A Trip to the Country and Back

We traversed the Hudson via the longest elevated pedestrian bridge in the world, located right outside the bustling metropolis of Poughkeepsie, NY.

We visited the charming Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome to see some rather decrepit flying machines.

We returned to a very thirsty garden. As usual, it is a wonder I can manage to keep a small garden up and running during the summer. We have spent nearly every weekend away this year and in our absence, the heat and dry weather have taken their toll on the plants. The marigolds are ever resilient, but those poor tomatoes, how they suffer!

Luckily we have lots of hardy volunteer tomatoes. Too bad they mostly seem to be that orange cherry variety that I struggled with last year. It's the same story this year: one or two little orange tomatoes every time I water but never enough for a bonafide harvest.

Oops! I split the first Mortgage Lifters with my zealous watering! I guess I should have eased back into it on our return from the country. Now I know better. In my (limited) experience, gardening seems to involve a lot of lessons learned, adjustments, adaptations, and surprises. I guess that's why it always leaves me wanting more: it is nearly impossible to perfect the craft!

Tea Garden Trips

I've always dreamed of taking a vacation to the Far East to visit a tea garden and to sample tea from the source. As many of you know, I'm somewhat of a tea snob. I like to inspect the leaves before I buy them. I'm precise about steeping times. I would feel uncomfortable purchasing tea bags. I like good quality tea and often have friends and family around the country purchase tea for me from trusted sources. It would be lovely to get one step closer to the process and visit an actual tea plantation.

Then earlier this week I learned that there's domestically produced tea in the US on a plantation that is open to the public. I read about it on the tea blog The Tea Scoop. The big tea bag purveyor Bigelow actually grows a certain line of tea in Charleston, South Carolina. They carry it under their American Classics line and it's available in loose form on their website. I haven't purchased any yet and I'm certainly curious about the quality and the leaf varietal. Regardless, it's nice to know that we can get some tea that doesn't have to travel halfway around the globe to get here. I've always wanted to check out Charleston sometime too, so a visit to a tea garden doesn't seem so far fetched now.

Thanksgiving in Centralia

Over the holiday weekend, we took a day to drive into Pennsylvania to see the infamous town of Centralia. In the heart of anthracite coal country, Centralia was once a busy little mining town. Then one day in 1962 the town dump was set fire to clean it out, the blaze spread into a coal mine shaft, and caused a subterranean inferno that still burns today. It has been on our list of day trips for years and we finally got around to it.

Welcome to Centralia!

Josh and I began our day in this part of town. The roads remain but all but a few houses have been removed. We were happy to see that the ground is still smoking, steaming, and looking creepy.

Josh inspected the vents.

It was a very windy day so we weren't too worried about noxious fumes. The information we referenced before traveling warned against idling in low lying areas.

Couch


Stinky Steam


Possibly the location of the dump.

We took the car down a dirt road as far as we could before we risked bottoming out on some deep puddles. After meeting some other travelers, we headed down a path to an area with a lot of vapor activity. It could have been the original location of the dump that started the whole mess. It also seemed like fresh dumping was happening in the woods here.

A steaming storm drain just yards from one of the few remaining homes.

A road to nowhere, of course!

The old highway into town was eventually diverted after what appeared to be numerous patch jobs and efforts to keep the road surface above ground. At one point, a huge crater developed and I guess they finally gave up. I can only imagine how long they held off the reroute. I can picture lots of "Rough Road Ahead" and "Dip" signs cautioning drivers of the conditions before they actually made the decision to build a new road.

Here's that dip I was talking about.

The crater that broke the camel's back.

In 1981 a child in town almost fell into a 4' wide by 150' deep crater that opened up in his backyard. The government began buying houses at that point and many residents relocated to neighboring towns. In 2002 the USPS revoked Centralia's zipcode, 17927.