Author: LSieh

Just a wife trying to cook and craft her way through life's adventures.
Throwback: Howe’s Cavern
Adventures

Throwback: Howe’s Cavern

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Hello! I realized I haven’t actually written about seeing Howe’s Cavern in New York and since the pictures were pretty cool, wanted to post about it. The Husband and I went to Howe’s for the start of our East Coast Trip in 2022. I had miscalculated the driving hours, so we ended up doing a 10 hour day and then going to the cavern tour when we got up. It was a pretty neat way to start the day though, I will say! Here’s a picture of the fog over the mountains that we woke up to.

The caverns are located in the Schoharie Valley region and was called “Otsgaragee” or “Cave of the Great Galleries” or “Great Valley Cave” by the Native Americans in the area. It’s not known how far into the caves the Native Americans had explored. The first white person who is reported to have found the cave entrance was around 1770, but not much is known other than that. Supposedly he was a peddler who was hiding from an attack in the entrance of the cave.

Lester Howe, a local farmer and his family, settled land across from the hidden cave entrance in the 1880’s and reportedly rediscovered the cave, by following his cows on a hot day to find cool air blowing from a cleft in the rocks on his neighbor’s property. He eventually bought the property from his neighbor and began to offer tours of the caves. The Howe’s Cavern website has some more information on the history and timelines for the cave, if you’d be interested to learn more. https://howecaverns.com/

Here are some pictures from the cave. The tour included a boat ride, but that was mostly in the dark, so there are no pictures from that. We liked our tour guide, she was pretty funny. The cave itself was pretty chilly and slippery in some parts, as you might expect. It wasn’t a hard walk though. There were some tight spaces, but overall we we impressed. It’s amazing to think of the work that was done with more primitive mining tools and safety precautions that we take now.

It was really interesting to see the colors from the different minerals on the wall and the shapes of natural erosion.

This rock formation was called “Pagoda Rock. It was in a deeper part of the cavern off the path.

We took a picture in front of the heart rock and alter area. You can get married in Howe’s Caverns, although would need to be a very small wedding! The superstition is that if couple’s kiss on the quartz heart rock, they’ll stay together for 10 more years of bliss. Since it had just been our 10 year anniversary, we definitely kissed on the heart.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some pictures from Howe’s Caverns. I am hoping to get caught up sharing our adventures from last year. We had a lot of fun on our East Coast trip and I think I’ve only shown part of it. Last year was a tough year and I’m just starting to recover from it now. I’m determined to showcase the good things from it though, not just dwell on the negatives. So stay tuned for more vacation pictures!

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- October

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“There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Autumn serenades the breeze into dancing a cha cha cha; the mountains echo in the background. October sky never looked more charming nor the sublime leaves of the trees so graceful.” — Avijeet Das

“After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her.” — Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond (I read this book obsessively when I was a preteen. I still own a copy of it!)

“You don’t waste October sunshine. Soon the old autumn sun would bed down in cloud blankets, and there would be weeks of gray before it finally decided to snow.” — Katherine Arden, Small Spaces

“Yet, I can face the winter with calm. I suppose I had forgotten what it was really like. I had been thinking of the winter as a horrid wet, dreary time fit only for professional football. Now I can see other things—crisp and sparkling days, long pleasant evenings, cheery fires. Good work shall be done this winter. Life shall be lived well. The end of the summer is not the end of the world. Here’s to October…” — A.A. Milne, “A Word for Autumn”

“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.” — Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

Adventures · Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Animals

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“But perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those that we put up ourselves, and that until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves.”
― Lawrence Anthony, The Elephant Whisperer

 “Never break a promise to an animal. They’re like babies—they won’t understand.” – Tamora Pierce, Wild Magic

 “The household cat is really a tiger that has underwent three counselling programs.” – Valeriu Butulescu

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Games

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“Purposeful play builds self-confidence and real-world problem-solving skills.”― Jane McGonigal, Superbetter

“Some of the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) are grounded in clinical and academic role assumption and role-playing exercises.”-Gary Gygax

“Real life this far had taught me that in the adult world, fate was chaotic and uncertain. Guidelines for success were arbitrary. But in the world of D&D, at least there was a rule book… By role-playing, we were in control, and our characters… wandered through places of danger, their destinies, ostensibly, within our grasp.”-Ethan Gilsdorf

“Life is more fun if you play games.”― Roald Dahl, My Uncle Oswald

One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games. – Carl Jung

“Gaming is our cultural bogeyman – we blame it for everything from child obesity to violence to short attention spans. But any explanation that fits every situation ultimately explains nothing.”-Naomi Alderman

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Beauty

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“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”-Confucius

“People are like stained – glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one’s own even more, one’s own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.”-Katherine Anne Porter

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”-John Muir

“It’s good to have a reminder that we can love ourselves and be beautiful even though we don’t really fit into certain standards of what beauty may be.”-Alessia Cara

Adventures

Nature Center Walk

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A group of us got together to go to a nature center for a walk to celebrate K2’s birthday. We had originally planned to go to a botanical garden, but they were closed for an event, so we went here instead. Unfortunately, we’d had some severe storms in the days before and we ended up getting blocked on a couple trails at the nature center and the park we went next because of flooding. We all agreed that it was more about the company than the event, so were happy spending time together. We also had absolutely delicious Mexican food after our two failed walks.

This nature center was small, but really well done. They had a lot of really nice taxidermy specimens and very nicely organized exhibits. They had a small viewing area with information on local birds and a kids section with things you could play with and magnification stations that you could use to examine things.

There were also some live animals, which seemed very happy! Most of them were active which was cool to see. The Husband and I are trying to get back to having regular dates. We missed each other during theater season and I think that some of the nature centers would be really cool and generally free to visit.

Here are some of the things we saw at the nature center.

This is the little pond was in the atrium when you walked in. The turtles all wanted the warming light and we didn’t see any frogs. There were signs to make sure to look down to avoid stepping on frog or turtle friends.

This wasp nest was really big! I get scared by wasps, but their nests are so cool looking!

Look, a beaver! We always joke that the beavers at the Zoo are “theoretical beavers” because you never see them unless you’re there for the late events. K2 says that they have, in fact, the beavers at the zoo. This one was posed very nicely. Behind the beaver you can see the fish and turtle tank.

There were signs saying “Don’t forget to look up!” So we did and were greeted by this happy little possum who looked like he was going to jump on us! There were some birds and racoons too, but some of the animals were hard to take a picture of. There were a lot of fun nature photographs too. Those always inspire me to get a really good camera and go exploring.

There were some interesting animal skeletons too. I really liked the curviness of this snake skeleton.

I didn’t see what kind of bird this was, but how cool is it to see the wings and everything? I feel like this is an interesting piece that you don’t normally see. I appreciated the different perspective.

Alright, the last few picture are snakes, so if you don’t want to see them, scroll away! I believe this was an albino corn snake. It apparently needs a lot of humidity, as the tank was very misty, as you can see. The humidifier in the tank was Olaf from Frozen, which made us all laugh.

I don’t remember what kind of snakes these were, but they were pretty active.

The last one was a hognose snake and K2 was sweet talking it. I told her Piggy might be jealous if she said the snake was her favorite Piggy, so she made sure to give her extra love when we came home. He was lovely and very interested in what was going on in the room.

I don’t mind snakes. I don’t know that I’d want to hold them or have them near me not in a tank, but they don’t freak me out as much as spiders or wasps. *shudders

Overall, it was a fun little visit! We had a good time at dinner and after dinner we just hung out at our house. I really liked that part of the night too. The Husband and I want our friends to feel comfy just coming over so it was neat to be able to do that again.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the write up. It’s been a really, really hard year for me and a lot of my creativity suffered for it, including writing. I’m hoping to get back into writing up short posts at least. Hopefully our date nights will be full of fun picture opportunities as well!

I hope you can get out and enjoy some nature this week!