Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 383
If you weren’t among the thousands in the area over the weekend you missed peak leaves. Highways were bumper to bumper at times; parking lots were overflowing as were restaurants and businesses. Lots of events throughout the weekend, starting with the opening of the Quilt Show at View with four galleries full of beautiful quilts and other machine and handmade clothing. You won’t want to miss this, and upstairs Claire Oehler has an open show of her quilting work for several years. October Fest was going on in the pavilion on North Street which was remarkably busy all weekend.
In Inlet it was Kids Day starting off on Friday night at the Library with Gary VanRiper and his kid’s books, then I did a Loon Rescue power point program at the Town Hall. On Saturday it started off with the kids fishing off the raft in fifth lake from 10 to 3. Beavers tried to stop that event by dropping trees across the channel from Fourth Lake to Fifth Lake, but the trees were cleared out to allow the party barges to make runs up the channel. Those dam beavers thought they were going to have peace and quiet by themselves for this beautiful weekend, but the kids made it up to Fifth with the barges and caught plenty of fish many for prizes. Other events went on all during this sunny day in the park and at the Town Hall. Ending with a Loon Calling Contest which echoed from several loon calling children in the meeting room.
I kept hearing about traffic not moving from time to time but wherever you were you could look out your car window and enjoy the beautiful leaves. Cameras were snapping from the roadsides and mountain tops all weekend. Sunday started off with a beautiful sunrise, but the sun soon faded into the clouds for most of the day as I was up in the Stillwater Fire Tower, but we had no rain. It did pop out during the late afternoon. The High Peaks were visible all day as were the windmills over by Lowville to the west. It was very windy most of the day and you could only have one window open at a time to take better pictures. I had sixty-one visitors that day, but I bet there were many more going up Rondaxe, Rocky and Black Bear Mountains. As I went up the mountain the Blue Jays and White-breasted Nuthatches were having breakfast in the Beech trees feasting on the many nuts on those trees. The Crows and Ravens were also calling and eating those nuts as I went up the trail. Up at the top of the mountain the Red-breasted Nuthatches and Red Crossbills were working on the red spruce cone seeds. There were Black Capped Chickadees and Brown Tree Creepers having a snack in the tree trunks on bugs and spiders trying to hide there. They were hard to hear with the wind blowing so hard but every once and while I would see one fly by the tower.
My daughter Erin came up Thursday after buying a long arm quilting machine out in Dexter. Their car was full of the machine and its parts and a light bar to go over the top. On Friday we got all the parts into the upstairs living room, and it took half of the day to get it all together and level. It wasn’t until late on Saturday when it was making stitches in material. Then some more on Sunday while I was in the tower. Now it is like a Halloween Ghost in the living room until Erin returns. Well, it is that time of the year. Today, Monday is their 40th Anniversary. I remember their wedding day well there were beautiful leaves the day before but wind and rain over night nearly cleared the trees of any pretty leaves.
A frost this week will cut back on many flowering plants but not all of them but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo above: Red boat house
