The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
Autumn is turning out to be quite lovely this year. I remember a recent October–maybe last year’s?–where it was just kind of rainy and unpleasant the whole month and then it was November and all the leaves fell at once and it felt like fall never actually happened. Anyhow, here’s a photographic glimpse into how Autumn has been going in my neck of the woods. I hope yours is as lovely!
Every Pizza Hut restaurant in Western New York has permanently closed.
What a strange winter we’re having in WNY! Our snowfall is way down, well below average, and Lake Erie remains almost entirely ice-free. At this point in the season, the lake is almost certainly guaranteed to remain wide open (we’re past winter’s halfway point, and as temperatures slowly go up, so will the amount of sunlight the lake receives, thus preventing large formations of ice)…which you would think would mean that we’re set up for a lot of the dreaded lake-effect snow, but you have to have really cold air blowing over the lake for that to happen and so far, we haven’t even had that. But we did get some snow over the weekend, resulting in these lovely scenes from Chestnut Ridge Park in the hills south of Buffalo….
Buffalo Niagara is, admittedly, cloudier in general than I would like. But it’s not always like living under a gray bowl, and we get some very nice sunrises here.
This morning’s is a case in point. Geography puts the sunrise directly behind my workplace this time of year, and it can be a real delight.
The week before last, there was a day of very stormy weather in Western New York. On that day the Erie County Fairgrounds and Chestnut Ridge Park–both favorite spots of mine–were hit by tornadoes.
Tornadoes aren’t unheard of in this region, but they are much more uncommon than in other parts of the country. When one hits here, it’s usually news. We were very lucky that no one was killed in these events, which did serious damage to the Fairgrounds (where a lot of people were passing the afternoon in the casino there). The damage at Chestnut Ridge hit me even closer to home, because that park is one of my favorite places to go on my Sunday nature walks with the dee-oh-gee.
I plan to write a longer “Chestnut Ridge Appreciation Post” at some point later on, so for now all we need know is that the park is the largest of Erie County’s county parks. It resides in the hilly country south of the Buffalo Niagara region, and its trails feature steep climbs into and out of valleys and ravines and deep forests of old pines. The tornado struck down a lot of those trees as it cut its swath through the park, leaving some still broken and twisted as the clean-up crews haven’t gotten to them yet.
Yesterday morning was my first visit to Chestnut Ridge since the tornado hit and even though I expected to see the damage, it was still stunning to behold once I finally got there. The most surprising thing was how localized it was. Most of the forest looked perfectly normal, and then I rounded a bend in the trail to see these landscapes.
Last week I picked my mother up at the airport, and it was right after a rain storm had passed through. We don’t get many rainbows in this area, so it’s always exciting when we do!
This weekend the World’s Biggest Rubber Duck was in Buffalo. Yes, we went down there to see it.
And yesterday the dee-oh-gee and I hiked through Chestnut Ridge to the Eternal Flame waterfall. I’d long wanted to see this, and now I have! It’s quite a hike to get there, but very much worth it when you arrive.
Oh, and I’ve been writing, too. More on that another time!
Photos from the Erie County Fair, 2016
Now, of course, with the Fair being over (for us, anyway), I am mentally shifting gears already into Fall Mode. This is usually helped along by August in Buffalo generally being cooler and less humid than July, but that certainly hasn’t turned out to be the case this year; instead it’s been just as hot and humid in August as in July, and our region is actually in the midst of a pretty severe drought. We’ve actually had measurable rainfall over the last few days, but earlier we went something like 80 days without a drop, so things are pretty parched ’round here. Hopefully it’ll rebound.
Anyway, that’s the Fair for this year. The next big things? Buffalo Comic-con, then our annual trek to Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival, and then…who knows! The sky’s the limit, folks!
Last week, two friends of ours from our college days happened to come to WNY for a visit, taking advantage of a week with their kids away at a mission trip of some sort to come see Niagara Falls and some other stuff in the Buffalo area. That’s why my posting was nonexistent last week. It was really nice to catch up with old friends, and it was also nice to play tour guide and get a look at this region of mine through eyes that had never seen this stuff before. It’s really easy to get wrapped up in the constant day-in-and-day-out minutiae of what’s wrong with Buffalo and WNY, but it really isn’t all bad. At all. I can happily report that this region made a very favorable impression on one couple from Iowa, especially downtown Buffalo, which resulted in the words “We don’t have anything like this in Des Moines!” being said a lot.
Anyway, we went to Niagara Falls one night for fireworks, which we watched from the American observation platform. Our initial vantage point was OK, but we wanted to move farther out on the platform, and there were just too many people there…until it rained for ten minutes, making half the people bolt for cover. We just waited it out, and then we moved down to where we wanted to be. When the rain cleared out ten minutes later (and it wasn’t even a soaking downpour, just a gentle summer rain that came and went), we had the spot we wanted.
We also attended Food Truck Tuesday at Larkin Square, a new-ish development in the city where a once-moribund area of warehouses has started transforming into something cool, and we hung out at Canalside, the unfinished-but-inviting waterfront development. I came away from Canalside still thinking that it needs more. It feels like a great start. Here’s hoping for more stuff down there! (And I finally got to see the Sharkgirl statue! Every other time I’ve been to Canalside since her ‘installation’, she’s been inside for cleaning.)
Some photos….
