Wow, it has been a few weeks since I did a blog.  August was a extremely busy month. It is not easy to do a blog post for this webpage while on the road, and I spent a lot of time on the road in August. Also,  my job was turning a corner for performance for the year and I was slogging through a lot of mud trying to get stuff done and be successful in my goals. Unfortunately, it appears I may not have made my goals and I may be looking for a new job. We will see where that takes me.  That will be a far future blog I’m sure.

But to catch up on the blog, I have done 5 more or less local videos about places within a few hours drive of  my home. I regretfully have not had any overnights since around August 12. We are going to change that this weekend, but I’ll save that for another blog. Videos I’m going to cover in this blog will be the Syracuse Scottish games, the Complete Moose River Plains Recreation Area Review, the New York State Parks around central New York, and the New York State fair. Hopefully if you click on any of those titles it will take you to the YouTube video.

I disappointed myself at the Scottish games because it was just too hot and crowded for me to stay and film all the competitions such as throwing the caber and tossing the hay bales, or the bagpipe band competitions. I hope I gave you a minor taste of what a good Scottish games is about so that you can be encouraged to go to one if there is one in your area. They are definitely entertaining and the food is interesting if nothing else. Personally I think the food is extremely tasty. And of course you can always spend a lot of money getting some of the authentic Scottish paraphernalia and clothing that may actually be coming into fashion soon.

While sitting around with the boys thinking about where we should go camping, it occurred to us that we’ve never really explored the Moose River Plains recreation area as thoroughly as we should. The 5 or so times we have gone we always end up at the same spots and do the same things, so we decided that we should really take a day to drive up and just explore the entire area. So that’s what we did.  I figured it’s a great place to fly the drone to really get a view of all the things that are around there. Unfortunately for most of the time it was too windy to send up the drone. The one brief time that the winds began to calm was luckily at the  Cedar River Flow lake that I think made a pretty good video. I had intended on making most of the video a drone video just because the area is so big and so beautiful and has so much to offer. One thing I did notice that I feel should be communicated to people is that as I was driving around looking at campsites there were a number of them that had “Caution – Do Not Enter” tape across the driveways into the campsites. Especially those driveways that go to a group of campsites. And on the 2nd one I saw, I walk down the driveway to see why there was tape across the driveway.   I found that it was just somebody who wanted to keep other people out of their preferred campsite. I do not believe this is right or even legal. So for the sites that I investigated I took down the tape so people could drive in and use the campsites. I encourage anyone else to do the same. On the Bug front, I will again reiterate my findings that I only saw deer flies, mosquitoes, or black flies in one area that we went through. Now that could have been because of the wind, or the sun, or just the time of day. But it occurs to me that the 3 times in the past we hiked around the Moose River Plains trails we were never really bothered by any pesky insects.  But I always try to go in fall, because most of the bugs are gone !

My video on Chittenango Falls State Park was supposed to be the beginning of a 3 part series on the 3 local state parks within a 20 minute drive of Syracuse, or at least my house in Fayetteville. There is Chittenango Falls which is just a very beautiful day use only park.  Green Lakes State Park, which is a very large full-service park with campground and golf course. And Clark’s Reservation which is a day use only State Park with a meromictic lake/pond and hiking trails and some unique geological formations and nature center. Clark’s reservation is also the central New York Parks regional office. Though it would appear they don’t spend much money to make the park really very nice. But actually I like a rustic park anyways. I hope to complete the editing and final video acquisition of Green Lake’s and Clark’s reservation before the end of September. Green Lake’s is one of the nicest places you could go in the central New York area and if you’re going through Syracuse it’s a great rest stop.

I had heard a lot of media hype about Mackenzie Childs factory in Aurora New York. Their annual barn sale in January is an event that attracts national news media due to the extreme chaos and huge crowds that come for the unique and crazy designer furniture and accessories. So I figured I should probably investigate what it was all about and try to figure out what the big attraction once. And now I believe the entire mission was a total fail. They seem to be an extremely successful company at this point, though they did go bankrupt and was bought out by somebody back in 2000. The other people that took the Farm House tour that I took seemed to be of the mindset that their entire house had to have a total collection of Mackenzie Childs furniture. I would imagine that would require about a half $1 million, but I guess that’s what makes the company profitable. The designs are definitely whimsical and upbeat, but after having dogs and children, I believe all furniture should be cheap and disposable. I do not want to live in “my grandmother’s house” even if it does look like something from a fairy tale. But I do hope you enjoyed the video and the introspective look at what apparently the rich people are decorating their houses with. Even if I won the lottery I don’t think I’d be in that group of people.

And lastly the video that may not come out before this blog is posted, I repeated my annual visit to the New York State fair with my son. Only this time I went 3 different days and spent at least 9 hours walking around eating and sightseeing. You should definitely feel privileged to be able to get almost the complete essence of my visit in under 15 minutes. The New York State fair is an extremely interesting and somewhat educational adventure. But between the carnival barker’s trying to get you to spend a dollar to win an oversized teddy bear and the hustlers trying to sell you a mop or a $200 pillow I think it’s better not to go. And while it has been my  annual tradition to go every year just to get the Villa Pizza Fritz and the $.25 glass of chocolate milk, I believe at the age of 60, I’ve gone enough times.  I may try to visit some other states fairs, as my son seems to think that Texas was pretty good and some of the other Southern states have pretty good fairs. So I will take his advice under advisement and see what I can do. But please do enjoy the video as its a pretty good representation of the best part of the fair. If I get a melancholy feeling that I need to revisit the fair again, that’s where you’ll find me. Just watching my video.

So that’s catching up the blog for the meantime. There’s a lot of things developing in life right at the moment. So stay tuned I hope to have another blog in a week, so it won’t be such a long gap between blogs. But one of the things that I am going to do is sell my house and move.  This house is too expensive to maintain, to pay taxes on, and to keep clean. So it is definitely up for sale and as I eliminate all the garbage that I have accumulated, and my children had accumulated, and my mother who lived with me for 3 years brought it with her, and my ex-wife left behind, it will be interesting to see if what’s left will fit in an RV. So stay tuned, I’ll hope to see you on the road somewhere.

Rick, Caesar, Dakota