Recently in Northern/West Shore Category

Did you all miss me last week? I'm back. I had been sick. Feeling much better now, though.

I've got sooo many e-mails and comments to get caught up on, and I've got lots of pictures to show off. I did get those off the camera and onto the computer today, so I'll start with some of those.

Back on April 5, Hubby, Girl and I took The Dog to Pinchot Park.

Here he is hangin' partway out the window:

We took a hike and played toss-back-and-forth with a football as we walked. After strolling for about half an hour, we had wandered from one parking area to the next, and at this one, there's a little "peninsula" that looks out over the lake, so we sat there and took some photos.

Chris took this one of me:

Then I took this one of them!

Really, I don't like snow. But there's something about the first snowfall of the year that does make me a little happy.

I took this picture of the tiny bit of accumulation driving north on Bull Road outside of Dover, while running errands today.

This really doesn't do justice to how peaceful and pretty it looked.

Meanwhile, I'm just glad I don't live a little further east; my mother-in-law, outside of Philadelphia, got 5 inches this morning!

Hubby and I had about two and a half hours to spare last Wednesday, so we decided to take a mini day-trip, kind of like the one we took the Wednesday before to Lock Haven.

Where did we get in an hour and 15 minutes one way? Well, we took the (very) scenic route, heading northeast along the river, so we didn't get as far as if we were doing highway traveling.

End result?

We went to Goldsboro and saw TMI! (We actually got a little further north, up to about Newberry Commons, but we stopped and took pictures at the Goldsboro boat launch.)

Yes, we're dweebs.

As if the wet basement weren't bad enough, of course it was rainy late last week and over the weekend. So, in honor of it being the Monday after all that rain, I thought I'd show you how I spent Friday morning.

I ended up going up to Pinchot Park in a steady drizzle, sitting in my car overlooking the lake and reading a book for a while, then getting out and going wandering around, both in silence and listening to my iPod, for about an hour.

It really wasn't a bad way to spend a morning. Because of the weather, the park was almost empty. And I've been in a kind of blue mood lately, and it helped to take the time to be "alone with my thoughts," as it were.

See, don't I look pensive and introspective? :-)

In our ongoing summer quest, we spent an evening last week up at Pinchot Park, planning to look for the three letterboxes hidden there.

We only got to do two, because it ended up getting dark (boo!), but we had a great time. This time, we brought Big!Fluffy!Dog! (also known as Coby) and let him "hunt" with us. Poor thing. He's very furry, and he got VERY hot and lazy about halfway through, but he was a good sport.

During our second excursion at Pinchot, the letterbox clues indicated we'd pass a rock shaped like a big cube. Never a family to resist a challenge, we (OK, they) climbed on up! (The top of the rock was about even with my shoulders, so I stayed on the ground with the trusty cameraphone to be the recording secretary.)

First, we had hubby plus dog (THAT was an adventure, getting 90+ pounds of dog up there!)

Then, the girl joined in...

In honor of our third wedding anniversary this past Wednesday (yay!), my husband and I will be taking a short trip to the Delaware shore next week.

But, on anniversary day, I was working at my part-time job and he had to work in the late evening here at the paper, so we contented ourselves with a smaller excursion - a picnic lunch a la Subway and a hike around the lake at Pinchot Park.

It was a bit cold - and we got rained on a bit during the last third of our two-mile-or-so walk - but I did get one neat picture on my cameraphone... of a tree, carved up like crazy, with lots of other couples' initials. I'm a little too tree-friendly to have added to it, but I did think a photo was an appropriate anniversary commemorative!

(If you like this, you should check out our Carving Tree project that assistant features editor Sue Haller did a couple of years ago. It's an even more detailed look at one tree's graffiti.)

Filey's School in Monaghan Township, an old one-room schoolhouse, went on to be used as a preschool. The Daily Record/Sunday News is putting together a book on one-room school memories and photos, and it's available for preorder here.

So here's something that's been bothering me for a while. And this morning, I found out that a few other people don't know this either:

How do you pronounce "Monaghan," the township in northern York County?

Is it MON-uh-han? Is it Mon-AGAIN? Or is it something even weirder, like Mon-OG-an?

Post a comment. Your response will keep the newspaper's editors from looking dumb. Well, it'll help, anyway.