SMALL TRIPS IN 1976 (9 trips for 41 days)
AKRON, January 20 - 26, 1976
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20: Grandma is 88! Bus: NYC-Akron: Grandma's birthday party.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21: To Chapel Hill with Jimmy; "Joffrey Ballet" on TV.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 22: Finish "Autobiography of a Yoga;" eat at Tangier; long talk with Mom on sex.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 23: Shop at bookseller; shop at Stagecoach; Edward arrives.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 24: Rita's wedding; finish "Some of Your Blood," to Goepfert's.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 25: To Marion's; eat at Dry Dock; goodbye to Grandma.
MONDAY, JANUARY 26: Bus Akron-NYC. Read three books.
POCONOS, January 31 - February 1, 1976
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31: To Mount Pocono and Buck Hill Falls; eat in Uguccione.
ICE AT BUCK HILL FALLS
Find signs to the Falls and park above, since the road down is closed because of solid ice. I have rubbers on but Don doesn't, and he slides around a lot, sliding down the hill, even stopping and looking like a little skidding critter in his voluminous raccoon coat fluffing over the ice as he zooms downhill with surprising balance. Into the woods and find the top of a banister that takes us down an ice-covered stairway to a bridge over the top of the falls, and one part of the bridge is a SHEET of ice about a foot thick, and we slide around a bit, admiring the GREEN of the water, the RED of the rocks, the WHITE of the snow, the GREEN of the rightly curled rhododendron leaves and the evergreens, and the BLUE color showing up in the thickest pieces of ice. He tries to crawl above the falls, but slips back and almost goes over the edge but saves himself by artfully directing his legs. He may LOOK clumsy, but he ISN'T. Then back to the top, and he must practically DRAG himself along the banister, once even slipping UNDER it, dangling down the cliffside, and then pulling himself back up, sometimes hurting his fingers which he later sucks on in the car. Along the ridge to another banister, and this one is on a trail even steeper and more ice-covered, and he falls a couple of times, skids with nothing to give him support, and people keep passing in boots, looking at his wig with amazement, and whispering about him after he passes. We're down finally, and down the stairs to the canyon floor to walk RIGHT UP to the falls and see the incredible leaf-like formations that the spray forms on the rocks, with DEEP indentations that sink up to three inches, as if the spray, frozen on the rocks, was yearning back toward the falls. The ice formations are incredible alongside the falls, and then I notice that the "back wall" of the falls has an array of stalagmites and stalactites on the ground, so I wander over and walk along their base: fantasies of running water, some as freely as spigots, and some of the formations are so thin and delicate that, even under the gray sky from which snow starts to sift down, they glitter and shine in colors as if under a bright sun. Don had remarked how he loved to point things out to people and to have things pointed out to him, so we wandered slowly along, trying to ignore the screams from the kids who followed us down, throwing rocks across the stream to obliterate the beautiful hangings across from them, and the one who trails behind us breaking off the formations. Look at the green and brown stripes down this cliffside; feel the ice, actually oily to the touch because the fingers are so cold that the ice doesn't melt under them, and we actually "feel the surface" of the ice itself without water intervening; gasp at the 4 inch wide ribbon of a flow down a side of a tree, following a curve even more graceful than the tree, evenly wide from top to bottom; look at the crevice under ONE tree, and look how another tree causes the flow around it to coalesce in a phallic icicle dangling from directly underneath. On the cliffside there were other pointings: look at the jewel clarity of the moss frozen into the ice, particularly when blown on to smooth off the surface, making them look encased in plastic; look at the stalagmites near the falls, looking like huddled spectators even to the black dots of eyes from some impurities in the appropriate places; look at the thickness of this, the thinness of that, the strength in this, the fragility of that, the mouth-watering trickle of water down the various pipes that Don yearns to duplicate in Plexiglas, and I suggest Crystal would be more beautiful. Feel the fuzz of ferns quick-frozen, see the greenness preserved in the ice. Touch with wonder the bizarre branchings where there are no visible channels that would have caused the branching. See the moss perfectly frozen into its globe of ice, taste the snow, marvel at the haze rising from the stream, laugh at the slips and slides of everyone going up and down the paths, marvel at the thickness of the ice-sheet oozing from the rock face. Feel the iciness of the feet against the snow, the nip on the nose, the annoyance with the shouts of the kids as another beautiful formation splinters. Gloves don't even get wet with ice, it's just too cold. A marvelous afternoon of looking and walking and doing; we BOTH loved it.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1: Pocono Manor Inn; snowmobiling; David Malamut Dance.
POUGHKEEPSIE, April 2 - 4, 1976
FRIDAY, APRIL 2: To Poughkeepsie at 6:30PM; to Rick Kleyn's, type 13.
SATURDAY, APRIL 3: Boscobel; Dick's Castle; eat at Old Mill; to the Deja Vu.
SUNDAY, APRIL 4: Eat at Liberty Cafe; return to NYC.
GREAT ADVENTURE WITH DON AND DENNIS: SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1976
The safari I described, and then we walked the length of the midway to get to the Flume, stopping on a short line for the Octopus that we all went on, then onto a short line for the Runaway Train, which they both liked, then onto a 45-minute line for the Flume, which Don sat out for in an eatery watching the frogs. We moved fast, looking at the splashed people, then got MIGHTILY splashed ourselves, Dennis less than me, in the back, but the ride was fun over the treetops around the sides, laughing up at the applause from the bridge, and then watched from the bridge to find that the applause was reserved for those who REALLY got wet. Then onto the long line for the ride back to the other side, we all complaining about the plainness of the people there: so FEW were greatly attractive, and MOST of them were of an age where they SHOULD have been great. Dennis is hungry so he's into the Gingerbread Palace with orders from the two of us, who go into an instantly moving line for the giant Ferris wheel, which Don likes, though he's still cold, and we laugh at the girl with the guy who's so afraid of heights she won't even look out. Then eat cheesecake and beer and French fries and out to the train that rides its boring way through the woods, and I want to go onto the Moon Flume, but they don't so we catch a part of the porpoises, sit for the next show near the bandstand while Dennis and I go off to ride the Enterprise, which HE has to tell me is Star Trek's ship!, and then back for the end of the clown and diving show at 9:15, and over to the other section where we ride up the swinging-car Ferris wheel to look out over the closing park, stand on line again for the Enterprise, which Don and Dennis go on while I sit alone, feeling the feeling of the weightlessness, and we'd taken time off earlier to go through a fence and smoke two more joints by the lakeside, enjoying the sunset and the clear air. I liked the whole day, but Don was totally turned off by the lines, though he'd go back to the safari again, and Dennis thought everyone had a good time, thanking me for getting the idea, but I think I might not be going back for ANOTHER year, though there are still some things that I'd like to go on that I haven't, but I can only stand to alienate one set of friends from parks each year.
GRAND FALLS OF THE PASSAIC RIVER, SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1976
By the end of the day, Don says that the high point was the half hour we spent on Paterson's Main Street, with the elaborate brick-and-concrete facades of the "middle American" Main Street that the article talked about. I'm sucking candies that I hooked from Don's, since I've had nothing since breakfast, and since 1972 there are lots of one-way streets added, and the traffic jam doesn't help, but finally we see road signs for the "Grand Falls Festival" and go around corner after corner, and finally see the river, cross it on a bridge, and go around the falls to a Grand Falls Park parking lot, and down through the gate, down the path, down the grass to the edge, where the falls, built on the pattern of Victoria Falls, tumbles off one side of a ravine, the END of the gorge blocked with crates, logs, tires, and other garbage, and the spray lofted into the air after the 77 foot drop is sometimes filled with bubbles from the detergent suds churning against the cliff-face opposite the heaviest fall. I climb over the wall and look over the whole thing, but the spray is very wetting, the rocks are slippery, though there's a well-trod path there, and it IS an impressive falls right across the way, but Dennis is being non-communicative, Don is VERY aware of it, and I walk along the path to see the water pipe carried across, the footbridge, and down around the corner to see the river rounding the sheer granite bend, below which black fishermen troll the churning waters to catch what's been stunned from the drop or what's fought the current to stay so far near the foot of the falls. Near the power plant there's a huge sluggish eddy of boards, suds, gunk, and junk turning slowly around. Above, the water butts against corrugated metal abutments filtering the flow into the power plant. The wide stream above, stepping down a shelf about 6 feet high, and the narrow stream below rather belie the information that the brink is almost as wide as Niagara's, but though the moss is nice on the rocks below, and some trees have sent branches 20-30 feet into the abyss, there's no way to "play with" the falls, as Don wants to, and from the other side it probably looks like nothing, so we're back and leave in 20 minutes, having seen the Niagara in Paterson.
POUGHKEEPSIE: SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1976: Dinner at the Culinary Institue of America!
NEW JERSEY: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1976: To Don Maloof's sister's; eat at Holly's in New Jersey.
See TRAVEL:ADK76 for October 2 - 10, 1976
NORTH SALEM: Art Ostrin's place Wednesday-Thursday, November 17-18, 1976.
SMALL TRIPS IN 1977 (3 trips for 14 days)
AKRON: Grandma's funeral: June 8 - 10, 1977
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8: Bus to Akron; eat at Hibachi and Helen's.
THURSDAY, JUNE 9: Grandma's funeral; eat at Brown Derby and Marion's.
FRIDAY, JUNE 10: Bus back to NYC.
ATLANTIC CITY, August 26 - 27, 1977
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26: With Rolf to Island Beach, Longwood Gardens, and Atlantic City; eat at Frank's.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27: Walk length of Boardwalk at Atlantic City; eat at Ranch House; back to NYC.
See TRAVEL:PAR77 for PARIS, September 27 - October 5, 1977.