I'm shooting you on purpose. : Nobody expects....Misssterrrrrrr CHEESE!!!! Cleveland, Ithaca, and Chicago: Day Five

Another day in Ithaca!!

We started our day at The Commons, since we hadn't really gotten to explore them the day Rhyann and I got tattoos.

Unfortunately for us, just about every single store on the commons was fucking closed. We got to go in maybe...5? Everything else we were interested in was off duty. For seemingly the entire trip, not to spoil anything. We went into a store that USED to be People's Pottery, but is now a knickknack shop with wares from local artists.

It is now called American Crafts!

I bought a cut out card:

I want to get or make a frame for it so it can be hung up in the house.

I also got a hand etched pin with a mermaid on it:

I was telling the woman that I am obsessed with mermaids, like so many people my age are. I told her I am a mermaid photographer, and she asked to see my photos. She thought they were amazing, and gave me a 5% discount on my pin. Honestly, it was hard for me to pick a pin from the collection of hand etched pins. So many of them reminded me of Edward Gorey's art, which I am OBSESSED with, and the others were just so interesting. I asked if I could take pictures of all of the work, and the woman said I could, but...it seems like a lot of my Ithaca photos have disappeared off of my cell phone. As I was reading my blogs to Derek this morning, I was telling him that I thought I had taken photos of everyone's meals at Hawi, and he was like, you did!! But I definitely do not have those photos anymore. I don't know what's going on. I guess I need to be quicker on the uploads of my cell photos. I looked at the artist info in my little pin box, and found them on the website for American Crafts:

Tree of Life Artworks

Sadly, none of the displays I was browsing are on that page. So I found the artists' website.

Tree of Life Artworks direct website

A lot of the pieces I was looking at and couldn't decide between are on there, thankfully!

Not that I am in need of a money clip, but I almost bought this one, because it reminded me of Edward Gorey and something wholly new:

Silent Poetry

I think I couldn't get Edward Gorey out of my mind when looking at the art of these people is because his illustrations have the same kind of scrimshaw look to them. I still maintain that the tree pieces they carved truly do remind me of Edward Gorey's haunted, twisted trees because they bare similarity rather than the same kind of aesthetic. You can check out Edward Gorey for yourself, if you're interested. I love their stories. I wish I could grab a few of his books, though I did buy a big box set of Edward Gorey Art Prints when I was in NOLA.

Here is another one I wanted:

Two sisters talking, of course

The spindly branches and the black and white etching just...reminds me of Edward Gorey. So wonderful. I almost bought this. Well, I almost bought ALL of them, honestly. It took a LOT of willpower to not buy up each piece I'm showing here.

Now these next two I almost bought because I loved loved LOVED Ursula Le Guin's Catwings when I was a kid. I recently purchased them from Thriftbooks (I'm only missing the last two in the series!!) and, while I laughed my way through them, I am so pleased to have the books I read and reread as a little girl, dreaming of the day when I would find my own little catwing colony. I squealed when I saw these two pieces, and shrieked to the woman running the register, "OH MY GOD, ARE THESE BASED ON CATWINGS?????" And she came over, smiling at me, and said yes, these cats have wings! And I laughed and said, no, I mean, are they designed after the Catwing stories by Ursula Le Guin. And she clucked her tongue at me and said, "gosh, I don't know, I would guess the artists just liked cats with wings." So I told her that I read a series of books when I was younger about cats with wings that looked very similar to these little pins. And she said she could put in an email to the artists, but it would be a few days. I thanked her for the offer, but declined. I should email them myself, because I would absolutely buy one of these if that's what they're modeled after. They do have a lot of Alice in Wonderland engravings, so I wouldn't be wholly surprised if these were Catwing homages.

Cats Want Wings

I checked their website and I couldn't find an email or a contact us page, so I suppose my question will go unanswered. But those are all of their goodies I had to choose between. Perhaps one day, I will buy another. Or all of them. One day far away.

We were all pretty bummed about The Commons being so closed for business. My dad was saying he'd like to complain, and not frequent the stores again, that they were losing customers for having inconvenient hours. I remarked that they are either hurting already and thus have a need for inconvenient hours, or they are doing just fine and can have whatever hours they'd like, but either way, my dad's patronage would not be missed.

We headed to Lower Buttermilk next.

There hadn't been a lot of recent rainfall, so this is all winter melt. Not as impressive as Buttermilk can be, but I was glad to see water flowing at all! Late spring and early summer/late summer can be finicky with waterflow. It can definitely still rage, but it can also be dry as a bone. It just depends.

I couldn't make the leap from where I took this photo to where I wanted to be to take a real photo with my camera, so I took these cell photos instead. They'll have to do. I may have tried at this vantage point...I'm running into the problem of not being caught up with photo editing now. I have photos from this day, and a couple from the next, but I bet I skimped on what I edited. It's time to take full on days to do these blogs again, because I'll have to catch up to editing as I write.

There are two ways to get to the top of Buttermilk, where we had been yesterday: you can hike the whole 2 miles to the upper park, or you can drive to the upper park. My dad took Alex and drove to the park we checked out yesterday, but Derek, Rhyann, and I hiked the 2 miles. It took us a couple of hours, which my dad assured me was not going to be a problem. There were so many things to see on the way!!!

Here we have one of the many cascades along the gorge trail. In all honesty, could we have jumped in and splashed around in the water? Yes. Nobody was monitoring the area, unlike the watchful gargoyles we would experience at Watkins Glen the next day. But if we had decided to do that, I'm not sure how timely we would have been, because SO many vantages for waterfall shots would have been better if I had climbed down into the gorge. And I REALLY wanted to. A lot. But we really had taken a VERY long time, and I was starting to feel like I was maybe overheating a bit by the middle of the trail. I didn't want to complain, I just drank my water and trudged onward. Which is dumb. And that's how I wound up hospitalized a few years ago, and I vowed I would be careful. And if Derek hears this, I am afraid he will like, treat me like an invalid baby on any and all hikes from here on out, which is not the intended goal.

Derek and I spent a LOT of time here. A lot. And you know what, I think I fibbed earlier. I think my dad and Alex did about half of this hike before they turned around and drove to the upper falls park, because I definitely took a photo of Alex at the top of these stairs.

If these gams in these socks aren't working for you, I don't know what to tell you.

An unobstructed view, for those of you who hate the beauty of my pale yet shapely calves in long, long socks.

I think we spent about 3 minutes here alone. I wanted to get a really great shot of this cascade, because its just so fucking pretty. Here is a lovely little video I took of this section of the falls:

So my videos are taking longer to download than I am taking time to write this blog, and I am too impatient to wait for them. Here is a video of the lower falls, where you start the trail.

I definitely have to take a break to edit some of the macros I took, because I took a LOT! There was so much to see on the trail. Bugs, caterpillars, fungus, if we had treated this as a macro trail alone, it would have been an entire fucking DAY of just this trail. Check out this glorious little crawling nightmare:

All of my macros will come at the end of this blog, because I don't do macro shots with my cell phone. For the most part. I did take a bit of a macro later on in the day, but not really.

When it came time to hike up to upper buttermilk proper, the kids stayed in the car. I didn't bring my camera, because we were kind of short on time, and I had been hoping to shoe horn ANOTHER activity into the day, so I didn't want to get caught up with framing and tripod assembly and disassembly, and retaking the photo to make sure it was perfect, and I really missed a lot of great shots.

Look at this beautiful white jelly fungus!!

I jiggled it, and it was as delightfully wiggly as its name and appearance suggest.

I tried to make a little friend with this gorgeous Eastern Newt!!! Look at it!!!

Video proof that I was making friends:

A little further up the way, I spotted some Witch's Butter!

I'm pretty sure these are deer mushroom. I can't be totally sure, but I'm at about 80%.

Upstate NY is just fuckin' LOUSY with wildflowers. I took a little video of a huge clearing just bursting with purples and whites and pinks, but I think I only get so many free uploads on the website I'm using to compress my videos. I'm not going to push my luck. I'm only on Ithaca day four, trip day five! So many days left.

Here we are at the base of upper Buttermilk. My dad beat Derek and I to the falls, because he wasn't stopping to investigate critters and shroomies. He offered to hold on to my water bottle as I hopped the rocks to get to the actual falls, and it's a good thing I checked the picnic area, because he totally left it there without even telling me.

I assure you, this looks beautiful and SMELLS AWFUL.

And here are the falls!! I obviously had instant regret for not bringing my camera and tripod with me. I knew I would I fucking figured I would. And I was so bent on adding whatever activity that I have since forgotten that I didn't. I didn't do a thing that I knew would make me sad if I didn't do it.

I mean. Not sad in any lasting capacity.

Here is the section of the road where you used to drive over the creek. I also took a video of this, and will not be uploading it for the aforementioned reason, but this bridge being out is the reason cited for no driving to the top. THERE IS NO BRIDGE. Just road. But honestly, I'm not mad at it. I like that there is less space for people to drive their dirty cars through, and that the sounds of cars driving up the road wasn't there to ruin the beautiful sounds of the birds chirping and the wind rustling through the trees and the flowers

After upper Buttermilk, we went back home and had dinner. Derek had started a sous vide roast two days prior with the sous vide we gave my dad. We made some corn, mushroom and onion, and...potatoes? I think they did potatoes. Clearly I am eating the same thing I ate every night, because it was delicious.

And of course, Stranger Things. We watched that every night together until we finished the series, it was a lovely little treat. We all went to bed relatively early, because the next day was going to be Watkins Glen, and that would be an allllllllll day affair.

So! Time for real camera photos. And there are a LOT today. I was very busy with my camera.

If I end up wanting to print those photos, I have every intention of deleting those randos from the pictures. For now, I am lazy enough to save myself the effort.

Aha! I DID take a real photo at that angle! I'm not necessarily mad at it, but I don't know how big a fan I am, either.

After a lot of looking, I feel fairly confident this is an army cutworm caterpillar, also known as a miller moth. We have been scouring caterpillar photos ALL FUCKING DAY, we have so much that we're trying to learn! But I love this part of blogging. I learn so much, and I've accumulated so much knowledge from being this thorough.

Look at these little raspberries!!!! Such green cuties!!

I can't tell, but I think these are downy roses. I think. I wish I had taken another angle. If they aren't downy roses, they are a relative for sure.

To me this looks like a spotted winged antlion. If anybody has a better guess, I would love to know!

I think these are false turkey tails. False turkey tails, or mossy mazes. Again, no other angle, so I can't be sure. This is one of the things that sucks about having such lengthy blogs for my travels...I lose steam. I could be checking into this, but I'm not going to. Right now. I'm sure I will later.

With 5% assurance, I am going to label this as orange mycena. At first glance, I thought maybe it was a cinnabar chanterelle, but I don't actually think it is. I did a short search, and I am fairly certain that this is orange mycena.

Now THIS I do know. Because this little nightmare is AMAZING. This is a cherry millipede, and I am fucking FASCINATED by this little sunset hued terror fest. They're pretty harmless to humans, unless you try and eat one, because...get this...they fucking release CYANIDE. When they're freaked out, they release cyanide and it smells like cherries. How. Fucking. COOL. Also cool? Only about 40% of the population can smell the component in cyanide that gives it an almond/cherry smell.

Rhyann found this GORGEOUS bloom of reishi mushrooms!!!! I would have loved to take some home with me, but I just kept on moving. We found these at just about every stage of their growth along the trail. What an excellent find!!!

As is my wont, I was peeking into logs and under rocks to find interesting little critters, or anything interesting to photograph. And I found this little growth, and I took a picture of it. I...I kind of think this is my favorite image from the day.

Orb weavers are everyone's friend!!! Look at this gorgeous, rumpy goddess!!!

Little maple spanworm sitting on a branch, eating all the leaves and...looking like a branch! Oh my gosh, I'm the best at rhymes.

Alright, here we are! The location where we posted up for a solid 30-4 minutes. I quite like this photo.

I like this one, too. I don't know if there's a way to take a bad photo here.

As evidenced by my taking loads of photos of this exact spot. Because I clearly felt so sure of myself.

Moving up a bit. I was getting close to happy with these shots, but not quite.

Now THIS one I love. Like, love love. As in I think this might be the one I print.

I think, if I warm this one up a little, I might love it just as much.

Upon reflection, I don't think I love this one. Or even like it.

Here's the long view of where we were sitting. I wanted to get at least one long shot, but eh. Not terribly sold on what I did here.

Ew. Or here.

I don't mind this one, though!!! I kinda like it, actually. This one might be a print.

Another cascade in the Buttermilk gorge!

A closer shot up at the cascade. I love all of these waterfalls so much. It's so cool and earthy in the gorge, the smell is so comforting. Maybe this is just me? I love that smell. I miss it so much.

I edited two big ass trees out of this photo. I need to do a better job of fixing the spaces they were in It's alright, but it isn't my best work.

I wasn't initially fond of the dappled lighting, but it's growing on me. I kinda love it now.

Ok ok ok ok ok!!! So this has been a mystery for WEEKS for Derek and I. We know this is a cabbage looper caterpillar. But we do NOT know what that thing on it is. We both immediately guessed it was an egg of something, and after a lot of searching, we are pretty fucking certain it is an white orange tip butterfly egg that was accidentally laid on this little critter, and it dried out because obviously the caterpillar lacked the nutrients the egg needed to hatch. We're trying to find an entomologist to ask what this is, because we're so fucking CURIOUS.