So, I spent a couple of weeks in Western New York state visiting my wife's family. It's always a pleasure to go this time of year as it's so hot in the South and the temps tend to be about 15-20 degrees cooler in New York.
When the kids and we were younger we always drove up to NY. It was a day or so of seeing America from the interstates. In short, we didn't see a lot of America which may be one of the points to having interstates. It's for people to get where they're going in a huge country like America. These days we fly and get to NY in a couple of hours. The hassle of flying is worth the time saved for sure. This year we flew with AirTran. The flight was essentially indistinguishable from the Delta flight. The flight was full, there were babies, slow people and those that thought the flight was all about them. They jumped up to grab their luggage from the overheads, hit someone in the head and then stand there and wait. Sometimes talking of their cell phone. They like to look important, I suppose. I wonder if they know they look anything but important? In any case, we got there and back, no problems.
The time in New York was very good. The weather was as expected, cool, some rain and some really beautiful days. I enjoyed it all. The town we were in, Springville, is located about 28 miles SE of Buffalo. It's a small town, a few thousand people at best. And, it's an agricultural town. Most of the land is used for crops. Corn seems to be the most abundant. They raise some of the best corn I've ever eaten in this area! I find the town very restful. My sons think they've been relocated to one of the lesser circles of Hell, however. Every year I tell them this was how America was for the majority of it's existence. Only in the twentieth century did large cities emerge and populations begin to migrate to them. They generally look, nod and ask how much longer are we staying.
One of the goals I set for myself on this trip was to get some photos of the wonderful farm land surrounding Springville. I spent a fair amount of time shooting barn, deserted buildings and flowers. I found this barn while we were on an exploration trip to see "where does this road go?" I really like the way this one timber is jutting out with a plant on it. Unusual for certain.An event we celebrated while in Springville was my father-in-laws ninetieth birthday! His actual birthday isn't til October but like I told him, at his age he can have whenever he wants! We took him out to a nice restaurant and invited family & friends to join in. We sat at one of those long tables where conversations happen in islands. On my island my brother-in-law and I discussed sports and the use of performance enhancing substances. The conversation was often interrupted by jumping up and shooting photos for the group. It seems so many times where you're the photog and aim a camera people stop talking and pose for the shot. It's easy to end up with a sd card full of the same/similar shot! Next time someone points a camera at you just keep on doing whatever it is you're doing and avoid the deer-in-the-headlights look!
While at my father-in-laws house we did some work for him. He had some chores that needed to be done and us doing them would same him a lot of time. I had my boys stain the front porch which needed it badly. On the second coat my youngest complained that "this takes forever!" I told him to image how long it would have taken if I hadn't bought him the 4" wide brush to match the boards? With a 2" brush he might still be there! I did go to the trouble of masking the porch with blue tape as much as I thought it would need it which was a lot more than I would have done had I been doing the staining. They still managed to get a little stain in the wrong places but not so bad as to require actual painting over.
Another wonderful job we did was to mulch the front flower beds. For some reason my father-in-law thought two bags of mulch would cover everything. I went along with it and when he saw what a pitiful pile two bags of mulch made I was off to the Big Box store. In the end it actually required twelve bags of mulch to do the job. But it looked great! I hope the boys were happy with their work.
Once the vacation ended it was time to come back to the South. Once again the flight was full and people were crazy. I spent a good bit of time shooting photos out the cabin window. It was the first time I had ever done that. It was kind of fun!
All-in-all it was another good family vacation. Nothing like any of the Chevy Chase movies...
