of the scanning on this software. There's a picture here it suggested as being Aaron. It's the last picture of the individual face shots of Aaron in the screen print from Picasa (top photo). It has a red patch across the bottom right of the picture.

The full picture is where the suggestion came from. It's obviously Aaron in the picture but not the one that's suggested. But then, if you look very closely at the bigger picture you will see that it includes an image of the wedding candle. It's at the top of Aaron's shoulder. The candle has pictures of Aaron and Amber on it. The one of Aaron is barely visible. It's almost impossible to even see the candle in the photo but Picasa picked up that image and identified it as Aaron. Amazing!

I was also reviewing some other suggestions it presented and found one of Deanna when she was very little (about 4-5) and it was a poor quality picture too. The only thing Picasa was working with was recent pictures but it correctly identified this old picture of a very young Deanna as being the same person as in the more recent photos. (Now I'll stop posting about this.)

This looks good!

I was looking at the Fox news page and noticed this!
We'll be there 9/10-12. Looking forward to temps like these!

Colby Graduated!!

Yesterday, at a meeting of the Rains County School Board, Colby received his high school diploma!! It was a brief but meaningful presentation that took place first thing after the meeting was called to order.

A few of God's creatures!!

I've see a couple incredible videos yesterday and today. One came in an email and the other was posted on Facebook. Hope you enjoy them both as much as I did!! I've got a lot more respect for turtles now - both in their "humanitarianism" and their ability to diagnose and solve problems. I thought they were just dumb creatures. And we've always known how dogs love to play - but deer?

Turtles

Deer and dog