on holiday

I have a few photos that I managed to upload before Dan left to perform Starball in NYC this weekend, leaving us here in Ithaca to play, play, play...these are just from the first day, and it has been just this lovely every day since...

oh Thai food. I love you. Our welcome picnic.

My cousin loves food maybe as much as I do, so it's a smorgasbord over here...she loves to talk about food and think about food too, and it is one of the many reasons I love to spend time with her!

 

It is also just feeling like vacation...Ani said tonight at bedtime (after stories, but before she asked me, while drifting off to sleep, "how do you make cheese?"), We are getting to do all of the wonderful and fun things every day! I told her we call that being on holiday...

Before Dan left (he had a day plus one diner breakfast with us before he left), we took him to Lucifer Falls, which is just spectacular. Is it ever really worth describing or photographing a tremendous waterfall? I can't seem to stop myself from trying, but even as I'm doing it I feel like it is probably pointless.  I therefore end up photographing a lot around the waterfall; the ferns, the moss, the fungus, the small chips of rock that look like precarious piles of papers. Look - a very very very green wall!!! This is as high as the waterfall itself, and I was fascinated by the patchwork quality of the different grasses and mosses that were growing along the varying surfaces of the rock.

Peeking over the edge...we couldn't actually get to the bottom of the falls for that kind of shot, as the path was closed at this point for repairs, but you can kind of get an idea of the height if you squint at the lefthand side of the photo.

a slug peering into a Jack-in-the-pulpit

One of the best things about hiking here is that we usually get to do it with one or two dogs...pretty dreamy, this one.

We ended our first day with my cousin C. and MG, eating venison and couscous and kale salads and garlic scapes pesto and chocolate pie and playing tag and going on a walk to a nearby fox den to enjoy the night and maybe see some foxes (nope).

We're being well taken-care-of, well-fed, and the girls and I are finding that nice balance between familiar (what Ani calls normal life - bedtime stories and little bits of downtime and getting enough sleep) and the special (crazy wrestling with young men, dog love, and ice cream cones).   On holiday, indeed.