Day 3: August 27, 1999
Mohonk resort, NY

Mohonk House with Flowers

The next day was still a little chilly and foggy in the morning. We got up around 9 and missed breakfast in the dining room, which was a drag, but then we found that they had a continental, self-serve spread in another room, which was perfect for our needs, so that worked out well. Then went out to take a canoe ride, but they weren't letting out any boats because of the fog. Instead, we decided to take photos of the flowers, since the diffuse light would be good for the photos.

Gate in Mohonk Gardens

The garden was beautiful and we spent about an hour or so shooting. Two of the gardeners were there working on it, and one of them said, "You should have been here a month ago, the flowers were much nicer then." Seemed to me that they were still pretty nice. (Later, Mom said she could understand that, knowing how a gardener thinks.) There was a pretty stone gazebo structure that we found at the end. I'm hoping one or two of my shots will turn out well.

Stone Gazebo at Mohonk

When we walked back to the main house, we saw that they had opened up the lake again, so we decided to go out. First Walendo ordered a box lunch for later, since we would be missing the lunch this way, and they said they'd have one ready for us in about an hour. So we went and got a row boat and went out on the lake. (They were out of canoes by that time.) Walendo took a lap rowing and then I did. It was very pleasant. The sun still wasn't out but it was clear and it wasn't too hot, which was good. The lake was smaller than I'd first thought, so the two rounds took only about an hour at a leisurely pace. We headed back in and then picked up a box lunch and Walendo ate it out on the porch. (I still wasn't hungry after the big meal the night before.) After lunch we decided to take a hike around the grounds with our cameras. As we headed out, we passed by a shuffleboard course, so we decided to stop and play. By now the sun was coming out and it was getting kind of muggy, so this was better than hiking at that point anyway. After a few rounds of getting our bearings, we both got reasonably competent at the game. I took the first match and Walendo took the second. At one point I knocked Walendo's 10 out and he got cutely sad and mopey, so I didn't do that again. After that, we played kind of cooperatively, keeping the score close and helping each other out when the other was down. I think this was a testament to our expert skill that we could control the disks so well. :-)

Gazebo view of Mohonk

After an hour of that, we continued on our hike, which turned out to be partly in shade, which was good. We stopped along the way to sit in the little gazebo lookouts they'd placed along the path. About half-way through, we came to some beautiful views of the Mohonk House and the Tower across the way. I shot some pictures and Walendo read for a bit. We heard loud screams from what sounded like below, even though we couldn't see anyone. Two large bus-loads of kids had arrived that day and they were having some sort of field day event. Eventually, we meandered back to the room.

Michael & Dad battle out a tough match

After resting a bit, we decided to sit out and read and I wanted to think of some more categories for the pyramid game that night. Laura found us as we were getting some tea and she sat with us, talking a blue streak, of course about Dawson's Creek but also about the family and school and so on. I eventually had to move to another room to get some quiet to think of categories! Still, it was good to get a taste of how Laura's doing.

After dinner, we all met in a room Ann had arranged for us to play the pyramid. There was some initial yelling as we tried to explain the game to M&D, but after we got settled in, we had a fun time playing the game. M&D were a little slow at it, but they got the hang of it and we all laughed a lot. Walendo and I did quite well together. As he put it, I "guide him well" when I give him the clues. Though, when we were doing the pyramid, I had the category "shortcuts." I couldn't think of a single shortcut, since we just generally go certain ways and don't think of them as shortcuts. Later that night, when I was trying to fall asleep, I came up with the idea of saying "Control-C for copy, Control-V for paste." Since we'd both had trouble falling asleep, I asked Walendo if he was still up, and he was, though sleepy. I asked him what he'd have said if I gave those clues and he got "Keyboard shortcuts" right away. Doh. One of the funnier moments was when Mom was trying to get Dad to say "jacket." She didn't give the best clues, but he got the idea and all he could come up with was "Mackinaw." The evening was fun, if a little loud with the kids screaming in the corner of the room. When we were leaving, the woman with the room next door asked "Are you leaving?" I guess we'd been a little bit loud. :-) Both of us had trouble sleeping that night, partly cuz it was hot, and partly (for me anyway) cuz I kept thinking about the pyramid. We both slept pretty poorly and woke up kind of tired.

Apparently that night, David was making noise by knocking the headboard against the wall in the middle of the night, so the neighbors called the staff to get them to quiet down. The staff came and resolved it, but the neighbors insisted that they wake up the parents, so they did. Keith, who has a lot of trouble falling asleep, couldn't get back to sleep again and they were really annoyed about it, since it had been resolved already. Things weren't going that smoothly for them, though I gather the hotel offered them free massages to make up for the whole thing.

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