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Aug. 18-21 Girl Time in NYC

“May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.” – Trenton Lee Stewart

I spent most of last week with my friend in NYC. She and her husband live on their boat in Jersey City with a wonderful view of lower Manhattan. Donny had business in Wisconsin so I came to keep Pam company. We had a lot of great girl time. 


Wednesday afternoon we took the PATH from Jersey City to Manhattan. We actually started each day catching this train. Our first destination was Broadway and Time Square. It's very touristy, but so much fun to watch people, smell the food carts, watch the street performers and do a little shopping. 

It's a sensory overload in Time Square
Free concert in Time Square
After enjoying the sights around Time Square and listening to part of a free performance by the Harlem Quartet, we headed uptown to Lincoln Center. The American Ballet Theatre was presenting the BAAND Together Dance Festival. It was a week of outdoor dance performances that brought together five of the city’s most iconic dance companies. The performance we saw was wonderful.

The World Trade Center. Day or night it's a beautiful place to visit.
The Oculus is The World Trade Center's transportation hub. It's also a beautiful shopping center full of high end stores.
The Freedom Tower, The Oculus and The 9/11 Memorial Museum.
Our second day started with coffee on the back deck watching the harbor come to life. They have a great spot to watch large yachts come and go. Our plan today was to catch the Staten Island Ferry. It gave us a good view of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. We had lunch on Staten Island, did a little shopping and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring lower Manhattan. We had dinner at a little hole in the wall Mexican food joint in Jersey City close to the boat.

The green dot shows where my friend's boat is...what a great location.
The view of lower Manhattan from the Staten Island Ferry. The ferry dock is to the right.
The view from Staten Island looking back towards Manhattan.
Lower Manhattan at night
On Friday we took our bikes to Manhattan and rode along the Hudson River Greenway, first to Little Island, then to Chelsea Market for a little shopping and lunch. Our next stop of the day was the Edge located in 10 Hudson Yards. It's the newest way to see NYC from above and what a view we had. Our final stop of the day was at the Vessel, but unfortunately we weren't able to enjoy the view from it. After a full day of exploring we took a ferry back to Jersey City and relaxed on the back deck of Pam's boat.
Hudson River Greenway offers spectacular water views and sunsets. The 11-mile bike route runs along the Hudson River from the southern tip of Manhattan at Battery Park up to the Bronx – with dedicated bike paths that are closed to cars.
Little Island is a new, free public park pier within the Hudson River Park, it gives visitors a unique green space unlike any other in New York City. It opened on May 21, 2021 and rises from the remnants of Pier 54. Little Island sits on a site that has played a pivotal role in the story of the Hudson River and its surrounding communities. In 1912, survivors from the famed Titanic disaster arrived safely at Pier 54.
Chelsea Market was constructed in the 1890s and was originally the site of the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) factory complex where the Oreo cookie was invented and produced. Located in the heart of New York City’s Meatpacking District it was redeveloped in the 1990's and has a collection of lively marketplaces where one can shop the region’s finest fishmonger, get the best cuts of meat and load up on artisanal cheeses, fresh produce and imported Italian dry goods.
The High Line is a 1.45-mile-long elevated linear park built on a historic, elevated rail line. It's more than just a park. You can walk through gardens, view art, experience a performance, savor delicious food or connect with friends and neighbors-all while enjoying a unique perspective of New York City. The original lines cut directly through some buildings, creating easy access for factories like the National Biscuit Company, which is now the home of Chelsea Market.
The Edge is the highest sky deck in the Western Hemisphere, with a one-of-a-kind design, it’s suspended in mid-air, giving you the feeling of floating in the sky with 360-degree views you can’t get anywhere else. It opened to the public on March 11, 2020. You can look 100 stories down from the thrilling glass floor or lean out over the city on angled glass walls.
We could see all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
The Vessel is a structure and visitor attraction built as part of the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project. The elaborate honeycomb-like structure rises 16 stories and consists of 154 flights of stairs, 2,500 steps, and 80 landings for visitors to climb.
Walking across the glass floor was a little hard at first.

Finger Lakes Breweries and Cideries (Part X)

Meier’s Creek Brewing Company is a new craft brewery and taproom located in Cazenovia. Their single mission is to create extraordinary beer with food to match. The brewery sits on 22 acres of beautiful farmland with hops out front and miles of trails out back. adventure awaits. Their core values drive them to achieve their goals and inspire others: “work hard, play hard”, “together, we’re better”, “follow true north” and “dream big.”
Hopshire Farm & Brewery is a family owned business. They've combined their belief in New York agriculture, local foods and great beer into a brewery that uses as many local ingredients as possible to produce high quality beers of several styles.   
We spent a beautiful evening listening to Notorious Stringbusters...a foot stompin, rug cuttin, knee slapping, string bustin bluegrass band. We enjoyed a little dinner from a local food truck and tried a few of their beers. I had Mt. Pleasant a crisp refreshing Pilsner and Stan had Shire Ale a malty brown ale fermented with Scottish Edinburgh yeast. Flaked oats and six different barley malts including chocolate, dark crystal and amber malts are used in this rich tasting ale.

South Hill Cider sits on a hilltop just south of Ithaca. The owner has been bottling his own cider since 2003. As a musician firmly grounded in traditional American Old-time music, he can’t help but point out the many parallels to cider: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, both cider and Old-time music were staples of American culture.

Most of their ciders are sparkling, which isn’t a favorite of ours, so we both had the Goldwin. It's dry and still (no bubbles) cider.  It was inspired by the great Burgundian whites and leaning on ages of winemaking tradition, which blends two American heirloom apple varieties and fermented in barrel and stainless steel. It had notes of apricot, early-picked white grapes, beeswax, grapefruit pith and lemon zest. We thought it was very good. Along with the cider we also enjoyed pizza and the music of a banjo player.
Indian Ladder Farms Cidery and Brewery (ILFCB) makes and serves beer and hard cider on a family-owned century farm located in Altamont, New York, beneath the dramatic cliffs of the Helderberg Escarpment. They produce hard cider and beer using crops such as apples, pears, berries and pumpkins as well as hops and malting barley grown on Indian Ladder and other local farms.
We visited this brewery after hiking the Indian Ladder Trail. We enjoyed a little lunch with our beers. Stan had the Indian Lager Farms an Estate Helles lager made with Tinka Barley and hopped with Nugget, Columbus & Crystal. Hints of pine and grass with a clean bitterness. I had the Chitwood-Style which was a light German lager made to please any beer drinker.  

Aug. 8-14 Vermont Vacation

“Families are like branches on a tree. We grow in different directions yet our roots remain as one.” –Unknown

Our August staycation...was actually a real vacation. We left the state and enjoyed a week with our family in the mountains of Vermont. We were joined by Bryt's parents Tom and Cynthia. We had two adults for every child, that's a great way to take care of kids. There was always someone for the kids to do something with and plenty of time for everyone to relax.

We spent the week exploring Manchester, Winhall and Stratton Mountain. We played golf, pickleball, card games, went swimming, kayaking, paddle boarding and even had a little time to shop. Best of all we had a lot of time to visit and enjoy each other's company.

The house
The bedrooms
The game room in the basement was a lot of fun.
Like usual...the deck was my favorite place.
The view I had with my morning coffee.
We had a lot of fun at Pike's Falls...the water was cold but refreshing on warm afternoons. 
Graham had a great time sliding down the rocks and jumping off the falls.
The deck and it's amazing view was a great place for us to paint. 
Even Hattie got to paint this time.
Dinner on the deck was also a lot of fun.
Graham had a chance to play golf with his Mom, Papa Fauch and CiCi. He had fun and caught on fast.
The week was very warm, so playing in the water was the most enjoyable. One day we went to the pond near the golf course to paddle board and kayak.
Hattie turns two this month. Since everyone was together we had a birthday party for her. I think she enjoys being two...she loved the cake.
Everyone helped on this 1000 piece puzzle. We actually finished it in record time. 
We spent one day at Stratton Mountain Village. 
Brytanie and her Dad did a little downhill mountain bike riding.  
The rest of us decided we weren't up for the workout and enjoyed riding the gondola to the top of the mountain.
View on the way up.
Stratton Mountain Village
The best thing to eat on a hot day is ice cream. We were in Vermont, so we had to have Ben and Jerry's.
No matter what else was going...playing at the house was the most fun.