Back home, I spent the next week weeding flower beds and cleaning and organizing the construction zone we are still living in so that our son had a place to stay while he visited for a week. The bathroom remodel got done enough so that we could use it again and move back to the bedroom temporarily. There is still much more needing to be done.

Here is a photo of Nick on his Motorcycle. This mom worries about him driving it, but I guess driving anything is not always safe. We had a nice visit with him, it was nice that he was home on vacation without things he HAD to do.

The day Nick headed back to Georgia, we left home again. This time to New Jersey to see our granddaughter, Eva perform in a musical not far from Atlantic City. Thanks to busy traffic and an accident, we missed a few minutes of the performance, but saw most of it. The next day, we brought both granddaughters home with us for a week long visit. They live in a city, so staying with us in a rural area was an experience. I guess there aren't as many bugs at home. One day they were here, we took another local Vacation Day. We traveled just over an hour away to Watkins Glen, NY. I have traveled through the town many times, but had never stopped to check out the beautiful gorges and waterfalls.

There are trails that take you hiking along the edge of gorges to see many waterfalls, and even places where you walk under them, too. The brochure says there are 800 steps in all the trails…. that's a lot of step climbing!

There are also a few tunnels where you walk right through some really rocky areas. Most of the walkways are like this one above, with natural or man made stone walls and walkways.

This photo shows some waterfalls with deep pools cut out of the rock. The trail follows along right under the water you can see falling in the distance. Many areas of the trails were wet from water weeping out of the rocky walls. The weather was perfect for trekking up these trails with many steps… not too cool, or too hot.

Here is a view of the falls that were in the distance in the previous photo. The gorges have been cut very deep and the walls are very steep.

A view of another part of the trail with little waterfalls flowing beside it. As you can see, there were a number of other people enjoying the sights that day, too. It wasn't too crowded, so we could take our time taking photos and occasional rest breaks.

When we got to the end of the most scenic falls, we took another trail that went trough the woods high above the trails we climbed up on. I did amazingly well walking the steps, probably because we took our time going up, resting often. Most of the way down was much faster with 2 pre-teen girls and a husband who seemed to run on the trail with no steps…

This photo shows a trail below we had already traveled. The water is realy a long way down from here! My fibro decided that quick walking downhill was not a good thing…. Then we arrived at the steps we had to take to get all the way down to the parking lot…. (for anyone who only wants to go up and not back, there is a shuttle available at each end of the park to take you back…)

This view made the trip down those last steps look very daunting. The girls are way ahead of Ken who is way ahead of me in this photo.

Little treasures like this fer growing in a crack along the steps. These little guys had to be pretty hardy to survive here.

This is Eva posing on a set of steps…. this was not too far from the beginning.

The gorges and falls weren't the only interesting things to look at…. This painted stone and brickwork is on the gift shop building at the South entrance of the park. I loved the colors and patterns….

After our trek through the park at Watkins Glen, we drove on to Corning, NY and the Corning Museum of Glass. Here are Eva and Maia applying tape to glass pieces that were sandblasted to leave designs on the glass. I also gave flamework a try by making a bead. I have trouble doing more than one thing at once, so it was a bit tricky, but I loved the experience. I love glass, and would love to play with it more in the future… The exhibits there were fantastic, too. Lots to see and do…. It made for a very long, but enjoyable vacation day. We are very lucky to live in an area with so many beautiful places to visit not too far away.

A couple more Flora photos…. Above is an interesting fungus that was growing in a yard near where our granddaughters live.

My Datura flowers have been hard to photograph this year with all the rain storms. Most of the flowers have been flattened onto the ground by rain. Here is one that didn't get rained on.

Here are Eva and Maia with art quilts I helped them make using photos of them with friends. They chose the photos, fabrics, yarns, etc. and I helped with some construction. They even did pretty well with the rotary cutter. Maia created a collage of photos for hers. She was really good at using the photo program to arrange the collage.

Now things are pretty quiet around here with no one visiting…. except for the local wildlife….. We were finding bees flying around our livingroom for a few days, and finally noticed the little hole in my office ceiling (in the center of the brown spot). There was a huge nest of them between the ceiling drywall and the roof between the rafters. Another nest was above the ceiling in my studio, but they didn't come through to the inside. Hopefully they won't return….

Now that the main summer monthes are over, I may finally get some time to play in my studio again…. I definitely have a lot of inspiration photos to help me along.