what about the plastic animals?

Multnomah Falls

Just down the road from Horsetail Falls is the spectacular Multnomah Falls.  I was glad I brought my rain jacket on the trip.  As you can see on the sign (my highlighting) Multnomah Falls bills itself as the second highest year-round waterfall in the United States.  That's blatantly false.  That is really weird because it is not like the falls are some schlocky tourist trap that needs the P. T. Barnum treatment.

More interesting is the old car that has a clawed Homer Simpson stenciled onto its hood.

Horsetail Falls

Rowena Crest is near the boundary between the dry parts of central Oregon and Washington and the wet Cascades.  Keep driving west and you'll soon come upon a series of waterfalls.  The best known and highest is Multnomah Falls but the first one is Horsetail Falls.  It is an easy climb up to and behind the falls and there are a lot fewer people here than at Multnomah.  The moss is a sneak preview of more to come.

This is the view from behind the falls:

 

Missing Felon

This photo is a couple month's old so there's a chance that Felon's been captured and reunited with his younger sister, Miss Demeanor.

Rowena Loops

US 30 looked much more squiggly west of The Dalles than I-84.  I figured that meant the road went up a steep hill, but I didn't realize the road would look much like it did when the Columbia River Highway was built almost a century ago.  The wooden guardrails on the edge of a cliff probably aren't too safe but I didn't drive very fast.  The hairpin turns are known as the Rowena Loops and the top of the hill is Rowena Crest.  Pretty nice view from up top.

Freshwater Front

On the way home in the rain this evening I noticed the runoff from the rain creating a front of sorts in the Morningside Park pond.  I would have guessed that the runoff would have been colder and denser than the pond water, but it looked like it was floating on top here.

Miles 12 and 48 On the Albany Post Road

Near the tip of Manhattan, on Broadway between 211th and 212th Streets, you'll notice a lone red sandstone rock among the Manhattan Schist that makes up the wall at Isham Park.  That red rock is a milestone letting travelers know that they were twelve miles from City Hall on the Albany Post Road. 

The milestone has been here (okay maybe it was at 203rd street for a while) since the mid-1700s.  It's placement was supervised by Ben Franklin, who later went on to found a chain of craft stores. 

The writing has worn off only in the last century.  In 1905 C. G. Hines wrote in The New York and Albany Post Road:  "there still exists on Manhattan Island a stone imbedded in a bordering wall along Broadway, and in about its proper place, in the neighborhood of Two Hundred and Fifteenth Street, which reads '12 miles from N. York.'"

There's a whole bunch of milestones along the road in Westchester County.  I happened upon the marker for mile 48 when in Peekskill a couple of months ago.  As you can see that marker was enthusiatically, if not competently, restored by the DAR in 1908.

Bronx River Waterfall

Here's a cool, refereshing waterfall on the Bronx River.  Don't jump in though.  On the same day I broke my hand last year two teenagers drowned here when they got tangled up in underwater tree debris.

The Cobblestone School

It's too hot to hold a consistent thought, and my next post from Oregon requires a bit of research, so let's jump around!

Cobblestone houses aren't too common.  It is believed that about 700 of them were built in the 1800s.  Almost all of them are located near Rochester, New York. That area had the two main ingredients: raw materials (cobblestones from Lake Ontario or glacial deposits and plenty of limestone for mortar) and labor (English masons that immigrated to work on the Erie Canal) for constructing such buildings.

The building above is the Livingston County Museum in Geneseo.  It was built in 1838 as a schoolhouse and was given to the county in 1932.

The Confused Tree

The branches are pointing up and the leaves are pointing down.  I didn't understand this at all.  On 120th near Morningside Drive.

Recreation

Greatest downtown bowling alley storefront ever?  I hadn't planned on stopping in The Dalles, Oregon but one glance at this place changed my mind.  In the background is the grand but closed Granada Theatre.  I took a peak in there too.