NEW YORK CITY: NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM THE DONALD JUDD STUDIO AND HOME

 May 2022

Andrew suggested two more places for us to visit while he and Michaela were at work. The first was the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) on Manhattan's Upper West Side across from Central Park. 

The AMNH campus is HUGE. There are 20 interconnected buildings and 2.5 million square feet of space. Obviously, we weren't going to be able to see it all, so we had to be choosy about where to go. On Andrew's recommendation, we headed for a new insect exhibit, the "Insectarium."

This is the "Pollination Portal," which shows how pollination works.

I loved the butterfly displays. We've recently traveled to several tropical areas where the butterflies are much more plentiful than they are in my desert area, and I have become more interested in the many varieties.

The magnifying glass means you can spin the wheel and look at butterflies and bugs up close.

The huge model of multiple combs of a beehive is unique.

NEW YORK: LETCHWORTH STATE PARK

July 27, 2021

When we travel in the United States, I am always surprised by how many truly incredible places there are that I have never heard of. I know our country is vast in comparison to many countries of the world (we are the fourth largest geographically, or the third if you count our overseas territories), so why should I be surprised? And yet it happens all the time.

We hit two such spots in a row on this trip, Letchworth State Park and Watkins Glen. I'll start with Letchworth State Park, located between the Alleghany foothills and the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York and known as the Grand Canyon of the East. (Note: We also traveled to the "Grand Canyon of Texas" earlier in the year, Palo Duro State Park.) I was surprised to learn that Letchworth State Park is "America's #1 State Park," at least according to a public poll. Why hadn't I ever heard of it?

Of course, it took about two seconds for these two to find a ginormous puffball, the first of many great fungi discoveries.

Letchworth State Park is famous for its series of three falls, creatively named Upper Falls, Middle Falls, and Lower Falls.

The park is named after American businessman and humanitarian William Pryor Letchworth (1823-1910), who in 1859 purchased a large tract of land around the gorge created by the Genesee River. In 1906 he bequeathed what had become a 1000-acre estate to New York State. It was eventually joined to other lands to form the current 14,427-acre state park.