Category: The Unknown

The Secret Caverns

August 3, 2013

Today, we went here:

It’s a natural limestone cave located adjacent to another (much more famous) attraction called Howe Caverns. We’d been to Howe a couple of times over the years, and it was time to visit the quirky neighbour!

As you can tell from the sign, the emphasis is on quirkiness. Here’s the main building:

The interior is full of ancient souvenirs, bizarro attractions and weird ‘hippy’ paintings. For instance, this is a mummy found in the cave:

And the accompanying story of the mummy:

Even the bathrooms are unusual:

The caves were opened in 1930 by an engineer who used to work at Howe caverns and wanted a cave of his own. Initially, tourists descended the more than 100 feet to the bottom by rope (!), but now they have stairs.

Here’s the above ground entrance:

Which covers stairs leading down:

The cave is wet and cold (50F) and runs in a more or less straight line for about 200 meters. Initially, the path is narrow and a bit like a tunnel:

But quickly becomes more natural including obstructions:

And a lot of water:

Until it ends at the star attraction, a 100 foot underground waterfall:

The flow rate is high, and the river continues out of the cave along a passage that would be navigable (but is closed off) that – after another fall – apparently runs out of a mountain into a large creek.

There are rumours the waterfall itself is ‘assisted’ by a pump, but our guide denied this 🙂

Note the hippy lighting on the falls. It played tricks on the eye, as you can see since I look tubby in the photo above 😉

Back on the surface, after punishment for some crime I’m sure I committed:

I had to spend a moment on another attraction in the gift house. That would be the one on the right:

Omg, Sky Shark! I used to be able to beat this on one man, but here I was only able to double the existing high score, which I soon learned had been set by an employee and was considered unbeatable 🙂

All in all, a great place to visit. If any of you are in Albany again, I may have to take you!

The New Addiction

June 23, 2013

Meet Zoffy, of Nebulon, my avatar in the new Animal Crossing for 3DS:

The game is all sorts of awesome, especially if you’ve been hooked by any past game in the series. It’s wonderful to get back to village maintenance and chatting with your animal buddies:

Although I’ve only been playing a week (since returning from Japan), it’s obvious the game is much more expansive than ever, with a mind-boggling array of stuff to do. This is no longer just a game you play for half an hour a day!

One new addition is ‘Club Tortimer’, which is an island excursion where you can play with people from all over the world. Yesterday I did this, and found myself on an island at night with two Japanese girls:

The one on the left was called Mari, and was very talkative and spoke great English. She is a secretary in Kobe that likes Ultraman! (This came up because my character, Zoffy, is named after one of the Ultramen):

The girl in the middle (with the pink hair) works as a secretary in a Tokyo Hospital. She is a hardcore player, and even had this award:

Anyway while we were chatting, we were just standing in a line like in the first picture. They were asking me about America and what I like about Japan and all sorts of stuff when I said “Do you know Rilakkuma?”. Their reaction was immediate and astounding:

As soon as the famous bear’s name was mentioned, both girls started running about the island excitedly just saying things like “love”, “cute”, “gyu~~~!” etc. They were maniacal about Kuma to the extent that even the mention of his name sent them into paroxysms! It was very funny 🙂

Later in the day, I also met Audrey, who lives in Paris. She told me it was sunny and hot:

So I showed her a fish:

These occurrences and much, much more are what await you should you enter the world of Animal Crossing 😉

Jokes aside, the online component (random matchmaking) is somewhat restricted as you may expect from Nintendo. Also, with no way to friend these people or even interact much with them outside of one-line chats, it will probably be something I don’t do very often. But my first experiences of it were very amusing!

Now back to catching bugs…

We Live With Animals!

May 12, 2013

Ok fellows, time again for some candid camera backyard snaps! This entry is a good one…

Firstly, I set the camera up leaning against our house looking directly in the backyard onto the grass. I left it there for a few days and… almost no animal photos! However, by sheer coincidence our backyard neighbour was having a tree removed during this period and the entire process was captured in about 300 photos 🙂

Interesting… but not furry! However this next one – one of the very few animal shots captured during that period, is most definitely interesting:

Now I’m no zoologist, but that to me looks like either:
a) A bear
b) A cougar
c) A thylacine
Sadly, with no further photos of the mysterious beast, accurate identification may remain elusive.

I then moved the camera, placing it on the patio angled toward the tree you see in the right side of the above pictures. Here was the new vista when moved:

This was a good spot! It seems this little tree sits atop a backyard highway, since over the next few days many types of beast wandered into shot. I’ll not show the usual suspects (squirrels, birds) and focus on two visitors.

Here’s a rabbit hopping into view:

And here, my friends, is an up-until-now elusive opossum:

Look at that ratty tail and pointed snout. Could this be the same guy I saw with my own eyes years ago?

Now we cut to about a week later (ignore the date stamp on the photos; I never bother to set it when). For Christmas we received a brand new squirrel feeder. It is a wheel on an axel that rotates freely and has place to put three corn cobs. In addition, I purchased a different feeder myself, which hangs a food block off a spring. About two weeks ago we installed these and set a camera on them. Here’s an establishing shot:

300 photos would be captured in this spot, about 90% of them containing squirrels making use of their feeders. Here’s two examples:

The photos not containing squirrels fall into two categories:
1) Night photos, that almost always contain only deer, and
2) Photos of birds

Here is a night example:

And here is a bird example:

That’s a bluejay. We have yet to see any squirrels attempt to feed from the new hanging feeder (as opposed to the corncob feeder hanging behind it). I think it may be too far from the branch.

By the way, compare the lushness of the greenery in the above shot to the establishing shot above. Only six days separate the two. Next year I should do a timelapse in early spring to show the growth of the trees and ferns.

Now we get to the good stuff, as in the really good stuff. I also moved the camera to look directly at the rotating feeder, and switched it over to video mode. It was set to record 30 second clips, and during the very first night hit the jackpot. Here are four such clips edited together:

Yes, that’s a raccoon! Possibly the same guy we captured in a photo a few weeks back. According to the timestamps, he was there for about 14 minutes in total. Cute little bugger, isn’t he? 🙂

So the list is squirrels, chipmunks, deer, birds, cats, rabbits, opossum and raccoons that we have caught on our cameras over the years. We know of three other mammals we know to visit our backyard that have still not been captured on film. Will I ever see them? Can you guess what they are?

Robot Claw