photographed by Adrian and Gill Smith
Starting in the Adirondacks in good time for the fall colours. Minnowbrook is Syracuse University’s field station and is a great place to hang out with a bunch of languages nerds and talk memory management late into the night. Or just get a reputation as a Shuffleboard shark, and rediscover the joys of paddling canoes indian-style!
| Morning mist over Blue Mountain Lake. The first few days it was really chilly in the mornings, which was great as it triggered the cherries and maples to start turning. | |
| Wynn and Richard at the lakeside. Roy Sykes came with Wynn and Kate who did a great job herding the delegates back indoors when the time came. | |
| Morning break outside the classroom. Yes, life was tough. Really. | |
| Moonset over the lake during the evening session. Should have borrowed a tripod, but found a pole I could balance on for just long enough to get the reflection. | |
| Reflections at dawn on the second day. Yes, it’s a lake, with trees reflected in it. After a while you get blasé about these things and stop clicking away! | |
| Perched boulder stereo pair. See Richard if you can't make this work for you. | |
| View from Castle Rock with trees beginning to turn. Lots of these too! The colour of the landscape changed quite dramatically while we were there. | |
| Floatplane landing on Blue Mountain Lake. Half the delegates took the plane ride, while we mountain goats took the walk up Castle Rock. The plane waved its wings at us tho’, which was nearly as good. | |
| Cabin at Blue Mountain Rest. This was the bigger cabin where the Dyalog crew hung out. Thanks to Gitte for endless pancakes at breakfast, and to Dan for his effortless mastery of the barbecue. | |
| Detail of leaves from the deck. Just a great place to mooch about and get the smoke and mirrors lined up for Princeton (see below). | |
| Blue Mountain spider. About an inch across and very hard to see until it moved. | |
| Red Maple leaves on the path to Blue Mountain. More arty farty stuff to enjoy! | |
| Chipmunk caching the winter food supply. As always, the trick is to follow the target for long enough that it gets bored and ignores you. Not sure what it was hiding - probably haycorns. | |
| Blue Mountain with cabin and Mazda5. Our little hutch and a plug for the Mazda people. This car was actually a pleasure to drive, even up hills and around corners. Beats most of the US built stuff we have had over the years. Except the Ford Probe back in 1991, and I suspect Mazda built that for them! | |
| Lake Durant. Trees keep on turning! | |
| Cascade Pond. And the water gets bluer by the day! | |
| Newt in Cascade Pond. Nuff said. | |
| Castle Rock 2 days later. The short route to the top this time as a pre-dinner scramble. | |
| The Minnowbrook Shuffle. This table was really skilful - fast and fair and 20ft long. Richard & I were never beaten as a team, but there were some pretty close calls. | |
| Dragonfly resting - Aeshna umbrosa. Wingspan over 4". See it in flight in the Tertiary later on :-} | |
| Wilson’s Pond. Yup, those trees are getting redder and the water is still blue! | |
| Our hired Grumman on Osprey Island. Paddling muscles were well used against a stiff breeze and a fair lop on the lake. Nice to pull off on an island and watch the world go by. | |
| Floating Maple leaf. Oh yes, there is arty farty stuff here too! | |
Moving on to the New England coast, we ignored the shopping opportunities in New York, in favour of some light dinosaur spotting and a bit of serious loafing on the beach.
| Footprints in the mud. Quite old mud (about 200 million years old) but looks fresh as if they went by yesterday. Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area. |  |
| Caught in the act. Who says the camera cannot lie. Note the dragonfly in the top left! |  |
| Resting Monarch. We reckon we saw about 3,000 of these heading resolutely South across the offshore breeze. Come the evening, they pulled off in the trees to rest and absorb what warmth was left in the sun. |  |
| New York sunburst from CT. The top 100ft of the Empire State is just out of shot to the left! |  |
| Sand bridge after partial collapse. Having got into this state, it stayed like this for at least another hour. The law of gravity is nowhere near as indiscriminate as many people think. |  |
| Early sacred site recently discovered on a beach near Norwalk. |  |
Finally, having thrown Gill out of the car at Newark Terminal C, Adrian and Richard carried on to Princeton for a bit more work and another chance to clean up at Shuffleboard.
| Pediment with particularly good typography. Just a building on the high street, but I like the design. |  |
| Actually more of a rockhound but never mind. Where Einstein hung out while he failed to finish General Relativity and carped about Quantum Mechanics. |  |
| A serious piece of bronzecasting. Maybe not the best bit of artwork I have ever seen, but technically brilliant. |  |
| Possibly the ugliest building in the world. How many incompatible styles can you get into one badly proportioned facade? This takes the biscuit! |  |
| Beats Kings Cambridge all ways up. Just over the quad from the previous monstrosity we have this quite wonderful early decorated masterpiece. Bizarre! |  |
The timing of this conference pairing was a bit fortunate, but perfect for us. Maybe we will get a re-run in 2 years time! Let’s hope so.