Fall is about over here

My grandmother's family had their start in Connecticut and the family farm still exists. Seemed like a natural to go visit them. Even better since they had a corn maze and pumpkin festival. This is the first corn maze we have ever done and it was a very exciting thing to complete as a family. There were so many fun activities for children that it would be hard to say what was enjoyed the most, but both Rose and Chris said they liked rolling around in the culvert pipe best. The weather again was still very nice. We weren't the only ones still wearing shorts in October. Anyone could see that it was a good play day by how dirty two children were that night.

A second trip through New York state has us camping on the eastern part in the Catskill Mountains. When we pulled in we noticed there is a lot more color here than up north, but the first night we were hit with a storm. The weather report said that 11 inches of rain was dumped on this area in a 24-hour period. They said something about flash flooding in NYC. The next day the mountains had skeleton trees to view. This isn't a good year for color.

Did you know that all the trees always have colored leaves? The reason that we see green leaves is because the tree is sucking up water and making chlorophyll (which is green). When the temperature drops and the nights are longer the trees chemistry changes and the chlorophyll is restricted from going to the leaves. Then the true colors of the trees can be seen. We are learning a lot. Some of the trees are lacking that chemical that blocks the chlorophyll, and they just keep sucking (so to speak).

There is a lot of evidence that Rip Van Winkle truly did exist, but we are a bit skeptical. Just to be sure, we spent a day hiking in the woods--there are some terrific waterfalls to see and they have a bit of fall color around them. Kaaterskill Falls is a beautiful short hike. The signs all say that it is the highest water fall in New York, but it isn't true. We are discovering that you can't believe everything printed on signs. (More reason not to believe ol' Rip lived.) Even so, it is a peaceful place to go and quite impressive. An artist had set-up her easel at the pool and we got to watch her work. An exciting experience for our little artist. After viewing the falls from below we drove up the mountain and hiked to the top of the falls (second water shot). There was a rough trail up the canyon on the side of the falls we could have climbed, but it looked a bit risky since the wet leaves were piled on the rocks. A couple of hardy young men were doing it while we were there and managed it nicely.

We are satisfied with the fall color and now would like to go south so we can keep wearing shorts. It is starting to get cold here. They are talking frost in various places. We went to wal-mart yesterday and were the only ones with legs showing. Some folks even were wearing heavy winter coats. hmmm...we didn't even bring anything as heavy as they were wearing. I pulled out some jeans for Chris and he looked at me like I was crazy. He got his shorts out instead, he will change when he gets cold.

Until next time....