Greetings from our final week. Its been luscious. So much lake, so many sunsets, so much boating. With the Morehouse boat only in the water about a week now, we've been doubling down on boat rides. This view, and the feeling of the wind in my face and the smell of the water-- I want to bottle it up, to get me through the winter... The winter which I am dreading in such a real, visceral way this year. Not in the "gosh, summer vacation is nicer than working" regular way but in the full knowledge that BEST case scenario the months of November -March will see us isolated at home with no way to see friends or family and no places to go for fun while we work long impossible days teaching in masks and living in constant fear of possible illness or death.
Can't we just stay right here???
Life at the point is just so good. Here are our "bubble kids"-- all of whome have essentially been quarantined here together for 2 weeks or more-- a the nail salon they operated for three days this week. I am soaking up the sights and sounds of our crew having fun and being with other kids, healthy and happy, and I will hold on to this crowded picnic table in my heart during the long months of virtual school ahead of us.
Other activities this week:
A visit to Sauders for a new Amish-made broom-- and bulk candy, of course!
A hike down the gully to hunt for geodes. I actually found one all on my own this time!
The cat has a new favorite napping spot. She has also taken to escaping the cottage at any opportunity. Thankfully little Miss Docile is easy to catch.
Nightly campfires with Sarah continue along wih photography and comet viewing whenever the cloud cover permits.
The comet is a tiny, near-vertical line above the flag in this picture. Also that was NOT a fun pose to hold for 30 seconds.
Wednesday this week gave us a perfect lake day. We took out ALLL the boats on the glass calm water.
-- and then relaxed in the afternoon with a drawing class. Claire wove a spell around all the kids at the Point and had then focused on their art for over an hour.
Don't you just want to know what these two young men are talking about as they walk?? Probably Fortnite.
Wednesday evening Nat and I had a belated anniversary date and it was just spectacular.
We started with wine tasting at Treleven. They've got a lovely outdoor setup that let us relax and enjoy as we picked a bottle of wine to take on our picnic.
Then we went waterfall hunting on Six Mile Creek. We weren't able to access Potter's Falls but we did find Wells falls (also known as Businessman's Lunch falls" down this crazy little back road, just past a house with a number of giant animal head sculptures...
A path through woods and cliffs...
... led to this secret-feeling wonderland of waterfalls and swimming holes and cliff faces and an abandoned power plant. I say "secret-feeling" because there were plenty of people there... but everyone seemed like they too had stumbled upon this place, a space apart from time, where you can jump into a waterfall and picnic on a rock outcrop and lose yourself in water and trees.
After our wanderings (shorter than they might have been due to inappropriate footwear and lack of swimsuits-- we will have to go back!) we picked up our dinner of Thai takeout and headed over to Stewart park to picnic. A wrong turn led us past the firefighters training center. Who knew we were going to see THAT tonight??
Our dinner spot was sublime. Who needs restaurants with views like this? Yes, that tiny littl speck to the right in the sky IS a hot air baloon...
This exceedingly friendly seagull kept us company as we sweated through our extremely spicy and extraordinarily delicious dinner, enjoying the view from the end of the lake.
On the way home we drove down our favorite street, Cascadilla, a narrow thoroughfare that winds down the side of Cascadilla gorge, with a delightful, unkepmt cemetary on one side and a cliff on the other, and amazing, European-feeling houses balanced in between.
This one, with its view straight out the gorge towards sunset! We have decided that when we come into money and move to NY we are buying a house on this street.
All told, it was a magical evening. I think the fact that we kept discovering brand *new* places was the best part. There's been very little new discovery in our lives these past months and I have missed it sorely. As we emerged from Ithaca back up onto the hilltop roads home to Aurora it felt like we were returning to reality from a vacation abroad. I've been making wishlists on AirBnB ever since, dreaming of more brand new places I can visit...
Next day's project back at the point: the kids worked on making a raft.
It went through severali iterations, none of which floated all that well.
That didn't seem to matter at all. For a long time the game was "try to stay on the sinking raft while Jack walks on it and pushes it under."
They will find their own fun here, for sure.
Another fun thing this week: Betsey and Peter have been kind enough to let us use the Wave Runner, and they have created two monsters in our newly Wave Runner-obsessed kids. They LOOOOVE it.
A lake like this at sunset???
Time for a boat ride!
Everyone loves boat rides.
And I love this summertime family on this summertime lake.
Bottle it up.
