Stephens State Park

I met up with Len, Sue, Sheryl and Trenton at Stephens State Park which is just a couple of miles from Hackettstown. The weather was gorgeous. Trenton has grapes in his cheeks!
Trenton enjoyed messing around with the gypsy moth caterpillars, of which there were millions.
Grampack found this adorable t-shirt for Trenton when we were shopping in Montana last summer - he sure is a keeper :-)
Trenton learned all about my car. It was a place to escape from the gnats. NJ should get with the spraying program.
He can ride his bike very well but here he decided to carry it. The campground road was a good place to ride bikes - it was smooth, the slight hill was fun for him, and there were hardly any cars.

This is the steep staircase that leads from the camping area down to the Musconetcong River. It was fun to watch Len fish and to see people enjoying picnics, many with their dogs. The river was clean and nice looking. Len caught several rainbow trout in 2 days. They jumped and gave him a good fight. He was using nymphs.
Trenton admires and touches Pop-Pop's trout.
He's showing Mommy how he touched it with one finger.
Isn't this a great picture of 2 happy guys?!

The Pileated Woodpecker

The pileated woodpecker has been all around us lately - in the back woods, in the front yard and even on the suet basket! It makes a loud call which alerts us to its presence. Finally we were able to take these good pics today.

This is an outstanding, beautiful bird and we are so glad to have it here.

Grandparents in Action

In no particular order, these pics show what a great time we had this weekend. Sheryl, Jim and Trenton arrived on Friday afternoon and left Saturday after dinner. The weather went from cold and rainy to sunny and warm to cool and breezy but we had lots of fun outside. Trenton climbed all the way to the top of this cargo net at Alexandria Park.
They make see-saws safe these days, still fun.
This was during the windy time!
Grampack (Trenton made that up all by himself) and Grandma's love of birdwatching has rubbed off on Trenton. He knows the names of many, many birds and got excited like we did when this grosbeak came to feed. The most exciting visitor has been the pileated woodpecker. He comes to the suet several times a day.
Here's a cute pic of Mommy and Trenton from Sheryl's blog.
Just some silly play.
Spring has sprung.
We all played outside for a couple of hours on Saturday morning. Trenton enjoyed his new (to him) Kawaski bike in the driveway and playing with tennis, wiffle, soccer, football and basketballs. Oh, and worms, too. Here we take a brief break.

See how his tongue came out? Just like his daddy, grandpa and greatgrandpa!

Singin' The Blues

Jim's showing off this large bluefish he just caught. We left the dock in Keyport at dawn and headed out to catch bunkers for bait. Unfortunately, there are no bunkers in the usual spots so we had to go farther away and when we got there dozens of other boats were there, too! We only caught 6 bait fish and were happy to have those. Because the wind was very light, the seas were calm, making for good conditions for us to be out in our boat in Raritan Bay. The overcast skies, the breeze and the 56 water temperature kept the air temperature down, it was probably in the 50s. Jim had the pleasure of fighting and bringing in 5 of the 6 blues we boated. We missed a few others. Let's do it again soon, Jim, when the bait and the striped bass are around!What a surprise it was to bring in this spider crab!

Brown Trout Fishing

What a beautiful day - we're so glad we waited for good weather. It was a great deal of fun to catch these beautiful 23 inch brown trout by trolling lures just outside of the harbor. They fought like crazy, even jumping out of the water! Mmmmm, they're good eating.
They are so pretty. Notice how they aren't all the same color.
This one's very silvery.
The weather and fishing were good this day, too. It was cloudy, a little breezy, and felt much cooler. I was dressed for the chill as you can see. That's Fort Ontario behind me. We caught the fish east of the harbor.
We're looking forward to fishing for salmon and smallmouth bass here this summer and to returning in May 2009. The campground is on Lake Ontario just a few miles from the launching ramp. It's good to see the lake before heading out to fish. The water can go from flat calm to huge waves breaking along the shore when the wind picks up. Our marine weather radio is quite useful. The birdwatching was excellent this trip. We saw: turkeys, eagles, mergansers, herons, ospreys, wood ducks, kingfishers, and bluebirds.

Oswego, New York

We went for a walk when it was too windy to fish and came upon this ginormous snapping turtle!
John grabbed it by its long tail and dragged it off the road to safety. See the moss growing on its shell?
We toured Fort Ontario which is right above Oswego Harbor on Lake Ontario. It was interesting. First we saw the reenactors shooting off the cannons! It was very loud even though they were shooting only black powder.
This is the view of Oswego Harbor from atop the fort. It was extremely windy and too rough for us to fish but a few big boats were out there. When the weather was good we fished to the right, just out of the picture.
We walked all around - inside all the buildings, up on the ramparts and even inside one of the tunnels. The website is www.fortontario.com. This part of NY was French and British owned at different times. The fort has been restored to what it looked like in 1868.
Creepy but true - something commonly done back then - this wreath is made out of human hair.
The buildings are surrounded by the ramparts, which have 5 points, like a star. Each bastion is a separate tunnel to help in defense, it was dark and damp inside the one we went in. It was interesting to learn all about the fighting that went on here, we were defeated at one point in time when the enemy attacked from the water.
The reenactors had lunch which was cooked outdoors in front of this building by a woman wearing clothes of the time period. We had sandwiches in the truck overlooking the harbor :-)