Why everyone should live here....or at least visit

I am still doing posts from the summer. You'll really want to move here when you see my fall shots! I can't stop taking them - it's so breathtaking right now. Anyway, here are some beautiful scenes from our summer:

This is a flock of wild turkeys that wanders through our yard sometimes.  Or maybe there's more than one group.

This was another outing to Watkins Glen, a state park.  (We've got to get there while the leaves are changing!)  We went with the Smiths, some friends from the ward.  We've been blessed to have two new young families move in recently.

A view from behind the waterfall.

Eli is amazingly good at spotting cool insects and reptiles wherever we go.  He just has an eye for detail that I've never seen in anyone else.  And he's training the others well.  They all get so excited when they find something.  And then, in public places, other people will gather around to see what the kids are looking at. We often end up with a group around us.  In the picture below, Eli found a colorful spider with a beautiful web.  And in the one after, he spotted a tiny painted turtle down on the rock, with several frogs nearby.  The turtle couldn't have been two inches across and it was down about six feet.  How did he see it?  I zoomed in to take the picture.

After hiking along the lower trail at Watkins Glen, we went to the free public swimming pool at the top.  (See what ridiculously high taxes will get you?  Oh, wait.  That won't make you want to move here.)  Also up there is the coolest playground we've been to.  Here's a little sampling:

 A while back, we were watching some "ultimate tree house" sort of show, and they showed a huge tree house at Cayuga Nature Center in Ithaca.  We had already meant to go there, but we didn't know about the tree house.  So, off we went.  I can't remember how many stories high it was.

This is one of the levels inside.

(Maggie dropped my camera, but I thought it was still working, so I snapped away.  Unfortunately, it didn't work.  I got these pictures from someone else's blog.  You're missing pictures of the indoor butterfly garden and some other fun nature-y shots, but what can I do?)