Wednesday, December 6, 2023

2023 Village

 The trains are up and running. This is truly a labor of love!


The farm has a "new" (from a rummage sale) piece this year--a mill that pumps real water! I have to add water every couple of days because it evaporates. The Farm Train is hiding in the tunnel but you can see and hear it in the video.


The tall houses and businesses in town are relatively unchanbged this year. I had to redo some of the train tunnels. 



The castle and observatory are in the fireplace, as usual. There is a little more in front of the fireplace, including the London Bridge! It was "new" last year (from the thrift store).





The ski lift is operating. If you look closely at the vidoe you can see it carrying the gondolas up the mountain. 



The Polar Express is parked at the train station when it's not in motion. two freight trains are on the lowest level, as seen in the video.




The North Pole Series started when my neighbor Jean gave me seven pieces. Then my friend Lisa. who faithfully helps set up every year, brought some more, and well, you can see what happened!


Granddaughter Delia set up the circus this year. She insisted on having the elephant babies ride on the backs of the big elephants! (She hotglued them on) The little dinosaur is her idea too. The circus train is parked behind the circus when it is not making its rounds.


And of course we have a song and a scavenger hunt! See if you can find: 12 pink flamingos, 11 firefighters, 10 jolly Santas, 9 little snowmen, 8 children skating, 7 swans a-swimming, 6 horseback riders, 5 kids with rings, 4 nutcrackers, 3 tiny penguins, 2 howling wolves, and a witch with a pointy black hat!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and joyous holidays of every kind!

Sunday, November 12, 2023

October 14-15, 2023

 All we did the next few days was play Scrabble. Neither of us won money this time, but it's always an interesting experience playing in a tournament.



We left Lake George after the last games Sunday afternoon and I drove straight through to home, stopping only for gas and dinner. Our dinner was at a Mexican Restaurant in Batavia, NY. This was the first long trip for this car, and it behaved very well, hour after hour in the driving rain. It's good to be home!


October 13, 2023

We drove out to hike to a waterfall today. I thought it was interesting that it was 20 miles away and would take 45 minutes to get there--the road to the site was "unimproved"--not paved, rocky and hilly. Some sections had room to meet another vehicle, some didn't.


It was no problem for me and my Jeep, but Dianne wsa pretty nervous about being on a one-lane dirt road with no guardrails or shoulders. We chose a parking lot and hiked in on the "blue trail".



The trail led to a lovely view of Lake George (the lake), much different than the view from the village of Lake George. The "red trail" led off to the left of where this photo was taken and I wanted to take that trail--it seemed to me that it would lead to the waterfalls. Dianne wanted to go back the way we came, so I gave in and we did. It was a nice easy trail, although the return was uphill.

We drove to a different parking lot and hiked a differnt trail; this time there was a sign that told us there were waterfalls. The "trail" was strewn with rocks. It was quite a difficult trail.



When we got to the first set of waterfalls Dianne had had enough; she turned around and went back up the rocky path to the parking lot. I kept on hiking and found several other waterfalls, thus the name Shelving Rock Falls. The path further down was not rocky, but neither was it an easy path.






I met one couple on the trail. They had come up from the blue trail to the red trail--it was a direct connection, just as I had suspected.

When we got back to Lake George (the village) Dianne's sister Julie, Julie's daughter Malorie, and Malorie's family--husband Jonathan and children Charlie and Magnolia were waiting for us. We all went for a walk around the village and then went to a restaurant outside the village. We had discovered it the day we checked on Bryan's cabin and found it worth returning to.




Our guests all left in time for us to go to the first set of games in the Lake George Scrabble Tournament.








October 11-12, 2023

We did not do much on Wednesday Oct. 11; it rained.. We played Scrabble, did some shopping, went out to eat a couple of times...This is the view from our balcony.

Thursday, October 12 we decided to ride the Wareen County Bikeway again. It is supposed to connect to another path called the Feeder Canal Trail, but we did not find it Tuesday; we turned around and went home because the sky looked ominous and we did not want to get caught in the rain.

We did not find it today either, although we followed the signs and asked several people in Glens Falls. It was a nice ride anyway.



On the way back I atopped and waited for Dianne to catch up at the top of every hill. I found it ironic that when I took this photo of her walking up the hill there was a sign directing us to the Feeder Canal Trail--we spent an hour searching for that trail while we were in Glen Falls,



We stopped to take photos of the cutouts at Wild West Ranch (almost back to Lake George) and a young man on a bike stopped and asked our opinion of the Bikeway. He works for Warren County and is on the board for the Bikeway. I told him how much we enjoyed it, and also told him how we looked for the Canal Feeder Trail on two different days and did not find it. He assured us that that is a known problem and it's being addressed. It'll be interesting to see if it's better if we come back here next year.






Saturday, November 11, 2023

October 10, 2023

Today we rode the Warren County Bikeway. We saw it last year when we were here for the Lake George Scrabble tournament, and decided then that if we came back here we would bring our bikes.





We ate lunch at the Prospect Mountain Diner, always a fun thing to do.





October 9, 2023

This morning we set out to Fort William Henry to get another look at the photo I found yesterday.



It is the bottom photo on the left, and is captioned "Interested Spectators Watch Digging". How amazing is that that I recognized Bill among all those photos?

We went for a drive to check on Bryan's family cottage, just outside Lake George. It looks fine, I sent him the photos I took. All is well.




October 8, 2023

We went to Prospect Mountain Diner for breakfast, our favorite place here. Then we went to Fort William Henry. The  British were defeated by the French here in 1757, but the museum commemorates the British.




The young man in the photo above was preparing to shoot his musklet and did not like where I was--directly in fromt of where he was planning to shoot, and oblivious to his intentions! He called out "Ma'am! You in the purple coat!" until I realized he was calling to me!


I spent some time in the outdoor museum, walked around the second floor battlements, and watched part of a film about the exhuming and identifying of persons from the fort cemetery. I was interested enough to go to the cemetery outside the gates, and there on the wall was a photo of Bill, age 11, with his dad and his brother!

Oktoberfest was going on in the streets of Lake George, so we walked down there after we got back from the fort. 



There were no open tables so we shared a table with Andy and his family. He was bemoaning turning 60 this year and we filled his ears with stories of things we have done since turning 60! He was especially taken by Dianne, still biking and having adventures at 80 years old!





When we left Oktoberfest there was a full double rainbow over the lake! What a sight! We went back to our room and played Scrabble. That's why we are here at Lake George, after all.