A visit to far-off lands would not be the same without some indication of the location, so here is a little hint of where we went.

Now while it is certainly not Simon and Garfunkel, but it WAS a concert in Central Park! This guy was doing his utmost to get everyone to sing along, regardless of how well or poorly they sang and to be fair, he even had me, the last of the karaoke-ers, singing to the songs he sang. A pleasant interlude to a hot day in the park.

Boy, oh boy! These buildings are big! The saying goes, they make everything bigger in Texas, well dont you believe it! A person can get a seriously stiff neck walking around in this city. I chose to take the longer view and this shot was taken from the ferry to Staten Island, a free trip of about half an hour. You just have to put up with the terrific number of people crowding to get on at each end.

On my first day off after spending the week in the office, we visited the American Natural History Museum, where they had displays of live butterflies and frogs. I had been to a butterfly display similar to this in England before, but the variety here was astounding. If I were to show you all the different photos I took, you would very quickly become bored and disinterested, so let me suffice with just a very few...

We moved along to the Department Of Frogs, where we found this chap doing an imitation of me. I feel for him! There are some days when you just don't want to get out of bed, aren't there? Let alone be put on display.

The display pf the poison-dart frogs was the most challenging one to take photos of, as they were as active as cats on a hot tin roof, never standing still for long and I swear they waited until I had almost got the focus and everything ready then the little buggars hopped along. Nasty little things. Full of spite and, well, poison. Some of them are bad enough that just holding them will do a person no good.

This chap was the star of the show for me. To me he looks like he is saying "Get that thing outta my face! Go on, get it out before I come over there and sort you out!"

Of course a set of photos set in & around Manhattan would be the same without the almost obligatory skyline shots. So here is one from the south during the day....

And the nighttime shot as well. Beautiful place!

The Hudson is a mighty river.  An immense body of water! Across on the other side is the almost equally impressive New Jersey

Barcelona is not the only city in the world with strange and quirky buildings. This one in downtown Manhattan had a strange squiggly and silvery surface.

Of course, I had to show you some of the rubber necking type of views. This is really not the most impressive shot I could have shown you, but it's the best I managed to find when my camera was around!

Most of you will know that Elseline & I live near Southampton. So I had to try their ale. And as it was getting close to Halloween, their Pumpkin Ale seemed to be highly appropriate. Strangely enough, it was even rather palatable!

So, my week's worth of work came to an end and we headed off, intrepid travellers that we are, into the depths of the Catskill mountains ("kill" derives from a Dutch word and means creek, which seems to be any type of river except the massively big ones!) We booked in at the B&B (delightful place) and took a drive to the closest State Park which is a pair of conjoined lakes, aptly named North and South Lake Park! Here we found some examples of the coloured trees which the area is famous for.

I am easily distracted and found this large circular lichen on a fallen pine log fascinating. Not everyone's cup of tea, but hey, this is my blog and I'll post what I want!

By this time the sun had wended it's merry little way to the west and begun to drop. This made photography a little more challenging and I found I was hiding the sun behind trees, leaves and anything else I could find in order to get a few shots.

I loved the way the light bled around the silhouetted pine trees.

There were many people out camping, fishing and canoeing.  This pair look like they are padding away into the night, but really only had about half a mile to go to the far shore.

This has been a GREAT start to our American vacation and it all bodes well for more.  Next we hope to head off towards Yasgur's Farm, where the sounds of music festivals still ring out across the countryside, but not in any way as large as they used to.