For now I’m skipping over the time between Lambtown and the current adventure, but I may backtrack later.

Do you remember in 2019 when I had a major accident? This is the BlogPost about that. (I just reread that post and see all the typos—that was because my hand still wasn’t working very well and I didn’t catch all the mistakes.) In 2019 a group of friends and I had planned to go to the New York Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, New York. Until I talked to these friends a couple of days ago I didn’t realize that the accident was only two days before our planned trip. My skull was repaired in February 2020 but that was just before the pandemic started. So now in 2023 we resurrected that trip we missed in 2019. It’s the same group minus one.

Landing in Chicago where we changed planes.

Kathleen and Mary and me in the airport waiting for the next flight. We were going to meet up with Chris who had already been exploring NY for a week with her husband and other friends.

We landed in Albany around 10 p.m., picked up a rental car, and found the nearby hotel we had booked. The next morning we had breakfast with Chris and got on the road. Kathleen wanted to find an apple cider donut and an apple farm was our first stop.

This farm was near Vischer Ferry and had you-pick apples as well as a fully stocked gift shop and bakery. There were apples of all varieties.

We each chose apples of different varieties. I like that this one says “Very firm with a loud crunch”.

How about this one that says “monster crunch, two-napkin juicy”?

We continued on towards our AirBnB near the small town of Tivoli, but wanted to explore some of the country. We saw the Erie Canal on the map and decided to stop at the Erie Canalway Trail near Vischer Ferry Nature and Historic Preserve. According to signs the canal opened in 1825 to facilitate transportation between Buffalo and Albany and was enlarged in the 1840s. It was abandoned in 1917.

This is the canal today.

There was parking near this bridge which was originally over another part of the canal. It had been moved in 1917 to a private farm and in 1997 was brought to the canal where there had been a similar bridge.

Kathleen and I chose to walk the trail for awhile.

Kathleen was looking for birds while I kept getting sidetracked by all the plants that are different from what I’m used to. White berries on this one.

Yellow berries here.

Red berries here. I loaded this photo into a plant ID app on my phone and it was identified as winterberry holly.

Berries are the fruit of the tree or bush and contain the seeds. We saw lots of other interesting mechanisms of seed dispersal, but I don’t have ID on any of these plants.

Another unknown.

Gorgeous colors.

We could see the other side of the canal from the trail. I assume that this is the original rock wall. But I don’t really know enough about it.

It’s larger here—maybe part of an old bridge or where there was a lock??

We drove on to explore Cohoes Falls on the Mohawk River.

It was fascinating to see the original cotton mill buildings in the town and to read about how they were powered by the river water. Many of the old mill buildings are still here but have been converted into apartments.

Here is how it looks today.

This is the outlet of the fish transport pipe as described in the sign below.

To be continued….