ALL TRAILS LEAD TO ICE CREAM

  Typically, the most picturesque time in my neck of the woods tends to be around the end of October and the beginning of November.  It was just about that time that Matt joined me for one of my post-surgery walks over in Michaux State Forest.  At that time, I still couldn’t do any trail hikes…so we walked around Laurel Lake and followed the access road up to Fuller Lake.  The pictures that I took that day are some of the best I’ve taken in a while.  Matt joined me for a five mile walk in Michaux State Forest.  The pictures that I took on this day were some of my favorite of the year.  -- October 26, 2022 The view from the boat dock at Laurel Lake.  -- October 26, 2022 Making our way around Laurel Lake, I snapped this picture of the Fall foliage reflecting in the still water.  -- October 26, 2022 Another amazing picture of the foliage reflecting in the water of Fuller Lake in Pine Grove Furnace State Park.  -- October 26, 2022 A cabin hi...

There is a folder on my computer titled PICTURES. Currently, it contains (as of this writing) 1,919 sub folders which house (again...as of this writing) a total of 41,307 photographs...the oldest of which are some old family photos that I'd inherited from my mother.  Heck...just in the sub folder named 2018 there are 6,049 pictures! I love pictures and the memories that they contain.  Cell phones and muliple gig memory cards have made capturing memories easier than it has ever been.  Every once in a while, I'll manage to take a picture that really resonates with me. Not that I think that any of my photos are worthy of winning any photo contest...but because, by blind luck, I managed to do justice to what I was actually seeing, and feeling, in that moment as I pulled out the cell phone to capture the beauty surrounding me.  So...out of the over 6,000 pictures I took this past year...I think I found the twenty best from the past twelve months. Only one of the pics fea...

In 1758, George Washington , commanding the rear guard of British general John Forbes's army en route to capture Fort Duquesne, slept in a field just ten miles west of Bedford, Pennsylvania.  Today, those very fields make up Shawnee State Park.  Named for the Shawnee tribe who, in the 18th century, were forced from the Potomac to Ohio Country, Shawnee State Park (opened in 1951) was a mainstay of my childhood.  When we were kids, my parents, on hot summer days, would drive my brother and me to Shawnee in our old 1975 Pontiac where we would spend countless hours swimming, playing in the sand, picnicking, and hiking (what seemed, to an eight year old, and endless trail) around the lake. Shawnee Lake as seen from Field Trail on the Northwest side of the lake. -- March 30, 2018 This past weekend was a "homecoming," of sorts, for me.   Please don't get me wrong...I come home to visit often...but I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to Shaw...