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Catskills Trip August 2020
BEST VIEWED ON A LAPTOP, DESKTOP OR PHONE. Not great on an iPad.
Click on pictures for a bigger view :) The videos will loop to the beginning automatically…
We just LOVED being back in the Catskills, and had an even more relaxing time than in June. No ball lightning to describe hahaha. We did get a couple of torrential downpours, though. Actually, there is very little to report - we really did NOTHING but sit around and soak up the life of the forest. This isn’t my usual travelogue, more pictures and videos than tales to tell. That’s all right by us - we really needed to snooze off in the wilderness for a spell. It did us SO MUCH GOOD. We both feel refreshed :)
The drive into the hills on the Palisades Parkway is so beautiful. DRIPPING with vine-covered trees, you have no sense that a gigantic city is just a few miles away. The car rental place didn’t have any compact cars when we arrived, so they gave us a HUGE minivan hahahaha! It had the sliding side doors and everything. I have never driven a minivan, I felt like a soccer mom hahahaha! But it made it through, gravel roads and all.
Covered Bridge Campground
We went back to Covered Bridge campground and LOVED it. Another river-front walk-in site with no neighbors for 2 out of 3 days. Sooooo peaceful.
We love our trusty tent, it has made it from Alaska to the Mojave and many places in between. But sadly, BOTH zippers on the rain fly broke within the first few days. I spent an AGONIZING hour between the two trying to fix it with my fingernail (it eventually worked.) If we had no working rain fly, it would be disastrous. It made it through to the end, but we can’t use it again. It also has a bent pole, as pointed out above :( I think I’m going to paint on it. I am SO GRATEFUL this didn’t happen in Newfoundland.
Our view of the creek.
Night life.
Aaron had a great 48th birthday! I woke him up with coffee from a gag mug I had printed for him with pics of his dad being silly :) And then he opened his presents while we had breakfast by the creek. Then we drove down 15 miles of gravel road (a GORGEOUS drive through the hills bursting with bright green) to the Balsam Lake Mountain trail, and hiked it until it started going too steeply uphill and we climbed back down hahaha. On the way back to the campground, Aaron asked if I could stop into town so he could pick up some dessert. Little did he know I had a birthday cake with candles and everything back at camp, which I painstakingly stashed in my backpack. I hesitantly said I’d prefer to just go back to the site, and I felt AWFUL denying him one of his favorite things to do: get pastries at the local small-town bakery :( When we got back and carried dinner to the site, he had two SAD packets of hot chocolate he was planning to have for desert. I couldn’t take it any longer, and also it had started raining, so I crouched behind the tent, lit the candles on the cake, and sang Happy Birthday. He was SO HAPPY :) It was a really great day.
My favorite time of day: Dusk. Everything loses its color, and blue is the last to go.
The next day’s activities included fixing a zipper, watching a silkworm squirm around from a thread on a branch, looking at water striders, and soaking our feet in the freezing creek. That is all.
Water striders.
Squirmy worm.
trout lake
The next day we made our way to Trout Lake (aka Ball Lightning Lake) for a magical visit. We didn’t stay in the same site as in June, we got the best place you can imagine - right on the shore. It was a dream. Frogs and crickets singing all day and night. Lots of bird sounds. Newt efts afoot.
Spur trail from the main trail that leads to our campsite. The plants were as high as my head!
It was very hot and humid, but we managed to find shade along the way. I love my pocket-sized tarp. Fits anywhere.
Time lapse of watching the clouds…
What’s better than nightlife on the lake? Aaron’s soundtrack :)
Dusk is the magic hour.
The next morning we were woken up by a torrential downpour, as seen in this video taken from the tent. It was neat! It only lasted about 15 minutes and really cooled things off for an hour or so.
The aftermath of steam on the lake was delightful. We spent the day walking the forest. We saw a big turtle, a dead mouse being eaten by bugs, LOTS of baby newts (efts,) and dodged another GIANT downpour in a lean-to near our camp.
Playing guitar by the lean-to. I’m so happy we had it for cover :)
Big old turtle under the log! Aaron’s foot for scale. Such a robust tail!
Dried mouse. Life is just an animated form of death.
The mouse re-hydrated after the storm.
HUGE rainstorm! It was really scary for a minute or two. Only lasted about 15 minutes.
When it ended, the sky was perfectly clear, but the trees were shedding all of the rain so it sounded like it was still raining all around us. I have never experienced that before.
It was so powerful it knocked down a tree right into the lake! The next morning, a HUGE branch came crashing down from another tree. It’s scary when you hear what sounds like a whole tree falling but you don’t know where to run in case it lands on YOU. I sincerely hope I never hear that loud, terrifying sound when we’re in the tent.
Rain soaked trees and cobwebs.
I’m so impressed Aaron could make a fire with totally drenched tinder :) It was delightful.
That night we made a mouse pal. It would come up and sniff around our food and sit between the rocks of the fire pit. It ate granola right out of my hand! SO adorable, with old broken whiskers and dirty hands.
On our last morning, we had a most excellent, relaxing, leisurely breakfast watching the efts and slugs, and listening to the birds, frogs, and crickets. I LOVE this place.
And that was the end of the trip :( This time, I decided to take a pillow. It makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE in the world when sleeping in a tent. Just strapped it to the top of my pack.
The minivan was a trooper and made it all the way back to the Enterprise parking lot. At which moment, I promptly backed into another car :( It turned out OK, no damage. SIGH though. Through the forests via gravel roads, only to be taken down at its Brooklyn home. UGH.