Before and Almost After

One year ago this week, we moved into our new quarters. Due to the combining of two backyards into one, the removal of fences, one of the previous occupant's trampoline and many construction vehicles driving and parking on the yard, our back yard was a mess.
My summer project was to overhaul the back yard. I started by pulling out part of one of the existing patios and putting in some gardens. (Lots of dirt moving was involved.)
Next I moved plants and bulbs growing in what were now random places in the yard, into two new flower beds. (Around the tree and in the far corner.) And R and B removed several wheel barrow loads of rock out of the yard.
Then, while the girls were in school and B hadn't started school yet, we tackled the next project. (Notice that at this point, my summer project became a fall project.) First, we moved the satellite dish. (Careful measurements were involved so that we still would have reception when we were done.) Next we dug up tons of small rocks along one of the sidewalks...
sifted the excess dirt out of them and relocated them.
We removed two old flower beds and relocated all of the mulch to the garden area. This is mid way through the project.
We took out a small patio area near the street and reused the pavers inside the garden area and to outline the garden. (This picture is actually from much later in the project but it is the only one I have where you can see the pavers outlining the garden.)
The next project was to get rid of the old cement patio. Luckily for B, our community management's grounds crew pulled it all out and hauled it away. It was going to be his job.
Then, in October, my labor force arrived. :-) With their help, we finished removing the other patio and laid the pavers in a new patio. We also finally got rid of the extra piles of dirt in the yard, using them to fill in the low areas where the patio was previously located.
(The sand will stay on the patio for a while so that we can move it around and allow it to settle into the cracks between the pavers.)

One morning while I was gone, my labor force rallied the rest of the troops in the house to rake all of the acorns, branches, and leaves out of the yard. (Mom took this picture out of an upstairs window. I wish I would have done this all along through the project because you can see the whole yard at once.)
Next up...rototilling. That was a work out. Some areas of the ground were so compacted that Dad actually had to loosen the dirt with a shovel first or the tiller would just spin and spin and not really make any progress. We eventually figured out a technique to use and that helped some, but it required wrestling the tiller. I was pretty sore the next day. After 5+ hours of tilling and another couple of hours of moving dirt and raking, the job was done and the yard was leveled out.
My original plan was to plant grass this fall. But it is now so late that the leaves are really coming off of the trees and it would be impossible to rake them with new grass and straw in the yard. If I left them, they'd kill the new grass. So, I will have to wait until spring to get the grass growing. In the meantime, I'll continue to level the dirt as it settles over the next couple of months. Hopefully, next summer I'll have nice grass. Then, I will be able to post the true "after" picture.

Anthony's Nose

Last Saturday the weather was cooperative and the family schedule was free so we set off on another 10 mile hike. We were especially excited because Grandma E and Grandpa B are here visiting and they came along.

Our destination this time was Anthony's nose. If we would have taken the short cut (parked in the closest parking area and just went up and back, we would have only needed to hike 4.4 miles. But, since we needed to go 10 miles, we parked a little further away. Once we got to the top (about 800 feet of elevation gain) we had great views. The kids were especially excited to see that we could actually see where we had parked our van.
They were wishing that they had brought binoculars so that they could really see it good. I'm sure we'll repeat this hike again (the shorter version) and next time we'll bring our binoculars.

From the top, we could also see the majority of where we had hiked and where we were still going to hike. (Our route is marked in red.)

We started our hike at an Historic site where we parked our van in the parking lot and hiked down to a foot bridge that crosses a tributary. We stopped on the foot bridge to take a quick picture.

From there we hiked up to a State Park where we stopped at the look out area on the left side of the Bear Mountain Bridge to get a good view of where we were going. (Not sure what Grandma was pointing at...something interesting down the river.)

Then we walked across the bridge.

On the other side of the bridge is where the real climbing happened. The kids even did some extra climbing by finding huge rocks to climb up on just about every time we stopped to take a break.

Once we made it to the top, we enjoyed the beautiful view and ate our lunch.
Then, it was back down the mountain and across the bridge to a park where everyone else rested while Grandpa, B, and I made a loop through the state park and out around the lake and back so that we could get in the 10 miles.

This is a view of the lake from the top of Anthony's nose. (Notice how brown the river is. It has looked like this ever since the hurricane, due to all of the dirt that was and still is being washed into it. It looks like chocolate milk. It actually used to be darker and more red but it has lightened up some.)

Here is a picture of Anthony's nose from the far side of the lake.

Here is the lake. There were tons of people out walking, fishing, etc, and attending the October fest celebrations that were happening at the park.
If there was a hiking award for this hike, it would definitely go to P. She was amazing. She did all seven miles that the whole family hiked, all by herself...no piggy backs. That was a huge accomplishment, and not just because of the distance she traveled. When we were climbing up to Anthony's nose, some of the steps to get up and over and around the rocks (it is a very rocky trail) were as high as her waist, or higher, and she scrambled right up them. B was an awesome big brother, and in the steepest areas he would take her hand and help pull her up. They were a great team. Every time I asked P if she wanted a piggy back ride, she said, "No. I'm going to do it all by myself." And she did! (Here she is at the top.)

First Day of School Part II

After 2 and a half weeks of having the house to himself since his sisters were at school, B finally started school on Tuesday. I can't believe that he is in high school now. Wow! The time passes fast.

I actually forgot to take a picture of him the first day of school because I was so anxious about him getting out the door on time so that he didn't miss the bus. Here he is with the neighbor kids waiting for the bus. I had fun watching them out the window. They've grown up together since kindergarten and now they are all in high school.

Next week we get to start early morning seminary. I'm not sure I'm ready for 5:45 a.m. Oh well.

Twenty!!!

One of the requirements for the hiking merit badge is to take a 20 mile day hike. We've completed 3 of the 5 Ten mile hikes and were planning to do the 20 mile hike last. When we realized how few free Saturdays we are going to have between now and November, we changed our plan. Since we never intended on everyone doing the twenty mile hike (we are just too slow with the girls) we decided that B and I would do this hike one day while the girls were at school and on a day that R could be home when they got home. Yesterday was that day and so we hiked.

All around the country there is a trail program called Rails to Trails, where old railroad right of ways are paved and turned into walking and biking trails. The merit badge counselor recommended that we hike the Rails to Trails Heritage Trail from Monroe to Goshen. It is just over 9 1/2 miles so with an extension of hiking into the town of Goshen for a ways, we would reach 10 miles and then we could turn around and hike back.

We began our hike at 9:22 a.m. Our goal was to be back at the van in 8 hours. We thought this would be very do-able since the trail is paved and has very little elevation change. We were prepared for a somewhat boring hike and were pleasantly surprised to find some interesting sights along our way. Right off the bat we saw a ferret. Neither of us had seen one of those in the wild before.

We also saw an old cemetery,

A cool looking old fallen down tree,

A couple of railroad cars in a section that still had track that wasn't overgrown,

and several marshes and ponds.

The coolest thing we saw were the leaf prints. At first we thought it was just light coming through the trees but then when we saw complete leafs, we realized that we were seeing prints of leaves.

We spent a long time wondering how they got there until we came up with this hypothesis. In the area where we saw them, the water in the ditches was very grey and a lot of the plants and underbrush were covered in a grey film. We assumed that this was the result of dirt that had a lot of grey clay in it, that washed over everything during the flooding that came with the hurricane. We are guessing that leaves coated in this mud, blew and landed on the pavement. During the wind that came after the storm, the mud dried and the leaves blew away, leaving a perfect stamp on the pavement. Since we haven't had any rain since the hurricane, the prints are still there.

The first half of our hike, the way out, went great. We stopped just short of the turn around point and took a 30 minute lunch break. Then we wandered into the town, and took this picture at the exact half way point.

We then walked the 3/4 of a mile back to our lunch spot, changed our socks, took another quick break and earnestly began our return trip. It was 1:40. We were on track to make our goal. Very quickly we began suffering from sore feet and a couple of leg cramps. We stopped at the old Chester Train station to take a break. Notice how tired B looks.

At this point we were about 14.5 miles into our hike and we hit a wall. For the next two miles we fell victim to our sore feet and muscle cramps. Our speed dropped way off and for those couple of miles it was a bit of a mental game. We managed to push through though and then we were cruising again. We made it back to the van at 5:38.

Now that we've completed this, neither one of us ever wants to do it again though. It was a long tough day. I ended up with a blister on my heal and B is still pretty sore in his left calf from where it cramped so bad yesterday. Other than that, we have no lasting injuries...and we're done!

Originally we planned to do another 10 miles on Saturday. It looks like it is going to rain now so we aren't going and that is probably a good thing. Although our feet aren't bothering us now, they might protest pretty fast if we tried to make them go 10 miles after only one day of rest.

Another 10 miles

Between all of the other fun things we were doing all summer, and the rain, and the heat, we didn't get much hiking in. Now that the weather is cooling off again it is a good time to go hiking. Football games and scout camp outs are going to fill almost all of our weekends so we've been trying to figure out when we are going to get the rest of our hiking done. We decided that over the next couple of weeks, before B goes back to school, and while the girls are at school we could get a couple of hikes done. So last Monday, R, B, and I hiked another 10 miles. We decided to hike around Bear Mountain. The mountain itself is quite steep so, in order to get all 10 miles in, we weren't going to be able to hike over the mountain. That would be too difficult and we'd wear ourselves out. So, we made a 10 mile loop around it. (We still did a lot of climbing and descending though.)

We saw a doe and her fawn, twice. We saw a snake and 4 frogs. We crossed a beautiful stream/river 3 times.
We hiked a lot of muddy trails. (It had rained over the weekend). We each slipped and fell once.

We passed through an old ghost town and saw the rock foundations of a couple of old buildings. (Most of them were severely overgrown with vines).
The end of our hike took us through the Bear Mountain Zoo but since we've been there many times and we were in a hurry to get home before the girls got out of school, we didn't stop to look at the animals. Our best views from the whole hike were from there at the zoo where it overlooks the Hudson River and Bear Mountain Bridge.
Scenery wise, it wasn't a hike that we'll choose to repeat but we still enjoyed being outside, hiking, and spending several hours together.

P.S. For a preview of one of our upcoming hikes, check out the last picture. The top of the mountain at the other end of the bridge is called Anthony's Nose. We'll be heading to that top of that soon.

1st Day of School Part 1

The girls started school one week ago today.


Here is C on her first day of middle school. She is a 5th grader this year and excited to finally be in middle school. She is taking art and general music for her elective classes.


P started 1st grade this year and loves her new teacher and her class. She is a little concerned about having homework. (It doesn't help that she has watched her older brother complain about homework for her whole life...and that he kept reminding her all summer "now you are going to have to do homework and you aren't going to get to play as much.") She was happy to hear that she wouldn't get any homework until after Labor Day. That has greatly eased her mind and allowed her to enjoy the beginning of the school year and adjust to a new classroom and routine.