Overlook Mountain

The day after Christmas Martin, my dad and I headed over to Overlook mountain for a little walk to burn off all the extra calories we had ingested over the holiday weekend. The hike to the peak (which is at 3,140 feet elevation) is only 2.5 miles, making the round trip a comfortable 5 miles (beware the hike to the top is a lot of uphill and is quite steep in spots). Though of course when we went there was quite a bit of snow and ice towards the top but we still managed the hike in sneakers.

Here is the old abandoned hotel that is near the top of the mountain. It first opened in 1871 and apparently burned down several times throughout history and in the end was just abandoned and looted and what remains today is just the stone skeleton:



Me and my dad, at the top:



Some views from the top:







And the fire tower at the top. It's 60 feet high and we would have gone to the top but the stairs were covered with ice so it wasn't very safe. We did climb up a couple of flights just to see above the trees but that was it.



And Martin and I at the top:

Walkway Over the Hudson

This morning Martin, my dad, and I went for a walk along the walkway over the hudson. This used to be a railroad bridge that connected Poughkeepsie to Highland but it was abandoned after a fire in 1974. In 2009 it was redone and turned into a pedestrian-only walkway - the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park. At 212 feet tall and 1.28 miles long, it is the longest elevated pedestrian bridge in the world.

It was quite brisk this morning with temperatures in the 30's ... well below freezing with the windchill on the river. Here's a pic of some of Poughkeepsie with maybe a Catskill mountain or two way off in the distance:



My dad and Martin, starting out:



The Mid-Hudson bridge:



You can actually do a big 7-mile loop where you start in Poughkeepsie and walk over the walkway then follow the old railroad line for a bit and then come back over the mid-hudson bridge and through a bit of Poughkeepsie to end up back where you started from. We opted not to do this because a) it was really cold b) we didn't feel like walking over the mid-hudson bridge since it has cars on it and is not as peaceful and c) we didn't feel like walking on streets in Poughkeepsie. Eventually the Dutchess rail trail will be connected to the walkway on the east side of the river so you can walk a bit beyond the walkway without ending up on the mid-hudson bridge.

Here we are all bundled up:



And here's a picture of the shadow of the bridge which was neat:



For more information on the park, visit http://walkway.org/

Daisy the Llama

Daisy the llama passes through my parents' yard in Rhinebeck almost every single day. The next-door neighbors own 3 llamas and even though there is a fenced-in area where they are supposed to be kept Daisy manages to never be inside of that area. She wanders up and down the street, eating constantly, every day. Grass, small trees and shrubs, leaves ... nothing is safe.

Of course while it is legal to have a llama or two as a pet (on a 3-acre lot like the neighbors have 3 llamas is one too many) they have to be kept in a fenced-in area and taken care of. My parents have tried to have the llamas taken away from the neighbors many times since it's not safe for Daisy to be in the middle of the road on a regular basis, but so far nothing has been done. Thankfully she doesn't eat their shrubs too often.

Here she is in the street:



And a few pics of her munching on things in our yard:

A Swiss Thanksgiving

Martin and I decided to tackle Thanksgiving again this year. We ended up having a group of 11 friends over for Thanksgiving dinner - held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving since the Swiss do not celebrate Thanksgiving and therefore do not get Thursday off from work. Our guests were natives of Switzerland, Germany, the US, Slovenia, and Canada.

There are enough Americans in Switzerland that the grocery stores sell cranberries and turkeys for a few weeks in late November so we were able to find all the ingredients necessary for a proper Thanksgiving feast. Of course the turkeys weigh 12 pounds, max, so we had to buy two to feed everybody this year. So we made turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, brussels sprouts, corn, and cheesecake. Our guests brought an eclectic mix of foods like potato salad, nüssli salad (a lettuce specialty of Switzerland), caprese salad, macaroni salad (with pickles, which was awesome), Slovenian wine which has a strong cherry flavor and is quite good, an apple tort (another Swiss specialty) and of course delectable cakes from Sprüngli. Sprüngli makes a really boozy cake ... it has a cherry on top so you think it's a cherry cake but it's actually completely saturated with cherry schnapps (not American schnapps but European schnapps which have a much higher alcohol content). You can barely eat a bite of it it's so boozy and I can't believe they don't sell it with a warning but whatever.

Anyway, here are a few pics. All the guests this year were guys who work with Martin at the ETH (and some of their girlfriends).