August 21, 2006
Philatelists, Birds and Bellfonte
This is it. The last words (and pictures) about our trip to State College, PA and the surrounding area. We had a lot of fun and got a lot done. Thanks to Becky’s mom, Evelyn, for giving us a bed to sleep in, food to eat and a cat to pet. Below see pictures from our trip to the woods, a sojurn to the American Philatelic Society (sorry, jank — i know you wanted to keep this a family friendly site) and a surprise visit to the Bellefonte Arts and Crafts Fair.
Pictures with a * are from my Vito II, the others are from my digital Elph©.
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Beckys believe that breakfast, and especially a glass of juice, is the best way to start a day and a fine way to start a picture blog. (“My name is Becky Kapes Osmon and I approve this picture blog.”)
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We spent an afternoon checking out some public and Penn State managed park areas. Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center is nestled in the Penn State Experimental Forest surrounded by trails, woods, hills and wetlands. It provides an educational nature center including a Raptor Center where they care for “non-releasable” birds of prey.
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The bald eagle on the left had a full wing amputation, the poor thing, but each of the cages had a nice pile of vivisected white mice so I don’t think anyone was going hungry. I can’t definitively identify any of the other birds (red shoulder, red something else…I don’t know). If I only knew some kind of bird expert, some kind of bird scientist…maybe a birdologist — they could probably tell you what they are.
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In the nearby amphitheater we saw several rabbits. Much like roaches, if you can see one rabbit there are many more that you can’t see. All I could think was that if they’d just open one or two of the nearby cages they wouldn’t have a rabbit infestation…and they could save money on bird food.
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Near the center we stopped at Lake Perez and took these lovely pictures. You camping types would have been ecstatic. :-P
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One of the many inscrutable things Becky’s dad left the family is a moderate collection of postage stamps. None of them are very valuable, but we decided to talk to the experts about how to handle them so we stopped in Bellefonte at the American Philatelic Society. It just so happens we caught them as they were packing for their big annual show. I know what you’re thinking when you look at those big trucks, packing crates and rows of library stacks: “Day-um, Gina. That’s alot of stamps.” Actually none of the containers pictured above contain stamps. All of the stamps for the show are delivered by special APS courriers and the library is just books about stamps. The trucks are just being used to haul stamp displays and related paraphenelia.
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Here’s a couple more shots from the APS headquarters including the idyllic view outside their library.
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After “stamp talk” we headed into Bellefonte proper for lunch at the Gamble Mill Restaurant. The food was amazing and the interior of this historic mill is gorgeous. Sorry about the blur on the last picture but I wanted to demonstrate the thickness of the exterior door at this place. Compare to Becky’s hand or the Visa sign behind it and you can see how massive the door is.
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As we passed through the Bellefonte city square — which has a beautiful lawn area by a quietly bubbling river full of fish fed by children’s hands from the food dispensers along the bridge — on our way to lunch we saw that they were holding their annual Arts & Crafts Fair much to our pleasant surprise. So after lunch we walked to the fair and wandered around making frivilous purchases and doing small-town people watching.
The Arts and Crafts fair was attended by ropes of children led by day care handlers, and entertained by the State College Senior Citizens Band who sang a lovely song about enjoying life before you’re too old and gray to participate. I, of course, indulged in some freshly fried foodstuff that was covered in fudge and powdered sugar. Evelyn found a vendor who crafted mushroom sculptures and she bought one to take home for her new front yard feature.
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Our last evening in town we went back to “Downtown” State College — which is very similar to UT’s “the drag”, in that several age appropriate hip businesses border one side of the campus. While there we bought kombucha from Raymond Fisher and t-shirts from a great t-shirt boutique, and we tried our best to obey the rules by not riding bikes or looking cross.
Here are the cool Threadless t-shirts we bought Downtown. Becky opted for Emo Bear and she picked out Adultery for me — because of the hotdogs, not the adultery. I love hot dogs…adultery, not so much.
Posted by etrigan at August 21, 2006 11:48 AMTrackBack URL for this entry: