Heating up!

Things are starting to heat up around here, both weather-wise and visitor-wise.  The weather is still mostly pleasant, but we've had a few days which hint at a soon to be pretty sweaty time.

School's out!  Visits have skyrocketed in the last week.  It's really fun to meet people from all over and share a little of the history and sacredness of these sites with them.  We've had some great experiences.   

We've had a bunch of fathers/families and sons come through on their way to Cooperstown, NY for youth baseball leagues.  We were thinking about heading over that direction (about 150 miles east of us) to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, but I think we'll wait until fall. Apparently each week for the next 12 weeks they have over 100 teams show up to play ball in the place where it all started (by some accounts anyway...).  Cooperstown isn't a very big place, so I imagine hotel rooms are pretty scarce in the summer.   

Lots of families are starting to come to the sites and the bus tours are ramping up.  We'll be busy from now until Pageant in July and then really busy for a couple of weeks, then busy again until fall.  There is also a brief bump up in visitors when the leaves turn in October.  Winter is pretty slow - it seems that only the really dedicated are willing to trudge several hundred yards through waist-deep snow and a windchill of 40 below to see an old barn...   
   
They're starting to set things up at the Hill Cumorah for the Pageant (light towers and such).  The Pageant starts on the 10th of July, but the crew starts arriving pretty soon to set the stage up.  The cast arrives about the 1st of July.  We're really looking forward to seeing the show.

You'll be happy to know that the Killdeer eggs hatched and that the little Killdeers made their way out of the parking lot.  They apparently are mobile pretty much from day one and go find a better place to sleep than the one their crazy mom provided.   Two of them were already gone when I got this shot.  These two were out and about when I checked a few hours later.

The Killdeer children snuggled in their comfy nest...

Speaking of wildlife and such:  We came upon this little guy slowly walking across the road with rubbery legs one morning.  There was no mom in sight, so we were concerned about him.  He was about the size of a Chihuahua and was brand new (I'd guess no more than a few hours, maybe minutes old).  He finally got across and into the brush while we watched.  Hopefully he found his mom...

We see deer quite often around the farm, but they're pretty shy. The mule deer we have in our neighborhood in Colorado Springs will let you walk right up to them, but not these little critters.  They'll literally hightail it over a fence if you even look sideways at them from 100 yards away.  Which conveniently brings me to my etymology lesson of the day:  "Hightail it" - "An idiom meaning to hurry or to flee.  To go as fast as possible.  From those animals which raise their tails when fleeing."   There you have it.  Whitetail Deer (which we have around here) hold their white tails straight up when they run and thus when fleeing are "Hightailing Whitetails."  Now you know...

The fire flies have come out, which is really cool for us westerners.  We walked down near the Sacred Grove last night and watched them for quite a while.  There are thousands of them.  I didn't get a photo.

We took a cruise on the Erie Canal one evening last week.  Unfortunately it was cold and wet, but it was still fun.  There were 82 missionaries (temple, site, FM) aboard.  We went about 10 miles west from Fairport (which is 15 miles west of Palmyra), and then back, going through one of the locks.  

For you history buffs:  The canal was started in 1817 and finished in 1825.  Originally 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep, it has been widened twice over the years to its present width of 120 feet and depth of 10-12 feet.  It's 363 miles long, running from Albany on the Hudson River in the east, to Buffalo on Lake Erie in the west. There's some commercial traffic these days, but nothing like it used to be.

"Low bridge, everybody down!"  I remember those words from an old song we used to sing in elementary school about the Erie Canal.  It is certainly true.  The bottom of this bridge for instance is only about 6 inches above the rail on the boat.  Everybody (including the captain) has to crouch below the rail to go under.  

Our intrepid captain

We went through Lock #30 (low to high going west and vice versa on our return trip).  A few shots in the lock while heading west.

Our Neighbors the Millers

The Guenthers from Alberta,Canada

The Veatch's from Orem with their daughter

We took a drive on our P-day to Irondequoit Bay, north of Rochester on Lake Ontario.  The bugs were so thick on this little jetty (some kind of miserable mosquito-like thing) that we only stayed long enough to take this one picture. 

Deciding we'd had enough bugs, we drove into Rochester to the George Eastman Home and Museum of Photography.  Some nice digs as you can see.  Eastman invented the portable camera in 1888 that changed the world of photography.  He founded the Eastman Kodak company and the rest is history.  Interestingly, he made up the name "Kodak" as a catchy name that people would remember (of course today, not so much - Kodachome 64 anyone?).   He never married, but rattled around in this huge house with his mother.  He was a bit eccentric, but brilliant (and rich).  He gave his entire fortune away, including millions to the University of Rochester, so he's pretty well thought of around here.