And, On Saturday........

Michelle and I relaxed a bit while Mark and Ben went out. Mark took Ben around the park to several places, including swimming and to the gift shop. They picked out the coolest souvenir.

They found some iron ore stones that were smooth as glass that had been magnetized. They are super magnets, and are just so fun!

I took several pictures at the park. As I stated previously, the park is just one beautiful area right after the other. Situated on 65,000 acres of natural beauty, it isn't hard to imagine the rugged gorgeous scenery stealing one's heart with rolling forested mountains and breathtaking streams running everywhere! The park has over 400 campsites, as well as rustc cabins and housekeeping cottages.

The only thing I kind of missed was my laptop. Although our Blackjack was working in the park (and I was able to post an entry to my blog on Saturday morning) most of the time, my laptop was so sluggish, I finally gave up trying to use it and just decided life could be lived without a laptop!

The above pictures are of the Red House Lake. This little lake offers so much....there are boat rentals and swimming areas. There are also bicycle rentals, as there are miles and miles of paved trails running throughout the park! There is also fishing allowed in the lake.

This is the administration building. It sits majestically overlooking Red House Lake. It houses a gift shop, a small museum featuring samples of the various birds and wildlife that dwells in the park, a lodge with lovely chairs overlooking the lake, the park police, and upstairs, a restaurant! I would love to have gone to the Sunday morning brunch, but Mark would have had a terrible time trying to navigate up the stairs, as the building has no elevator.

This park is located in close proximity to Salamanca, NY. Salamanca is a small city owned by and under the jurisdiction of the Seneca Nation of Indians. I guess that because of this, it is so easy to imagine this property many, many years ago when the Indians were living there with no modern conveniences!

One of my deepest regreats is that we were unable to go camping when Michelle was little....When she was just a little snippet, she loved the woods so much! Her make-believe friend was John the Baptist. Well, technically, according to her, John was her constant companion, as well as boyfriend! She dreamed of being an Indian princess. She would take Ben into the woods about a hundred feet behind our house, and the two of them would lash small pieces of rope around the trees and fashion amazingly well-constructed lean-to's. She even masterminded a beautiful "patio", constructed from flat shale found around the area. I look at my complex little girl who isn't much of a little girl anymore and wonder where the years have gone. With her dark eyes (a woman at the grocery store once called them "dark as chocolate chips" when she was only weeks old) and hair, she certainly could be an Indian princess. Besides, I do believe there was an influx of (I think) Algonquin blood in my mother's bloodlines!