Water feature, plus cows

Summer, upstate New York.

There was no place to pull over, but I was the only one on the road so I just stopped the car and rolled down the window to take this picture. I might have liked to try to get the cows from a better angle, but I had an appointment with the alpacas and couldn't hang around.

A few final alpacas

I think these are the last of the alpaca pictures. I particularly love the way the pattern from the shearing on the alpaca on the bottom left makes her look like she's wearing a sweater. (And a fancy hat!)

Another alpaca snuggle

I understand the impulse; I wanted to snuggle up with them, too.

Mother and child 2

I think these are the same two alpacas, just snuggling.

Mother and child

I took the picture of the baby alpaca nursing, and as soon as the shutter clicked the alpacas stopped and looked at me like, “Do you mind?”

Alpaca faces

Some of the amazing variety in those beautiful alpaca faces. Alpacas are easier to photograph than birds, but that doesn't mean they're willing to stay in one place for very long, and so some of my pictures are a little blurry. But still worth seeing.

This is clearly the Bad Girl of the alpaca farm

 

Sunday alpaca blogging

I may have mentioned that I have been sluggish and slothful, to put it kindly, since I came back from Peru. I had a lot of things I wanted to get done this summer, and accomplished very few of them. (It didn't help that the weather was unbearably hot and sticky and that every time I left the apartment I returned with my clothes sodden and my hair dripping.)

Then I happened to see this article about therapy alpacas. The alpaca farm in the article is up near Boston, and had only one free slot for visitors left this month, but it occurred to me that there might be an alpaca farm closer to home, and that really, aren't all alpacas by definition therapy alpacas?

So on Thursday I visited the Shalimar Alpacas Farm in Warwick, New York. It was possibly the only incentive that could have gotten me off my ass and out of the city, and the alpacas did not disappoint.

Saturday reflection

A road in Woodstock. I know the mirror is there for safety, but I prefer to think of it as an art installation.

Saugerties Lighthouse

The Saugerties Lighthouse.

The current lighthouse was built in 1869, and there were lightkeepers living there until the 1950's. The top floor is now a bed and breakfast, and I thought I would love to spend a night or two there, until I found out it was $525 a night, and there are no vacancies until next January.

I love that kid who ignored the big, beautiful river and claimed the muddy puddle instead.

Summertime and the livin' is easy

The trail to the Saugerties Lighthouse, on the Hudson in Ulster County.

Houses

Two of the lovely houses I saw on my trip. The house on the left is in Woodstock; the one on the right is in Rhinebeck, across the Hudson from where I was staying.

 

Sunday bird blogging

Another souvenir from my trip upstate: a young barred owl. Mama was hovering back in the trees, but unfortunately I didn't get a picture of her.

Saturday reflections

A very summery reflection in Woodstock, where I spent several days this weeks catching up with some old friends and (mostly) staying off the Internet.

Ithaca Falls

You don't have to go to one of the nearby parks in Ithaca to see a waterfall—there's actually one in the middle of town, just below the Cornell campus.

Final houses of Ithaca

I am actually in Minneapolis for the weekend, but have decided that I need to finish at least one location in the backlog before I post anything new. So here are a few more pictures from Ithaca, of various buildings that caught my eye.

Taughannock Falls State Park

Two last pictures of the stream below the falls.

Taughannock Falls

I have better pictures of the namesake falls in this park, but I picked this one because there's a teeny tiny human visible in the lower right-hand corner, which gives some useful scale to the photograph.

The falls is actually 33 feet taller than Niagara Falls, and is reportedly the tallest single-drop falls east of the Rockies, but for some reason waterfalls just never look that impressive in photographs. (Except maybe Victoria Falls. You really couldn't take a bad picture of that one.)

Cayuga Lake

Going back to some of the backlog—here are two pictures of Cayuga Lake in Taughannock Falls State Park outside Ithaca in April.

Sunday bird blogging

Here's another picture of the pileated woodpecker in Sapsucker Woods last month.

It's not as sharp as I would like, because it was busy pecking away like a little feathered jackhammer, as you can tell from the bits of tree debris flying through the air.