Friday Favorites: Animals

  Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens Brown paper packages tied up with strings These are a few of our favorite things.   We all talk a lot about books on our blogs, but what about other things we like? Friday Favorites is a meme hosted by Epic (Chocolate) Fantasy that gives book bloggers a chance to gush about something other than novels. This week's topic is animals.   Wendy   I love animals! My favorites are alpha shifters lol. Seriously though I adore wolves of all kinds and I collect all things wolf (even books). Bengal and Siberian Tigers are both gorgeous animals too. Other animals I find fascinating, although scary as hell are sharks and snakes. Yes I said snakes. I think they are amazing animals and I am not afraid to handle them in a controlled setting, but in the wild...oh no!   Jen   Like Wendy, I also love animals! I'm a huge fan of werewolves and shifters in books. I'm a dog lover and have a fur baby named Kirby. And because I love showing him off, here are some pics...    

  Cats are ok too as long as they keep their talons and fangs to themselves, haha. In other words, I do like cats but I have a niggling in the back of my mind that keeps telling me that I could be scratched or bitten any second. I don't mind being around cats but I try to keep them away from my face.   And because Wendy mentioned sharks, I would LOVE to swim with sharks someday!!! In a cage of course haha!    

Past Friday Favorite Posts

Jen & Wendy posting here @ At Random (TV Shows)

Jen posting @ GReeps Through the Shelves (Songs)

Jen & Wendy posting here @ At Random (Foods)
Jen posting @ GReeps Through the Shelves (Actors)

Jen & Wendy posting here @ At Random (Cities)

 

A Tale of Two…make that Three Bloggers

Just a warning, this is a bit long winded ;)

Hubby and I took another trip to Central New York about a month ago

(I’m very late posting my pics, shame on me!)

We met up with Wendy at Wall-to-Wall books and her husband and did a little bit of
winery hopping and went to a cute gift shop.

Two of the wineries

Hubby and I then checked into a cute little motel that looked more like a bed & breakfast. There was even a resident cat that hung out around the motel (outdoors). The whole set up was very charming. After checking in hubby made a phone call so I decided to sit outside on the lawn chairs. The cat came with me and hopped on my lap wanting attention. I gave her a quick scratch secretly hoping she would get down if she didn’t get the attention. I don’t mind cats but at the same time I’m also not a huge fan of cats I don’t know. Well she hoped down alright, but not before biting my wrist! She didn’t break skin or anything but I was still surprised. I satt there and then was bit by a mosquito…all within less than a minute. So I mumbled to myself ‘forget this, I’m going inside’. From that point on, this cat was deemed Devil Cat! I mostly tried to stay away from her, haha.

 

 

Along with Devil Cat, we also had a bit of a spider problem in our room. Every evening we would get massive spiders in our room…ok I may be over exaggerating on the size a little but they were between quarter sized and half dollar sized. One of the evenings we were laying on the bed watching tv and I went to the bathroom and when I came back I was 2 feet from the bed and I stopped in my tracks and said to hubby ‘get out of the bed’. He was confused but he got up. One of those spiders was on the bed right where I was laying, EEKK! I was totally creeped out! We had to pull all of the covers off the bed and shake them out before I would lay back down!

 

 

I know I just concentrated on the two bad parts at the motel but I decided to not bring up the name of it because even though it wasn’t a perfect experience, the owners were very nice. They were telling us about the area and also suggested some less touristy places to eat that ended up being fabulous! The room was also nice with great ambiance.

On to other parts of the week...

We visited more wineries, took a tour of one of the wineries, scoped out some waterfalls around Cayuga Lake, found some good places to eat, went to the Corning Glass Museum, and got to make glass pumpkins at the glass museum. Well technically all we did with the pumpkins was pick the colors and blow the air into the slug but it was still neat seeing the process up close!

Waterfalls

Corning Glass Museum

Glass Pumpkins
My pumpkin is darker so I cheated and used a flashlight to make the color more visible :)

On our last day in New York, we met with Wendy, her daughter Ashley (Fictionista blog), and Ashley’s main squeeze. We had coffee, checked out some waterfalls in the Watkins Glen area, and had a nice lunch at a lakeside park.

 

 

Wendy and Ashley…You can tell they are mother and daughter because they are
standing  exactly the same and I bet they never noticed it, haha!

 

This was our beautiful lunch time spot

It was great to see Wendy, Ashley and their significant others! I'm sure we'll head to New York again to see them!

 

 

We also went home with a nice collection of wine! We're still new to wine drinking so we are experimenting with sweets and semi-sweets for now.

Thanks for reading :)

Bronx Zoo, New York

Up until this past weekend I had never been to a zoo, but now I can check that off of my Bucket List. My friend and I took a bus trip to the Bronx Zoo and we had a blast.

We sat at a table with a peacock...

And rode camels...

These guys are definitely not as cute up close!!

But these are...

 

 

I'm pretty sure I was being sized up for lunch...

This adorable bird was having fun diving...

And last but not least, a cool building in the zoo...

A Tale of Two Bloggers

This is a tale of two bloggers as well as an item checked off of my bucket list! Just a warning, this is going to be long because I’m including pictures!

Our tale begins in Pennsylvania this past Friday evening. My husband and I were volleying some ideas back and forth on how we wanted to spend our weekend. After much debate, we decided to head to take a spur of the moment trip to the Watkins Glen/Finger Lake Region of New York. We made sure we could line up a house/dog sitter for the night then at 8:30pm we booked a campsite (and talk about timing, it was the last site available!) for the following night in NY.

The next step was to email my blogger buddy Wendy at Wall-to-Wall Books. She lives in the Finger Lakes area so I shot off an email and then crossed my fingers! I was really hoping we would be able to meet since her and I email and comment on eachothers blogs. I was anxiously checking my phone about every minute to see if I had a response. Then the response came and YES!! she was available and agreed to meet us for lunch when we arrived!! Yippie!

Hubby and I packed up and headed out the next morning. The drive was, well, wet! It poured the entire trip (for my UK readers, it was pissing down with rain ;) )! Thankfully the rain had mostly stopped when we arrived in Watkins Glen!

Wendy pulled into the restaurant parking lot right after we did and when mine and Wendy’s eyes met we waved and then ran in slow motion into eachothers arms. HAHA, ok, it didn’t quite happen like that but I think we were both very excited to meet!

This is a semi blurry cell phone picture of the inside of Jeraldo’s where we ate lunch.

If you ever find yourself in Watkins Glen, definitely add this to your to do list! The atmosphere and food are amazing! Anyway, back to the story. We chatted over lunch then we meandered around the pier.

 

After saying our goodbyes to Wendy, my husband and I took a sightseeing boat tour on the lake. It started raining during the boat tour so we got wet heading back to our car.

Next up was walking on the Watkins Glen Gorge trails. It was still raining but we were already wet so we figured we would just go for it and I’m glad we did because the trails/waterfalls are gorgeous!

While walking on the trails we worked up an appetite so we headed to lunch on the pier. The rain had mostly stopped so we dared to sit on the deck. This was the view from our table.

We then wandered around the pier again trying to take advantage of the improved weather.

I snuck a picture of a bride and groom having their wedding photos taken…

And stalked some ducks…

And played tourist some more…

We then took a drive and came across this winery. I think the name is amusing, don’t you?

We came across a very neat looking winery and decided to stop to do a wine tasting…even though neither of us like wine, haha.

Turns out we found wine that we like after all! Go figure!! We left with our loot and headed to the campground to set up shop. Once our canopy, etc. were up and ready to go, we relaxed by the campfire.

The next morning, we went to a family style restaurant for breakfast then headed out. We stopped at the welcome center right inside of PA and I snapped a couple quick pictures.

We had a lot of fun and are really looking forward to heading back in the Fall when we can stay longer! AND when we return the tale of two bloggers will become the tale of three bloggers! If all goes well, we will be meeting Wendy’s daughter Ashley of Fictionista blog!

To see Wendy’s version of our fairy tale click here