Fields of corn and cow manure

Growing up in a rural area of Western NY, farming was an every day thing. Many Kids lived on farms and most students worked on them year round. The county that I grew up in was a big dairy county. Cows were every where in my town and every child knew a lot about cows. The crops in Western NY were the same variation that Northern Maine has but there was one huge difference. Northern Maine is a potato place. Most of the crops in Northern Maine are potatoes but they have some different vegetables growing here and there. Most of the fields that you see in Western NY are corn fields, but many of the fields are not for eating. Most of the fields in Western NY are utilized to grow corn for the cows that also reside on that farmers land. I love looking at the corn fields, but smelling them is a different story. While it is a fact that cows mean manure and manure means fertilizer, down in NY they liquefy the manure and dump it on the fields. That means that the whole county smells really bad. I do love to take long walks around the tall corn fields. Almost every corn field in NY has a treasure hidden around the borders. That delicious treasure is black berries. I love the wildly grown black berry; they are so much sweeter and juicier than raspberries. Every time I visit NY I go berry picking with my little sister. My whole family loves to go berry picking. It is great exercise walking along the vast corn fields, it is very fun especially when you are picking with a friend, and at the end of the day you have a delicious treat.

Maine, a beautiful place

Maine is a great place to live. Maine has the brightest grass, the bluest rivers, and the biggest trees. A great day for me is being outside in this beautiful state that I now call home. I love to take walks down country road, treks trough the woods, hikes up mountains, and ATV rides alongside a river.

These pictures were taken after a nice ride up Mars Hill Mountain on an ATV.

Taken after a hike up Haystack.

Though I have not seen any waterfalls in Maine, I have seen some gorgeous sites. The Aroostook River is over 100 miles long and flows into the Saint John River. The Aroostook River flows from Penobscot County, through Aroostook County, all the way to Canada. The river is a big and beautiful, not to mention powerful, river that many Mainers enjoy. Whether you are fishing in it, following the current in a canoe, swimming in it, or just watching the power of the river, much fun is had on the river every year.

If you love the wilderness, you will love Baxter State Park. Though Baxter is not in Aroostook County, it is not far from it. Baxter State Park located in Piscataquis County and is most known for Mount Katahdin. Mount Katahdin is a large mountain consisting of clusters of mountains. Mount Katahdin is at the northern end of the Appalachian Trail.

this picture was taken from Bing Images
Another one of my favorite places in Maine is Acadia National Park. Acadia National Park is along the east coast of Maine. The park consists of mountains, Islands, and the Atlantic Ocean. I love Acadia and visit it every year. Whenever my family comes to Maine, I plan one day to take the four hour drive and spend the day at Acadia.

waterfalls of NY

I have always loved being out doors. Growing up in Western NY, I saw beauty every day. Having a large back yard made it possible for me to sit outside on a freshly mowed lawn with a blanket and a good book. When you are in the shade of many different trees and bushes, reading out in your back yard quickly becomes a habit. Lunch at the state park takes on a different and beautiful meaning when talking about Western NY, for most of the state parks there have numerous waterfalls. Growing up, I took the awesomeness of nature for granted. Whenever I take my family to visit the town I grew up in, I take pleasure in in the fact that five minutes from my parents place is this amazing park with three big waterfalls. I also enjoy the fact that there are also three other state parks, maybe more, less than two hours away. I love New York and all of its wonder. Every year, I make it a point to go to Letchworth State Park, and since it is so close to where my parents live it isn’t hard to make that travel. Much fun has been had there, and I will always love that park.

When I was younger, my parents would always take one day out of their busy summer each year and take us girls to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. You can see more of the falls on the Canadian side, and over there they have many shops and touristy stuff to do. To get there, the four of us girls, mom, and dad would all hop in the station wagon and take the two hour drive north. It was always a fun ride and it was amazing to see the amount of water that pours over the cliff.

Last year, our family took a trip two hours south to Watkins Glenn State Park. Watkins Glenn State Park is the most popular state park around the Finger Lakes region and has about nineteen waterfalls. Watkins Glenn is insanely gorgeous when you are walking along the gorge trail. In the summer, we also went to Stony Brook State Park in Dansville, NY. Stony Brook was the first state park that we had been to that let their visitors get in the water and stand below the falls, which of course I did. Stony Brook also has a natural swimming pool at the bottom of a waterfall.

I love the state parks of NY, and I love the waterfalls. I know that we will be back to Stony Brook, and probably in later years we will go again to Watkins Glenn, but whenever we go to NY, we have a mission of finding new waterfalls. If you ever feel like traveling to some place new and have never been to any of these places, I say go. It is a long way from Northern Maine, but seeing these beautiful creations of nature is beyond worth it.

The things Mainers see

I originally came to Northern Maine10 years ago for a vacation after my high school graduation. I intended on being in Aroostook County for 2 weeks to a month at the most, but I immediately fell in love with what Mainers see every morning when they walk out their front door. I did not know what I wanted to do with my life in my senior year of high school, and it took me only 3 months in this great state to realize that I wanted to capture everything that I saw with my camera. My first experience with the natural life of Maine was the second day that I arrived. I came to Maine by buss with a friend and arrived in Bangor at 10:00 pm. I stayed with a relative of that friend the first night, and the second day his brother brought us to the county in way of rout 11. To anyone not from Maine reading this, rout 11 is the back way to the county, and it is also the logging road. It takes about 2 hours going from Bangor to the bottom of the county on the interstate. Rout 11 is much longer than the interstate and the roads can be quite worn in places, but if you don’t mind spending the extra time it is well worth it. Three hours after I woke on my second day in Maine I saw one of the creatures that this beautiful state is well known for, and then 3 more after that. I was stunned silent, which most of my friends and family will tell you does not happen often, when I saw this huge vegetarian beast picking at grass by the side of the road. It was the first moose that I had ever seen in real life, and they do not always look like what you see in nature books and on Television. Most of the pictures that I have seen of moose were of big glorious animals, the males and females were thick with a lot of fur and the males had massive antlers. The truth is that they are only like that in the late summer to the fall. During the winter months, moose lose most of their body weight so when they come out in the spring the poor animals look sickly. The first time I saw a moose was in the first of July, so the moose that I saw on that day did look somewhat ill, they were better than some I have seen. I always loved being out side and loved the sites in NY, but I believe that seeing that incredibly tall animal standing outside my window is what started the deep love and respect that I have for nature today. In NY there were many deer, and deer is all you saw. Though deer are beautiful in their own right, if that is the only thing you see, you get tired of seeing them.