15th Anniversary - ADK 46er

On the 17th of July I observed the 15th anniversary of completing the Adirondack 46 High Peaks by driving up the Memorial Highway to the summit of Whiteface Mt. For the original ascent of course, I climbed on foot including an ascent of Esther on the way and I considered repeating the climb for the anniversary but I really wanted to take my cameras and large tripod. I couldn't see carrying 25+ pounds of gear in a backpack so I postponed the re-climb until the 20th anniversary at which time I hope to have a party of sorts on top. I'll have some of the invited guests drive the photo gear up and meet me at the summit for that trip. :-)

Meantime I did shoot a lot of photos including a panorama of the summit (above) that I just got around to stitching together from 6 frames. I had planned to spend only about an hour on top but it was a nice day and I met some neat people including a fellow who was doing an insect survey. We had quite a chat and he pointed out a Luna Moth that was on the window sash of the summit building. I ended up spending considerable time photographing that moth. It was a very patient subject. You'd like to see the moth too? Here it is...

A Piece of Adirondack History

I finally got around to scanning my Grandfather's glass plate negatives (the few that survived and got passed down to me) and among them are images of an Adirondack trip he took with my Grandmother. The surprise was finding a photo of the Nehasane steamboat which was named for the private camp of William Seward Webb who built the first Adirondack railroad.

A Stroke of Luck

I subscribe to Ancestry.com's on-line services and I received an e-mail yesterday about updates to their site. One of the updates was a change to the user profile section so I decided to update my profile. Then, since I hadn't visited the site in several months, I ran a search on GGGrandpa Stephen, the major dead-end in my genealogical research. I do that as a matter of routine when I visit genealogy sites in the hope that someone, anyone, has posted something new that would give me another clue to where he was born and who his parents were. I got a whole list of stuff, the first being what I already knew and had posted myself and most being about other Stephen Bullards all over the country. The second was the 1850 census (been there, seen that) but the third item was an Army enlistment record. Awesome. I knew he was in the VT Militia during the War of 1812 but the enlistment record tells me when he enlisted, where, who recruited him, that he was 5' 10"" tall with blue eyes and brown hair, a fair complexion and the bit that I have been frustrated by for about two decades, where he was born, Jeffrey, NH. It was like reading the LOTTO numbers in the paper and finding that they matched the ones I played.