The Towns Time has Left Behind

We left Cincinnati for Bloomington, Indiana to visit Andrew's in-laws Carolyn and Paul Jarvis.  On the way we stopped at the Whitewater Canal State Historic Site in Matamora, Indiana.  It is an absolutely lovely place.  Everything was closed and it was calm and peaceful.  The state of Indiana had built the canal and lost its shirt on the transaction as railroads quickly took over the transport of goods.  This is a model of a canal boat (pulled by horses) that still gives rides to tourists.




 All the buildings are on the National Register.  This is the Masonic Temple.
















                  The bank.













The lock and a water wheel near a grist mill.
































The canal goes across an aquaduct in a covered bridge across a stream (the only such engineering feat in the US).  I don't know how the horses/mules pulled the canal boats through as there was no space for them to walk.









 The aquaduct from a distance with the rail tracks (which is where the horses now walk).













We spent the night in Iowa, after leaving Bloomington, IL going on Iowa route 2 through the southern part of the state.  We went along the Des Moines River to Bonaparte, which had these lovely brick buildings that were used to manufacture something.  The down town (photo below), was also beautiful.  We continued 4 miles to Bentonsport, Iowa.  This is along the Mormon trail and they built the Mason House Inn which Snoopy is parked in front of.

Grandchildren

We went back to Cincinnati (via Buffalo, NY where Bob played disc golf on Grand Island and Pokagon State Park in NE Indiana) to visit the grandchildren.  Here Elsa is helping to put the feet down on Snoopy.















Looking at my earrings.

















 Henry and Olive.













 We watched Andrew and Elsa participate in a soccer skills class which involved running, dribbling, changing directions, freezing and kicking the ball into the goal.  Elsa got a Strider bike from Henry and we worked on riding too.















We also went to the Deerfield Township "Touch the Truck" event where they had every conceivable type of vehicle (fire engines, ambulances, SWAT Team vehicles, ATVs, Ohio State Patrol motor cycles, dump trucks, snow plows, a helicopter ambulance, a chance to shoot a fire hose at a house, etc.).  Elsa's favorite was this Kubota tractor.





















 Elsa is a real train fanatic and Andrew arranged to go to Lebanon, Ohio for a Thomas the Train event.  We rode a real train with Thomas "pulling" it (though there was a real engine).  There were all sorts of associated activities (bouncing gyms, videos of Thomas, train sets, etc.).  Elsa was really excited.




























The conductor let Elsa wear his hat.













































Henry is three weeks old and keeping his parents up.  He's just learning to keep a pacifier in his mouth and managed to sleep for 4 1/2 hours one night.  His parents are both sleep deprived.  He has Andrew's hair line and is loved by his parents, big sister and Olive.

Cape Cod

 After Labor Day, Bob, Markus, my mother and I went to Cape Code to visit her sister Hanni and my cousins Patrick and Barbara.  The first day it was pouring rain, but warm, and we went to Provincetown.  This is a fish packing house on the dock with photos of the Portuguese women of Provincetown.







The library in Provincetown has a huge (100' long) model of the sailboat that won the race from Provincetown to Boston in the children's area of the library.










We spent a delightful day helping Patrick and Barbara (Woodbury Shellfish) dig and sort clams.  They have been growing clams since 1986 on a 5 acre grant in the Wellfleet Harbor and supply many of the really good restaurants in Boston (and a few in New York).  Gourmet magazine called their clams the best in the northeast.  It was a calm, warm day when we donned chest waders to go out on the low tide and dig clams.  You use a huge rake attached to a basket which you attach to a belt around your middle to help pull it through the top 3-5" of sand/mud.  Then we take all the clams back to sort them by size on this machine that Patrick invented.  The rollers get ever wider as they go down sorting the clams by size.  It was lots of fun.  We also took walks with Hanni on the beaches of the Atlantic (on this trip we have truly gone coast-to-coast).  This is the site of the Marconi radio station, the first station that transmitted a radio signal to Europe.  Obviously, there is nothing left except a few foundations (which are under water).







We also went out to this seal colony which was being observed by a volunteer who pointed out the seals with shark bites and with pieces of plastic around their necks which will cause them to die.  I hadn't been to Cape Cod since the early 60's and it was lovely to visit again after all the crowds had died down (somewhat).

Grey Towers & Rickett's Glen State Park

 Continuing our practice of exploring northeastern PA on the weekends, at Carol Stull's suggestions (Markus' girlfriend), we headed off to Grey Towers in Milford, PA.  This is the home of Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the US Forest Service.  His parents were quite wealthy (from clear-cutting timber) and suggested that their son study forestry.  They endowed the forestry school at Yale and built Grey Towers, based upon a Norman/Brittany model of a castle/chateau in France.  It was built by local farmers (friends of the Pinchots).  The walls are double thickness in the towers and roughly made.  The third story of the tower has 30" thick walls and sticks out over the lower two stories to repel attacks (historically).  Gifford Pinchot became a forester, married a woman who was very involved in workers' rights, child labor and suffrage.  His brother was one of the founders of the ACLU.  The family gave back extensively to the community of Milford (they had huge gardens and orchards and invited people in the village to take what they needed; they had a huge ice cream social to which all the townspeople were invited).  Gifford reforested the estate and it was donated to the National Parks in 1963, along with all the furnishings and papers.

 Gifford Pinchot's bedroom (he often had the bed taken out onto a sleeping porch through a window).  We ate lunch at a wonderful old hotel in Milford that was made famous when the chef from Delmonico's in NYC came out and took over the kitchen.

 This photo shows the insulation I installed in the kitchen roof (the bare spots are for three skylights which are desperately needed because the room is lit only by one window over the sink facing south).  I am also putting in one layer of insulation in the walls so that the living room, kitchen and bedroom can be isolated from the rest of this house this winter and kept relatively warm.

 Markus also put me on insulating the top of the walls in the stairway parlor where they meet the cathedral ceiling.  I put in 5 1/2" of insulation (each piece cut to fit).  This was particularly difficult in the corners where the angles were very acute.  This photo shows the antique Chinese sea monsters which will be holding up the truss.

 Yesterday we went to Rickett's Glen State Park (a place I have wanted to visit forever).  It was proposed for national park status, but this didn't occur due to the intervention of WWII.  It consists of three glens (valleys) that were owned by Rickett.  He was a Union commander in the Civil War and won an important victory at Gettysburg.  There is a plateau which feeds the streams.  Six men spent five years in the 1890's building the trail along Falls Creek.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  We walked in from the top and ate lunch next to a fall.  Then Bob and I walked down while Markus, Carol and Mom drove around to meet us.  There were many people hiking due to the Labor Day weekend and quite a few people swimming in the pools at the base of the falls.

 Picnic lunch at Gonaga Falls (96'), the highest in the park.

 Some of the wonderful stone steps on the trail.

Today Bob is playing disc golf with a neighbor who built a forested disc golf course on the property adjoining the Cottage.  He and Bob played the Cottage Course on Friday and today they are playing the woods course.  This afternoon we go to the Everhard Museum in Scranton.  We work on Monday (our last day) and then head to Cape Cod to visit my aunt (my mother's sister) in Wellfleet before we start heading west.  We are due home in early October.

Family & the Harford Fair

 On August 22 Mom celebrated my birthday by hosting a luncheon at Patsel's Restaurant near Scranton.  This is where we have celebrated all the Robinson birthdays in PA.  In honor of the occasion, Beren, Arlene, Calder and Oriana stopped in for one day and two nights on their way from Guelph, Ontario to Chapel Hill, NC, where Beren will be spending the academic year on sabbatical.  Catherine, Miro, Zax and Anaya drove up from Philadelphia for the day.  Bob, Markus, Mom and I took the day off from working on the house (in the case of Bob and I, insulating every space in the roof with pink solid styrofoam).  The work on the house is proceeding and we can really notice the change in temperature in the upstairs due to the 6-8" of insulation.  Bob and I also tore down the walls and ceiling in the north dormer and put in the last window.  Bob installed two octagon windows way up at the peak of the roof on each end to provide more ventilation.  Every day we measure and cut insulation and pound it into place and end the day covered with pink styrofoam fuzz.  None of us had met Anaya (who was born in February), here held by her Mom.  Her name means God's Gift (or something similar) in an Indian language (and she was really such a gift to her Mom who wanted a girl).

 Arlene and Anaya (we spent a lot of time sitting on the porch chatting).

 Oriana heading off with Miro and Zax to catch frogs in the pond.  Oriana is very good at this and Miro caught two frogs too.  I spend quite a while with him swimming while he searched for frogs.

 Zax and Miro.

 Beren and Anaya.  Beren, Arlene, Calder and Oriana left very early Thursday morning to drive all the way to Chapel Hill.  We sent them on their way with a good breakfast,

 On Saturday, Bob, Mom and I went to the 155th annual Harford Fair, an old-fashioned country fair about an hour from Tunkhannock.  We have gone almost every year.  Here is the winner of the weird vegetable contest (we think it's a cucumber about 3' long).

 I always find the decorated cakes a riot.  Here was one decorated for a shower.

 We visited the animal barns and the 4H sheep auction.  Here is a blow dryer used on the animals (in this case cows) prior to being shown.

 There was quite a collection of cars for the demolition derby in the evening.  They have their gas tanks in the center of the car, surrounded by steel so that they aren't punctured.  The bumpers are often chained on and there is a lot of testosterone evident in the revving of engines as the cars were checked in.

We also watched the remote-control cars, helicopters and planes exhibit.  Here you see a car (orange on the left) that is about 1' long that has gone off the ramp.  It was a hoot and a lot less dangerous than using real cars.  There were guys of all ages (and the rare woman) driving these things.