Trippin' with Susan Straley

This evening I have an owee on my nose, but I am feeling pretty dang happy. I last wrote to you when we were still in New York.  Let me tell you about our adventure getting home to Florida first. Then I will tell you about the nose. Our last day in NY, Steve's kids came over for dinner.  Steve's son brought his guitar and speaker and I got to hear him play a tiny bit as he and Steve fiddled with the controls on the speaker.  And get this, a year and a half after I started hanging out with Steve, I finally got to hear him strum a guitar.  But they didn't play a tune for me.  They just putzed.  Some day... Our flight from Albany, NY to St Pete, FL was to take off on Monday at 7 pm.  Steve's daughter gave us a ride to the airport.  We arrived in plenty of time. We boarded the plane.  We were practically the only passengers with masks on.  We didn't want to risk taking something nasty home to our friends in Florida.   The plane didn't start rolling.  Instead the pil

 Hey There, we are still in the Adirondacs. I guess I missed sharing with you the picture I took during totality.  You can't see the moon covering the sun in the picture, but you can see the darkness, and the light off in the distance like a sunset all around on the horizon.  And you can see ...I think it was Venus. This morning we took it easy for a while.  I studied Spanish using Duolingo, read the news, and did some of my Physical Therapy exercises. Steve made us an amazing breakfast. Then we bundled up to go for a hike up Ampersand Mountain near Saranac Lake.   Right away we were peeling clothes. It must have been about 50 degrees and the trail started climbing right away. It was a fun and scenic trail with extremely tall trees, lots of little streams to cross, and stones to step on to avoid the mud puddles and traverse the mucky places. We climbed 1600 feet and walked 5.5 miles.  We didn't make it to the top,  the trail became a steep sheet of ice with water flowing over i

 Wow! We chose the right spot.  Though we didn't hear any changes in nature,  bird songs or bugs, we got to be in front of a screen with a live stream from Nasa. We got to watch the shadow of the moon on that screen from a satellite, and from the ground as several communities along the path of totality experienced the totality.  We watched the eclipse as it happened in Mazatlan, Mexico, in Texas, in Arkansas, in Carbondale, IL, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Niagra Falls. What blew my mind was this: while we saw on the screen the totality in Mexico as it was happening, we were just starting to see the moon start to cover the sun where we were using our solar eclipse glasses. We were blessed with a fairly clear sky, and no traffic or parking problems.   We drove from our tiny home rental to Tupper Lake and we're there by 8:30.  We walked around, attended some activities, and texted friends and family. The event was free.  Steve bought us sweatshirts to support the host organization, 

Greetings from the Adironac Park in NY, This morning we put together a lunch to take with us.  I heated up soup while Steve made sandwiches.  We were both able to work in the little kitchen.  Who says we can't dance well together! The news has been that the restaurants would be crowded.  The traffic has not been bad yet. We did a short hike down to Middle Saranac Lake to see if that would be a good place to view the eclipse tomorrow.  It was lovely.  We saw two loons diving in the distance.  One was a juvenile without the white plumage.  We then drove to Tupper Lake where the town has many activities planned for the event.   We got to look through telescopes at the sun and see sun spots.  We got to crawl through a tunnel into a blow up dome.  20 of us participants sat around the perimeter.  In the middle was a projector and an expert.   We learned some of the constellations that will appear when the sky gets dark during the day tomorrow.   We learned that NASA will be live streamin