New York

With yet another beautiful weekend off I headed to Peru, NY on Saturday to visit my Aunt Sarah. Ironically, her son/my cousin, moved to the Cincinnati area for a co-op and is spending some quality time with my parents. Anyway, to get there I get to ride the ferry across Lake Champlain, which I really love to do. If they didn't charge me to ride it, I would probably find a reason to go to NY everyday. Once I was there we decided to go to Ausable Point and walk around, we took my camera and a pair of binoculars and set off. Ausable Point is a beach and campground on Lake Camplain and it's right across from Valcour Island and Gumboat island, which a nice man told us were vital during the Revolutionary war. I also got to see TWO bald eagles, one in flight. I had never seen one live before and I thought it was pretty cool, but we could only really see them through the binoculars, they were too far away to capture on my camera. I did get pictures of the mountains surrounding the lake though. Once we were sufficiently chilled we decided to head home where I enjoyed another first, my Aunt Sarah made me a Kir spritzer, which is wine, creme de cassis and some soda or tonic water, I don't remember. It was delicous though. We then headed off to see a showing of the movie Frozen River, which was filmed in the area. The movie won at Sundance film festival and the lead actress and the writer/directer were nominated for academy awards. The coolest part was that writer/directer Courtney Hunt was at the showing. She introduced the movie and then stayed afterward for a question and answer. She was so cool, she actually seemed humbled that she could fill a school auditorium and she was so personable. It was interesting to hear details about the making of a movie, from how the idea came up to how they got it funded, not to mention little anecdotes from filming. Then, of course, she told us about the Oscars which apparently are amazing. So there goes another amazing weekend in the books!
The view from Ausable Point across Lake Champlain