Nature « Robot Claw

Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

Cape Cod

Wednesday, July 28th, 2021

We’re on a road trip vacation, and our first two days have been in cape cod. Due to a covid outbreak in these parts, we’ve restricted our activities to outdoor only, which isn’t hard with the beautiful weather and lots to see.

Yesterday we visited two salt marshes. Boardwalks had been constructed over them so you could walk above. We learned that they have plans to rebuild the platforms six feet higher due to future sea level rise.

At the second one the tide was coming in and we watched thousands of crabs and fish moving around as the little pools filled with water. It was mesmerizing!

We then walked along a two mile beach, well past the swimming area, and into dunes where protected birds nest. We were charmed by plovers darting in and out of the waves as they fed. The beach was quite nice and very popular, with loads of people sunbathing and splashing about. We didn’t bring swimmers, so walked in the waves to cool our feet 🙂

Today we went to Provincetown where I walked a causeway across to a sand island (while kls waited, since it was a bit risky for her). It was a challenging walk since the rocks were not level, and a few times I had to jump! Roses are about 9 feet here, and it was low tide when I crossed; I learned that at high tide the waters lap at the top of the causeway. It was extremely windy and a little chill, and the return trip took me 51 minutes! Not bad for a hike that they claim takes an hour each way 🙂

Provincetown is a popular tourist town on the very end of the cape known for its LGBTQ community. The homes and gardens are beautiful and immaculately kept and – since we looked at some listings in a realtor – incredibly expensive!

Provincetown is also in the news right now for recently having a bad covid-19 outbreak and for the first time in many months we were masked everywhere (and so was almost everyone else we saw). It was a bit strange, but I fear it’s the near-future of most of the world (due to Delta) so we may as well get used to it.

We had lunch from a near the pier which serves fresh (fried) seafood. My flounder burger was great but KLS says her scallop roll was ‘beyond excellent’. Even better than the lobster roll she had yesterday!

Afterwards we went and visited the location where Marconi sent his first transmission to England. There was a nearby hike through a swamp which looked great but was ‘infested’ (according to the sign) with ticks and also (according to reviews) with mozzies so we piked out and moved on. Needless to say there’s been a good deal of souvenir shopping as well; mostly for salt-water taffy 🙂

Tomorrow we move to destination #2. I’ll leave you in suspense as to where that will be…

Posted in Nature, Trip | 1 Comment »

Safari!

Sunday, July 18th, 2021

Yesterday we visited a local animal park. We’d been twice before but due to covid they were a bit different this year. Specifically: they’d turned themselves into a drive-through safari!

After paying it was a short drive from the entrance to the first gate, beyond which we saw this:

Yes those are camels, and amongst them were also ostriches. In seconds we were mobbed!

We had little cups of food and the animals knew it. They were absolutely fearless when it came to getting the food of us, and didn’t hesitate to stick their heads right into the car.

Yes that’s a gigantic camel helping itself to food from the caddy between us in the car!

The animal flocked around us (and every car) so much that we couldn’t move until the attendants scared them away just long enough for us to drive forward a bit. Of course the cloud of camels and ostriches simply moved to the next car in line 🙂

A bit further along were some zebra! I hastily closed the window because of all the animals in the safari this was the one with warning signs. Apparently zebra can bite!

Next we drove into a forested section full of fallow deer, sika deer, albino deer, llamas and a certain evil bird (see below). This part overloaded with cuteness, mostly because of all the pretty deer and their big dewy eyes.

Of course had no food left since the ostriches and camels had taken it all!

The evil birds were these guys:

I have an ancestral fear of these (as do all Australians) so we closed the windows when they got near. This guy was tapping on the window with his razor-sharp beak as he stared at me with murderous intent. I gibbered as we drove on…

The last section had rhea, oxen, and a few other unusual cow like things. Alas we had no food for we surely would have fed the elegant rhea! They came right up to the car and looked at us with their lovely gray and blue eyes.

It took us a little under an hour to drive through and it was much better than we expected! They did a great job of converting their zoo, and the density of animals was hilarious. A great time was had by all 🙂

Posted in Animals, Miscellaneous, Nature, Pets | 1 Comment »

Bonsai!

Friday, July 16th, 2021

I got this as a gift:

It’s a candy kit to make an edible bonsai! Start by kneading the chocolate caramel to make it soft:

Gently fill the molds with the candy:

After a half hour in the freezer it had solidified:

While I was trimming the flash Kristin was cooking a green sponge cake. It was as easy as powder and water mixed together and microwaved. It looked… unusual:

But stone the crows it looked convincing when broken apart and placed onto the branches:

And here’s the finished product (which was about 2 inches tall):

Looks good enough to eat doesn’t it?

And we did! It wasn’t bad at all; basically chocolate caramel mixed with cake. Easily one of the best candy food kits I’ve ever made – or eaten 🙂

Posted in Crafts, Food, Models, Nature | Comments Closed

Waterfall and Crackers!

Saturday, June 5th, 2021

Today we drove two hours south to Pennsylvania. Our first stop was Raymondskill Falls, a few minutes south of the town of Milford (which itself is about 10 minutes across the border).

Although we arrived early, it was already popular and one of the two car parks was full. We found a spot in the second and started the brief walk through the woods to the falls. The trail was labeled with this scary sign:

Luckily no bears were to be seen 🙂

Mysteriously (considering the full car parks) the path and falls were almost devoid of people and we had the viewing platforms to ourselves. It’s a beautiful waterfall, and has several stages that drops about 40 meters in total.

Here’s a panorama that attempts to show the two distinct main falls, but there are more both above the right one and below the left.

It was lovely, and absolutely worth the visit.

That said, our true reason for the drive was more fireworks! They’re legal year-round in Pennsylvania and there were three stores very close to the border. We visited all of them.

As with previous visits, we were dazzled by the selection. All the stores sell fireworks to professionals as well, so you could buy all sorts of items including launching platforms and even equipment to control remote launching systems. You could even get the required licenses in one shop! (Of course we couldn’t do this, since the laws in our state are different.)

Fireworks can be extremely expensive, especially for items you quite literally set on fire. The most expensive single-fuse item I saw today was this:

It’s an amazing firework (search on YouTube to see one being let off) but $375 gets you a firework that lasts for 41 seconds after you light the fuse 🙂

The priciest item I saw was this:

It’s a box of 120 mortars that requires a launching system (and license) to fire off. Basically it’s a near-professional show in a box! For only $700 🙂

The shops were very busy, and we saw people filling shopping carts with all sorts of items, and I’m sure they were spending hundreds or even thousands. Two young guys behind us in line had five 180-shot launchers in their cart, as well as loads of other stuff, and were talking about going back first thing tomorrow morning to buy a 660-shot launcher that had sold out today!

kit

On the other hand, items like those above are incredibly cheap. That ‘Saturn rocket’ with 100 shots is under $10, and those 144 bottle rockets were only $5! I bought none of these, since I don’t like firing off noisy, high-flying rockets.

The most unusual items we saw were the first officially licensed fireworks:

I’m sure The King would be proud!

While we avoided anything with ”high flying’ or ‘loud report’ in the description we still managed to spend about $200 today on a large variety of different items (including the ‘Dark Soul’ shown earlier).

July 4 will be fun this year 🙂

Posted in Blog, Home, Miscellaneous, Nature | Comments Closed

Kaaterskill Falls

Saturday, April 10th, 2021

Today we drove about an hour south to visit Kaaterskill Falls. We’d never been before but had read good things about it. We left early to beat the crowds (pandemic, you know…) and parked at the start of a rail trail leading to the falls.

It was a lovely walk through the woods and we had the path to ourselves. It was about a half hour along the trail until we reached the main car park for the falls and a second trail leading to an observation platform.

And then we saw the falls, and were not disappointed!

It’s a two-stage waterfall that falls 260 feet in total, and from the platform you get a good view of the top stage. It’s quite spectacular and I loved how you could still see some remaining ice from winter. The view from the platform was fantastic and would be amazing in the fall:

Even though we were a little tired by now (we’d walked for about an hour) a second path led to the bottom of the falls and of course we had to take it. While the previous walking had been easy this was a bit more difficult, and that was before we reached the perilous steps:

They weren’t messing around with warnings here, and I read there was a death last year so I don’t think they are exaggerating:

There was no ice on the trail but the steps were wet and slippery. I became nervous about KLS and asked her to wait at the middle level while I scuttled to the bottom for some quick snaps of the entire falls:

Before we headed back we went closer to the pool in the middle of the falls. This was the closest we got to the water, which was misting over us as we took the photo. The water was very loud!

By now the crowds had started to arrive, and as we hiked back up (which was strenuous) there was a constant stream of sightseers (and their dogs!) heading down. It wasn’t even 10 am, so if you’re ever planning on visiting go early to avoid crowds!

By the time we got back to the car we were exhausted. All told we’d hiked for over 2 hours and about 14k steps. But it was a great place to visit and I’m sure we’ll return again one day 🙂

Posted in Nature | Comments Closed

Robot Claw