Looking Back at 2022

In January we began the new year in Pennsylvania...enjoying our family and the snow. 

The weather in February was wonderful and we enjoyed spending time in Rockport. We visited with friends and spent time with our Texas Granddaughters.

March was a repeat of February, except the wind was a bit crazy. We took a break for our rocking boat by staying in Corpus for a few nights.

In April we spent a week in the Texas Hill Country exploring Wimberley and Fredericksburg. By the end of the month we had closed down the Texas Pearl and started our northern migration. First to Arkansas and then to Kentucky.

May was spent settling in at the lake...catching up with lake friends and family.

In June we spent a long weekend celebrating birthdays and Father's Day with Kyle and his family. Stan and I also spent a few days in the Thousands Islands.

In July we celebrated our 41st anniversary in Niagara on the Lake in Canada. Each month this summer we enjoyed making a few new friends.

The highlight of our summer is having our grandkids come one at a time to the boat. We spend 3 or 4 days doing just what each of them enjoy. Hattie was very excited because it was her first summer to stay on the boat.

In August we took a family vacation to Maine. We spent a week enjoying the great weather, lobster and each other.

After our week in Maine Stan and I took the ferry to Nova Scotia.

September signals the end of summer and the beginning of fall. We spent our last family get together on the lake going to some of the kids favorite places and a few of ours.

The first week in October I spent time in NYC with my friend Pam. We had fun catching up and exploring the city. 

The rest of October and the beginning of November was spent at a house in the Poconos. We truly enjoyed the fall colors and some wonderful hiking.

In November we returned to Rockport ready to enjoy a little more sunshine and warm temperatures, but mother nature had a different plan. Our first two weeks in South Texas were cold and wet, but it was fun to see our Texas family.

In December we celebrated Christmas early with our Texas family and then we drove back to Pennsylvania. We got there just in time for a great day in the snow. 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our family and friends. Our life has taken on an enjoyable routine the past six years. We spend November through April in Texas and the rest of the year in upstate New York. It's actually perfect, at least for us. We get to spend half the year with each of our sons and their family's and we escape the extreme weather in each place.

Our kids are doing well, our grandchildren are growing into beautiful and interesting people and we are all healthy. So 2022 was a good year and we look forward to seeing what adventures come our way in 2023.

Nov. 3 - Drake Creek Trail

“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” -Lao Tzu

Today we decided to hike the Drakes Creek Trail near Jim Thorpe. It was a fairly easy 3 mile hike along a well maintained dirt road. The trail descends about 500' from the parking lot to the Lehigh River....meaning the hardest part of the hike was coming back to our car. Although the trees have lost most of their leaves the hike was still full of color, because the rhododendron form a thick, impenetrable wall of greenery along the slopes of the creek. We definitely need to come back to this area in July when they bloom. The road is used by rafting expeditions to enter the Lehigh River, but it looked like a difficult way to get into the river to me.

The creek forms several picturesque, little waterfalls on its way to the Lehigh River, and small bridges span the creek to allow vehicles and hikers to cross the water as it meanders downstream. The creek finally flows under railroad tracks at the end of the trail and enters the river through a tunnel. We picked up sandwiches at a small grocery store on our way to the trailhead and enjoyed a nice picnic close to the railroad bridge. 

The trail

The first bridge along our hike.

Drake Creek...the rhododendrons make it look like a jungle.

We found lots of interesting things along the way.

One of the many pretty small waterfalls.

The second bridge was by the most impressive falls.

At the end of the hike we had to go down these stairs to get to the creek. This is where we had our picnic here and where the rafting expeditions slide their rafts down into the river.

Looking north along the railroad tracks about Drake Creek.

Looking through the tunnel towards the Lehigh River.

Looking up Drake Creek.

This is where the creek flows into the Lehigh River.

Some of the last leaves falling from the trees.