Postcards from some recent adventures

As I've talked about a few times, my brother is taking me on a series of adventures...and I'm trying to do as much as I can now, while I still can. I have not had any luck finding trading cards at any of these places, but post cards, most of them have post cards. So, I've been getting some...fully embracing the post card as an actual collection, although still in doubt if I want to consider them part of my card collection...I will be posting them on my Cardboard History Gallery.

The good thing about postcards is that they are very cheap. The average selling price is 50 cents, and only one of them cost more than that in this post, and you'll see why when we get to it.

On the trip to Lake George last week, I picked up 4 cards, although 3 of them were not actually Lake George related, but Adirondacks related. I love the Adirondacks so that's fine with me. This is the West Branch of the Ausable River, taken in Lake Placid, where the Miracle on Ice occurred.

 This is Long Lake

and this is the view of Castle Rock on Blue Mountain Lake. I've never been to any of these three places, but they all look fantastic.

 This is the only one that's actually for Lake George, and it's kind of generic in that all of them for sale were animals in the forest, which could be anywhere in the northeast. This card is actually printed on birchwood, and is pretty thick- the same thickness as 8 regular postcards. It can be mailed, but I have no intention of doing that. You may recall, although I don't talk about it much, is that the turkey is my second favorite animal, after only squirrels. I had to get it, even though, in 30+ years of going to Lake George, I've never actually seen a turkey there.

Now, we move on to an adventure I am too chicken to do.

 This past Saturday, before joining my mom and I at FDR's home, my brother stopped at the Walkway Over the Hudson State Park. This was a train bridge connecting Poughkeepsie and Highland NY, and was built in 1888. After a train caught fire on it in 1974, they could no longer run trains across it and it sat abandoned for decades, and eventually was turned into the Walkway. There's a good article about it on Wikipedia that has a lot of old images. The above image, taken from the Poughkeepsie side, shows the bridge, and it's 212-foot height. Way too far up for me!

 This shows the bridge from the entrance to it.

 This image is from the Highland side, and shows a tugboat pulling a barge up to Albany.

 This shows it as it appeared in circa 1960.

My brother picked out these postcards for me. He went across the bridge, something I could never do.

I forgot to check the FDR gift shop to see if they had post cards. Duh!

The final adventure is one I have not actually written about yet. I thought I had, but when I went to look for a post to link back to, there wasn't one. A few weeks back my brother and I went to Long Island for a scale model show there. While there, we took a side trip to the Nautical Mile in Freeport, which I will post a picture of after the post cards. It was cool but probably not something we will do again. It was mostly seafood (which I don't eat) and bars (and we don't drink) so, since I've seen the boat part already, we've pretty much finished up all that we need there.

 Where we were is not considered part of NYC, but Long Island is more like the city than where we live. They also had this Manhattan post card, which I got. I still find it a little hard to believe that I've walked around in Manhattan now, more than once. It's not my favorite place to be, but they do have things you can't see elsewhere.

 This photo is probably taken from a boat on the Nautical Mile, but I am not sure- Freeport is right on the Atlantic Ocean, I think, so there is a lot of water and boats there.

I love sunflowers. I always have. So I had to get this one!

And that's all of the post cards. Below are a couple of pictures from the Freeport adventure.

 The Nautical Mile is basically a road for boats.

A cormorant landed on a pylon and flapped it's wings and shook it's tail

 The Woodcleft Canal is now what the Nautical Mile is based around

 This propeller is likely from the 1800s

 As you can see from the pictures, most of our walk down the Freeport Mile was in the rain

 Out on the only "tourist pier" I saw. Note the raindrops on the lens, which is actually my smart phone.

 This small boat crossed the Atlantic Ocean! It was the first outboard powered boat to do so, and it faced a hurricane in the process. It was almost destroyed by Hurricane Sandy and was found on somebody's front lawn three blocks away, according to the woman who sold us the post cards.

 Part of a mural in the municipal parking lot. I love these old style ships, wish I could have seen them. They create a sense of yearning, a feeling of loss in me, that I can't explain. I've never actually seen one, and I've never gone for a real boat ride- so why do they create such an emotional feeling/reaction in me? I've wondered about it for years.

 Their historical signs are not the most detailed, but I will always stop and photograph one of these when I see them. This was actually taken out the windshield of my brother's car.

 When returning to the mainland over the Throg's Neck Bridge, it actually turns and it looks like you are going to drive right into Long Island Sound. A little unnerving- especially the first time you do it. I had done it before, but not since 2008, and it was still unnerving.

Looking out to sea, Long Island Sound.

This is not the most photo intense of adventures, in that the album only has 259 in it. It's actually the lowest photo count for any adventure, although, had it not been raining, I would likely have taken more, and if I could have done more physically, I could have gotten to the end of the road which is the ocean. I couldn't physically do anymore, though, and the next time we attend a model show at the Freeport Rec Center, we plan to drive to the end of the Nautical Mile just to get the ocean view. They hold three model shows in the Rec Center every year so I do have the opportunity...although I won't go to one show due to something I witnessed there in 2008. And the other conflicts with the last race of the NASCAR season, so it's out too, at least for this year.

HERE is my photo album on my website.