We are just a few days away from Fall. Fall is one of my favorite times to walk. The summer heat is gone. There is a crispness in the air that makes for good walking.
The changes in the season are just spectacular.
This picture is my neighbors Japanese Maple. These leaves will become a brilliant red, especially when the sun shines on them.
Hopefully the maples will also have brilliant fall colors. There is so much joy walking around a bend and seeing those lovely oranges and reds of the maple trees.
Finally, the green curtain descends, and I can see all the sights that were hidden by the leaves.
This summer in addition to walking I took the train a lot. I find taking Metro North to the Fordham Station is quite nice. You have Arthur Avenue, The Bronx Zoo and the Bronx Botanical Garden.
I also took Amtrak three times this summer. One was to Mystic. You know about that. Another time was to Rhode Island on a Friday. My grandson did not want to be in traffic for three hours. We took the train, and it was very easy. I do think the train going along the Connecticut Coast is one of the best sightseeing trips.
The last trip was taking the Amtrak Acela to Philadelphia, PA. The Acela is the fast train and is usually too expensive to take. They had a sale, and I went to Philadelphia for the day. The train ride is a little over two hours each way. I left at nine in the morning and took a 4:30 pm train home. I had over five hours to walk all over the town.
A word of advice don’t go to Philadelphia on Tuesday or Wednesday. Most of the art museums are closed those two days.
I went to the Mutter Museum. It is an interesting museum. It is a medical museum that shows lots of skulls and body parts. If you are in Philadelphia, it is worthwhile going. I would not go out of my way to see the museum.
I had lunch at the Reading Food Court. It is well worth the visit.
I walked all the way to the Delaware River and could see the Battleship New Jersey on the other side of the river.
I ended up at the Rodin Museum. It was closed. The thinker is on display outside.
Philadelphia is definitely a nice day trip from Stamford. The cost for the Train was $106.00. You almost have to take the Acela. The regular trains don’t get you to Philadelphia until early afternoon.
I have had Covid all week and have only been able to do short walks. Not fun at all. Today was no exception.
I walked south on High Ridge Road and came up to the big lawn with the old maple tree there.
I spied on an object in the lawn. It looked like a branch with leaves on it sticking out of the grass. As I got closer the leaves had a triangle look to them
The leaves were a fox. If you look closely at the picture, you can see the fox.
There it was, hidden in plain sight. All those cars were passing the fox and never seeing it.
The joy of walking is seeing these great sights hidden in plain sight.
Yes, there are space invaders in Stamford. When I walk around, I see them all the time. Some of them are even alien.
Of course, I am talking about objects that have invaded my space on the sidewalks. They run the gamut from cars, garbage, trees and bushes.
The Japanese Knotweed is one of the worse. It just takes over. A close runner-up is poison Ivy. It loves to climb up bushes and then starts to protrude onto the sidewalk space.
One space invader that I am ambivalent about are trees that are lifting up sidewalks as they grow. I like seeing these mighty trees, but I feel for someone who has issues walking trying to navigate the lifted sidewalk.
I do wish cars and other vehicles would not part on sidewalks. There are times when I am forced to walk on the street because of vehicle blockage. Plus, it demeans the quality of life in Stamford.
Let’s end the plague of space invaders in Stamford.
Usually by this time of summer the lawns have started turning brown and the streams and brooks have slowed way down or stopped flowing altogether.
These last two weeks of summer have produced some spectacular thunderstorms with heavy rain. Stamford has not had floods, but other parts of the state have been flooded.
The grass is green, the foliage is lush, and the streams and brooks are flowing.
The best part of my walk these days is Interlaken Road. Design by Lee a nursery is there, and I am always tempted to purchase another plant for the deer and rabbits to eat.
The spillway for the North Stamford Reservoir is there and the water is flowing over it. The nice part is you can hear the water roaring through cascades about 500 feet before you get to the spillway.
Mianus River also has some nice cascades, but they are not that easy to reach by foot.
I had no idea that the walk would be so scary. When I planned the walk, I knew it would be new territory but not scary.
The walk was from Grand Central Terminal in NYC uptown to 59th Street. Then I crossed the 59th Street Bridge by foot to Queens. That was the scary part.
The pedestrian part of the bridge was shared with the bike lane. There was three feet for pedestrians and three feet for bikers. I knew it would be difficult when I saw a bike coming off the bridge going at a high speed.
The bikers were not able to pass each other without going into the pedestrian space I would watch the bikes veer towards me at high speed and at the last second miss me as they scooted past me. Bikes would overtake other slow bikes and just miss me.
Did the bikes ever slow down NO! It was the longest two miles of walking I ever had. Luckily, I did not get hit. At this point I would think long and hard about walking on the 59th Street Bridge.
Once I was off the bridge the walk was fine. I walked along Northern Blvd. Surprising it was mainly car dealers for a long time.
Okay, my scariest walk was when I was ten years old. I had just seen the movie “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” It was a scary movie. Two of the creatures were a cyclops and a mean dragon.
I like to talk to strangers. When I was young, I was very shy and would never reach out to strangers.
Walking ten miles every day I run in to a lot of people. However, it is hard to actually talk to strangers. Heck it is hard just to get people to say hi back to me when I greet people.
Last week I was able to talk to five strangers on my walk. I initiated each talk, and they responded so well.
The walk was at Bear Mountain State Park and the trail that I was walking on was the Appalachian Trail. The five strangers were all hiking the entire trail.
They had all started in Georgia and had walked over 1,000 miles already. The fastest walker had done it in 95 days. The slowest was 120 days. One walker lived in Washington State and had also walked the Pacific Trail. I told one hiker that my grandson and I had looked up the record for walking the Appalachian Trail and it was 46 days. He told me that the hiker had help in that his wife met him every night and had the camp set up which allowed him to walk more than most hikers each day.
All the hikers enjoyed telling us about their adventures. When I mentioned the was a restaurant and lodge at the bottom of mountain they knew and two were planning to spend the night there.
I find that once you can get strangers to open up, they enjoy talking about themselves and I enjoy hearing their stories.
Life is good for me. I am healthy. I spend a large part of my day walking every day. The vistas I see every day are just great.
As I walk all over Stamford, I do see life on the edge sometimes. Actually, every day. Within one mile of my house are plants that are living on the edge. It is not some exotic plant barely surviving. The trees I see. are a maple and oak tree.
Look at them. The oak seems to look fine. It should be bigger. It has been around for years. I wonder who will win the struggle. The oak or the rock.
Look at the maple. How did it pull that off. Living on an oak tree. Somehow it must have been able to tap into the oaks capillary system and get nourishment. By the way, I measured the oaks diameter and by using a formula I was able to estimate the age of the tree. This oak is over two hundred years old.
If you want to see really old and big oaks there are two in the area. The Bedford oak and a oak in Darien. The plaque in Darien says the tree was around during the American Revolution.
Keep your eyes on the lookout. There are many places of life on the edge in Stamford.
I just discovered that Mystic, CT is a great walking town. Not only is it a great walking town but you don’t need a car to drive to it from Stamford.
I rode the rails to get to Mystic. The Amtrak train left Stamford at 8:33 in the morning and I stepped off the train in Mystic at 10:30. Just under two hours. Driving would have saved me twenty minutes if there would be no traffic. Of course, that is an oxymoron.
The walk from the train station to Mystic Seaport Museum is fifteen minutes. The Seaport Museum is always interesting.
There are many sailing ships to see, and the volunteers were able to answer my many questions.
Then I was off to the Mystic Aquarium and Mystic Shopping Village. The walk also took only fifteen minutes.
They have five Beluga whales and over thirty penguins among their many species of sea creatures.
Now it was off to the quaint village of Mystic. There are many shops and restaurants to visit.
Finally, it was back to the train station for the ride home. I think the train ride between New Haven and Mystic is one of the most viewable rides around. You have saltwater marshes everywhere with lots of birds. Long Island Sound appears quite often. Crossing the Thames River at New London you can always hope to see a submarine.
The total time for the trip was less than twelve hours. That includes walking from my house to the Stamford train station. I had six hours at Mystic. If you wanted to spend the night at Mystic, there are plenty of Inns and B and Bs
Stamford By Foot 