It snowed all day yesterday and most of last night. The total was in the 6-8" range so we had to get the blower out of mothballs. TV weathermen are saying that we might expect to see a new storm every 36 hours for a while.
The farmers porch and side door.
Back yard: Snow covered raised vegetable garden, windmill and 3 of my burn piles (burn season doesn't start until mid-January)
Our small outdoor Christmas tree. It has solar lighting and large ornaments.
Trailer and bird feeders. The birds were really stuffing themselves during the snowstorm.
Front of the house.
There are those burn piles back there again.
Snow on a multiflora rose across the road. The multifloras are what I've been cutting down and adding to the burn piles. They are a horrible invasive species that make a more effective barrier than razor wire (they do look pretty in the snow though).
Life is good here in
Oakham, MA and we hope that all is well with you.
We’re not going to
include any pictures with this letter but we do occasionally about what’s
happening with us. You’ll find our blog post (and lots of pictures) at http://LifeInRuralMass.blogspot.com.
We've found MA life to
be a much more strenuous life than we were used to in CA but we're loving it.
Our 2.6 acres is about 1 acre of lawn with the rest dense woods so there's a
lot to take care of. Gardening/lawn mowing in the Spring/Summer, leaf
blowing/snow removal in the fall/winter and, now that the leaves are down,
we're working on thinning out and burning the underbrush and dead trees so that
we can safely utilize our woods (there's an old stone well out there someplace
that we hope to find this winter!).
Found the well on 11/29. It's in the highest corner of our property. The concrete cap is about 6" thick and 6' across.
Our big project last
winter was to finish off the unfinished space above the kitchen. When this 1837
house was restored in 2006, the kitchen wing was razed and rebuilt. The
upstairs was closed in but was, essentially studs, a couple of outlets and a
bulb in the ceiling. The new room is now our family/TV room and we love it. (More & with furniture)
Jeff's Mom was able to
fly back and spend an enjoyable week with us last May.
In June, we spent a
couple of weeks in Florida. We flew into Orlando and, after visiting Disney
World, the Kennedy Space Center, Cocoa Beach, Miami, Key West, Key Largo and
Everglades City, flew home from Fort Lauderdale. (More)
In August, we shared a
house in the White Mountains in New Hampshire with Briar, Gus and the kids. We
did some tubing, miniature golfing, shopping and a lot of hiking (Jeff even did
some zip lining). (More)
During the Summer, we
realized that our trailer hadn't budged since we moved in on 7-23-15 and that
the truck that we'd purchased that October had all kinds of trailering features
that we'd never put to the test. We decided that it was due for an outing and,
after replacing the tires and making sure that everything was clean and still
worked, we took off for a couple of weeks in September.
After visiting Quechee,
VT, we crossed over the North end of Lake Champlain to Lake Placid, NY
(Adirondacks). Our next stop was Thousand Islands, NY (East end of Lake
Ontario) and then Medina (convenient base for day trips to Niagara Falls and to
learn more about the Erie Canal). Heading toward home, we stopped at Oneida
Lake, NY and Copake, NY (Berkshires). (More)
Truck and trailer both
performed well and we're planning to take them out at least once a summer in
the future.
We haven't seen a whole lot of New England Falls but this one has definitely been a bit different. In the past couple of years, we've seen snow flurries before now. This year, we've seen frost a couple of times but it's only gotten down into the upper 30's once that I can remember, Today, it hit 80.
The foliage colors are at their peak and the leaf peepers are everywhere. We made a run to get lunch and do some shopping earlier today and found that couples on motorcycles and in open convertibles were everywhere (traveling way below the limit).
We are not going to be lulled into a false sense of security. We've pretty much finished our preparations for winter. I still need to get the porch rockers into the basement and Kristen keeps bugging me about marking the edges of the driveway with reflective stakes (it's much easier to plow when you know where the driveway is). Everything else is done.
I've gotten a good start on my brush clearing but I won't really be able to do the bulk of the job until the leaves are down. Around here, we're allowed to burn between January and April (ideally when there's snow on the ground and when it is lightly snowing). Before that, I'll need to get everything cut and put into piles. Our property is heavily wooded but a lot of it has been inaccessible because of the heavy brush. Wild roses, poison ivy and tree choking/killing vines are among the types of brush that I'm trying to eliminate. A number of trees are dead but have appeared to be alive because they were covered in vines. Come Spring, I'll be able to see what trees need to come down.
Kristen took this first couple of pictures on one of our morning walks:
This next bunch was taken on our walk this morning. We walked down our road, Coldbrook Rd., to Old Turnpike Rd. and back (about 2 miles round trip).
One of our favorite Oakham events our first year here was Oaktoberfest. Our second year, we learned that Oaktoberfest was a biennial event, alternating years with a Summer Fair. This should have been an Oaktoberfest year but, apparently, our Parks and Rec Department has resigned (except for the chairperson who might just be the problem). We're wondering if we'll even have an ice rink this winter.
Oakham HAS announced that this year's trick-or-treating will occur on Saturday the 28th between 5:30pm and 7:00pm and that it will be followed by a Horribles Parade from Town Hall to the Fire Station. As was the case last year, the parade will pass in front of our house and then turn up "Haunted Hill" toward the Fire Station. "Haunted Hill is the Barre St. side of our property. People (mostly volunteer firemen) hide in the brush and jump out to scare the kids as they pass (kids that don't want to be scared can walk ahead of the fire engine).
Wonder what will happen after I get that brush cut?
Our trailer hasn't left our driveway since we moved in in July, 2015. We've decided that it's about time for us to take it out. We've replaced the tires (the old ones had about 30k on them and were showing some signs of age). We've been busy making sure that everything is in working order and we should be all ready to go on 9/10.
I'm borrowing from what I did with our Florida trip. I'm creating a seperate blog and, as I post about each stop, I'll link to it from the list of stops that I've created below.
Last summer, we spent a week in the White Mountains with Briar and Gus, Grant and Melissa and all 5 grandkids. Briar and Gus found another house this year and we shared it with them for the week.
Saturday, 8/5 was a travel day. Check-in was at 4pm so we didn't do much.
On Monday, 8/6 we went on a couple of hikes. Both started at the Pinkham Notch Visitors Center which is one of the main trail heads for the Mt. Washington ascent.
We found these great T-shirts at the Visitors Center. If you don't recognize the images, they are cairns (above the treeline, the trails to the top of Mt. Washington are marked by cairns).
First hike was less than a mile up the Appalachian Trail to a small waterfall on the Ellis River.
After returning to the Visitors Center we decided to cross the highway and do the Lost Pond hike.
On the map, the hike appeared to be just over a mile on the Appalachian Trail with a short side trail at the end to get us back to the highway close to the overflow lot where we'd parked the car. I guess that scale is everything. It was more like 3 1/2 miles.
The trail was very difficult to follow over some pretty tough terrain. When we finally looped back to the road, we found that we had a pretty wide and fast flowing river blocking our way. There were stepping stones most of the way across but there also was a couple of 4-5 foot gaps. It didn't look crossable so Gus and I scouted up and down stream looking for a better spot. We didn't find one so it came down to crossing at original spot or backtracking the entire 3 1/2 miles. Gus and I were able to leap the gaps and stay dry. Kristen and Briar decided to take off their shoes and socks and wade through the fast water. They lifted Niko and Maya across the large gaps and Gus helped them rock hop the rest of the way.
This amazing rock and tree seemed to be fused together.
Some goofballs that we met along the trail (Briar, Gus, Niko and Maya).
Finally, Lost Pond (It was a whole lot less lost than most of the trail around it and back to the highway).
Our hike wasn't over. There was a parking lot across the road but it was the wrong lot (the overflow lot hadn't been on the map). We still had a mile or so to hike back up the road to the car.
A waterfall that we spotted from the road.
You'd think that they would have been exhausted but that didn't stop Briar, Gus and the kids from heading over to Storyland at 3pm. A full day ticket to Storyland allows you to spend the 3 hours before closing on another day at the park. After visiting Storyland last year, we decided that we were kind of done with it so we didn't go this year.
On Monday, 8/7 we started the day with a long steep hike up to Arethusa Falls. Fortunately, it was beautiful and well worth it.
In the afternoon, we went into North Conway for some miniature golf.
We had an adventurous Tuesday, 8/8.
In the morning, we went over to the Attitash Mountain Ski Resort with the intention of riding their Mountain Coaster and Alpine Slide. The Alpine Slide doesn't run when it's wet and we had light sprinkles just often enough to keep it closed. Fortunately, the Mountain Coaster was running. Niko and I each went alone while Maya rode with Briar (not quite tall enough). Gus and Kristen wimped out.
In the afternoon, we all went up to the Wildcat Mountain Ski Resort where we all rode the gondolas to the top of the mountain and then Gus and I did the zip line.
The view from the top of Wildcat.. At the time, we thought that the pointy mountain in the middle was Mt. Washington. Subsequent research has revealed it to be the mountain on the left.
That's me in the lead with Gus trailing. We started at the same time. Gus asked what he needed to do to go faster and the guy told him to eat more.
Kristen and I had the day off on Wednesday, 8/9 while everyone went back to Storyland. We did some shopping, had lunch in town and just took it easy.
On Thursday, 8/10 we went tubing on the Sako River. We intended for it to be a morning activity but, when we showed up, found that we needed a reservation. It ended up being an afternoon activity. The river couldn't have been much slower. It took more than 2 hours to go 1 1/2 miles. The only tough spot was reaching the take out spot. It was a very small shelf that the river just didn't want to go to.
A late addition (9/1/17): Kristen has been after me because I didn't mention 2 things,
While we were tubing along with 50 or 60 other people, a flock of geese came in low and floated with us for a bit before taking off, barely missing our heads.
Along the way, we encountered a couple of fly fishermen right out in the middle of the tube traffic. Durring the time that we were able to see them, they reeled in several trout while oblivious tubers bounced off of them.
Our last full day started out with a hike to the top of Blackcap Mountain. Different subsets of our group did it twice last year (I went both times).
In the afternoon, we wanted to hike in to the falls at Diana's Bath and wade in the falls. Since last year, they had raised the fee for the small lot from $3 to $5 and they had banned parking on the road for about a mile in either direction (i.e: the parking situation is now nuts). We ended up doing our wading at Jackson Falls which didn't involve much hiking.
Niko didn't want anything to do with walking up the falls. Maya just grabbed my hand and said "C'mon Grandpa". Niko announced that we were both nuts.
We started for home early on Saturday, 8/12. Briar and Gus had a wedding to go to so the kids spent the night with us. Usually, the run us ragged with outdoor activities but they were spent. One of the calmest visits that we've had. Maya did manage to harvest our entire blueberry crop.
I've done something different with this posting. There are way too many pictures for one posting and I didn't want to create multiple postings for this trip in this blog. Instead, I created multiple postings in a new blog. I'll link this posting to those postings as appropriate.
Worcester airport is about 20 minutes from home. Jet Blue is the only airline and they have one flight per day to/from Orlando and one flight per day to/from Fort Lauderdale (there are talks about flights to JFK but that hasn't happened yet). We wanted to try Worcester so Briar could drop us off and pick us up. THANK YOU BRIAR!
Our original plan was to fly to Orlando or Fort Lauderdale and then catch another Jet Blue flight to somewhere in the Caribbean (we've had bad luck with having our luggage make the transition between airlines so it was Jet Blue or nothing). Unfortunately, every single Jet Blue flight to the Caribbean leaves before the flights from Worcester arrive. On the return, the flights to Worcester leave before the flights from the Caribbean arrive. Bad Scheduling Jet Blue!
So, we decided to do a Florida trip. Kristen had visited Florida for work but our only previous trip together was in 2013 in the trailer. We crossed the pan handle (Panama City Beach and Tallahassee) and stopped in Jacksonville (with a side trip to St. Augustine) before heading North.
Our first stop was Disney World. This was one of the rare occasions where we used a travel agent. We booked a Disney hotel (the Pop Century) for 3 nights and bought wrist bands that let us into 2 parks on the 2 different full days. We had been to Disneyland a number of times as kids. We got kind of jaded with Disneyland when Kristen worked there (summer of '71) and we were able to get in free (sans ride tickets) whenever we wanted. We did take the kids back a number of times but still, the thrill was gone. In spite of that, Disney World was on our bucket list..
Our arrival at the hotel was confused (to say the least). Our package offered online advanced check-in which was supposed to allow you to bypass the long check-in lines. As a part of this, they were supposed to text or email the room information to us. They didn't so I called from Orlando Airport and got the room number. It would have been nice if they'd told me how to find the building. The Pop Century has groups of buildings for each decade ('50s through '90s) and the decade number is the only information on the street signage. Our room was in the '50s but, without that information, our only choice was to go through the long check-in line. Poor execution.
The transportation at Disney World was amazing. We never had to touch the car once we'd parked it.
We spent the first day at Disney World: Magic Kingdom. Knowing our way around Disneyland made Magic Kingdom easy to navigate. The rides were very similar and, with the heat and humidity, we'd reached our limit by 4pm. It was just as well. We took a bus over to Disney Springs and got there just as the sky decided to open up. Fortunately, we were next to a lakeside margarita bar when that happened.
An hour or so later, there as a brief lull and I made a mad dash to a Disney Store and bought a couple of Micky Mouse raincoats. Wearing those, we made our way to Dinner at Rick Bayless' Frontera Cocina in Disney Springs where we had a wonderful dinner.
The next day, we went to Disney World: EPCOT. It was all new to us and we enjoyed it very much. Again, we had our fill by 4pm and caught the bus to Disney Springs. Again, we got there just in time for the downpour and holed up in another lakeside bar until it was time to don our raincoats go to Dinner at House of Blues in Disney Springs.
We left Disney World the next morning and stopped at the Kennedy Space Center on our way to
Cocoa Beach. Both were highlights of our trip. The owners of our hotel at Cocoa beach obviously cared about every detail. The beach was great and we'd definitely go back.
And then there was Key Biscayne. Our original thought was to stay in Miami South Beach but we didn't find the accommodations that we wanted. Once we saw the confusion of Miami South Beach, we were kind of glad.
We were a bit disappointed when we saw our room. We'd reserved a room with a king sized bed and, apparently, the only room with a king was a concrete bunker that was as far from the beach as you could get and was surrounded by parking lot on 3 sides. We did some quick reconnaissance and got ourselves moved to a room with 2 doubles that opened onto the gardens. Not the nicest place we've stayed, but it was OK. We won't be returning.
Our next stop was Key West. Our hotel was right on Duval street. Duval is the main street in Key West's old town and is home to many restaurants and bars. One outdoor bar featured live music from 11am to 1:30am. Naturally, that bar was right under our window. Still, we really enjoyed Key West and will probably go back. While we were there, we visited the Key West: Hemingway House where we met the many, many descendents of Ernest Hemingway's cat, Snowball.
Key West is apparently known for its Key West: Chickens. They are everywhere.
Our next stop was Key Largo. We were only there one night and it looked like there might be a lot more to do there than what we saw. Key Largo did have the largest iguanas of anyplace that we visited.
We had reservations for 2 nights at Everglades City but found that our hotel was without power because of some fallen utility poles. We gave them several hours and then, since dinner time was fast approaching, cancelled the reservation and found something else. In the interim, we'd pretty much done everything that the area had to offer.
Our new room was up on stilts. It was a bit dated but it featured a wonderful, large, fully screened, deck that looked out over the mangrove swamp. The bugs are pretty bad all over Florida so you can imagine what they're like in the Everglades. We enjoyed that porch for hours.
We booked the room for one night and, after our Airboat Ride the next morning, took off for Fort Lauderdale. Our original plan had been to drive to the Fort Lauderdale airport from Everglades City. Instead of doing that, we decided to spend our last night in Fort Lauderdale and have a short drive to the airport.
Unfortunately, when I was using my phone to book the reservation, the date fields reset somewhere along the way. We showed up and learned that our reservation had been for the previous night and that they had charged us as no shows. Fortunately, they were very understanding about the mix up and used the previous night's payment to cover the current night.
We didn't see a whole lot of Fort Lauderdale but the beach is beautiful and it definitely looks like it might be worth returning to.
We've had a lot of wildlife sightings in the past few days.
Saw this guy out the kitchen window. It was taken through the window screen so it's a bit grainy.
Found this on our wildlife camera. Here's the video that I did the above screen capturefrom.
And then we had a bear try to destroy our bird feeder at about 10:30pm last night (I've seen a lot of fresh bear poop lately when I've been cutting brush so we knew that we had one hanging around).
Still assessing the damage. I hope to be able to straighten the pole. The feeder on the ground is a bit mangled so I'll need to take a closer look. In any case, the feeders won't be up for a few days and, even then, we'll probably bring them in at night.
Checked the wildlife camera to see if we captured the culprit. The bear moved across the screen so quickly that the video isn't worth showing. Here's a screen capture:
-JC-
Update: The pole straightened out beautifully and is back in the ground. One of the feeders was bent but straightened right out. Both feeders are in the garage for now.
With the upstairs room complete, we went shopping for furniture. It didn't take long to find the sofa and chairs that we wanted but there was a 5 week wait to have them reupholstered in the fabrics that we wanted. They finally arrived last Tuesday. Unfortunately, one of the sofa module arrived damaged (a rip on the back so it is out of sight at least). A replacement will be showing up in about 5 weeks.
With the upholstered pieces in place, we went out and bought the table between the chairs and the sofa table for behind the chairs (both antiques). We still need to find the right area rug.
The wing back chairs are really Lazy Boy recliners.
We wanted a modular sofa so that it could be gotten up the stairs. The module on the left end is the one that has a rip on its back.
We bought and refinished the cabinet under the TV a while back. The front telescopes out and there are 6 18" leaves inside the cabinet.
At long last, the upstairs room is complete! It's time to select furniture.
If you don't remember how this all started, here's the video that Briar shot of the entire house on the day that we closed. Here are a couple of shots that I clipped from the video:
There is one more thing to do upstairs but it's going to have to wait. You may (or may not) have noticed that the sashes in the double-hung windows are still unpainted. They are very easy to remove so Kristen wants to paint them in the basement. It's a bit cold just yet to be removing windows. Once things warm up a bit, we'll get going on that last step.
