Petey! My Grandma’s cat.

For the latter half of our trip, we mostly spent our time “upstate” (far out of the city, but not in the northern part of the state), and spent time with family. Good food, good company, and wild blueberries. And there were some fireworks. Go America!

Random shot on the way out of the city. Teeny, tiny, all the same-y.

Adam goofing off at the campsite

A panorama of the beautiful panorama.

We went to Sam’s Point Dwarf Pine Ridge Preserve and walked up to the point to see the view.

My cousin Sebastian checking out a little cave.

Us at the point. I’m ducking out of the wind…. SANCTUARY!

Panorama at Sam’s Point Dwarf Pine Ridge Preserve. You can see Adam on the left and Aunt G on the right.

The top of the point was covered in wild blueberries. They weren’t in full swing, but we managed to pick enough to appreciate them!

Grandma patiently waiting for us to come back down, as seen from the point.

View up from out way back down.

We ran into a guy on the trail with five exhausted 50-80 lb dogs. One was completely collapsed and he was trying desperately to figure out how to get everyone down. We told him to carry the one and that the five of us would take care of the rest. We split them off of their tandem harness and walked them all at whatever pace they could tolerate. It was definitely a team effort! But it was really nice to do a good deed, for man and creature alike. 


At the campsite, there were lots of little firecrackers shot off by Seb, as well as some water balloon tossing…

And we even whipped out the Atari 2600 to give it a go.

Fiddling…

Playing Haunted House (1982)

We managed to play Pac-Man, Missile Control, and Haunted House. Pretty neat.

The juvenile form of the Eastern Newt. So cute!

When we got back to Queens, we laid low for 4th of July and caught fireworks on the TV. But we shot off a few of our own, including this big bucket of fun, that had probably a dozen different stages.

Gigi, Grandma, Seb and Frank admiring the show.

The morning of our flight(s) home, we dashed over to Herald Square to pick up some excellent Korean food for lunch with my cousin Kris. I hadn’t seen Kris since… 2005? 2006? Long time. It was really great. Hopefully next time we can do something longer, (and include Matt, too).

Cousins!

Grandma and me!

All in all, a great trip. I can’t wait to go again… maybe next year? Maybe just not in July next time. Many thanks to everyone who fed us, carted us around, met us places and generally went out of their way to help make our trip the nest it could be. We really appreciate it! Come visit us sometime!

I’m sure Fourth of July seems like a faded memory now to you all now, since it took me so long to get this up. But I belatedly hope everyone had a fun Independence Day!