Hiking New York’s Minnewaska State Park and Awosting Falls

Friday afternoon after work we went hiking with some brothers to New York’s Minnewaska State Park

We walked along a road which met up with a river and we then moved from rock to rock up the river to the 60 foot high Awosting Falls:

I can’t take credit for this great photo – I found it on the internet. My photos of the waterfall are lousy, but I do have a great picture of Jordan behind the waterfall.

It’s July, so the fall has slowed to a trickle more or less. Most us boys walked almost under the fall to the ‘third step’ and got soaked

then we all headed to the top of the falls to peer or dangle our legs over the edge.

We tried to take another route back to the car which was a dead end, then got sidetracked jumping down a gravel hillside. The sun had gone down and it was nearly dark when from the top of the hill I noticed glowing pairs of eyes appearing briefly at the base of the very same hill we were jumping down. I felt the hair on my neck begin to stand as I saw them again. Elbowing the guy next to me and pointing out what I had seen, we strained to make them out – if they would only appear again…didn’t think I was imagining things.

The ‘eyes’ that I saw were actually fireflies, cool! We saw them nearly the entire drive back to Wallkill.

Check out this photo of the falls in the winter / spring:

Crack Bang Boom

From Sacramento to Wallkill, startlingly loud noises and bright flashes of light seem to be following us.  The evening of Saturday, July 4th, we saw many beautiful fireworks in the sky on the way to the airport. Similarly, since arriving at Wallkill, there have been two awesome thunderstorms and even hail – the nice bonus is the bright green foilage and fields – check out this photo in the courtyard:

Now that you have seen a photo of the grounds, you should know that the buildings are like a giant maze – Hilary and I get lost all the time, but are starting to learn our way around – at least to the important places: our room, the commissary, the auditorium, the cafeteria, the gym, etc.

Up to this point we haven’t had much of a chance to roam around and find the billiards / table tennis room or the family library in our building or take many pictures. Maybe Saturday…

We’ve met and heard of some interesting family members while staying here. The ponds in the background of the picture above are said to have large bass and catfish that pick off baby ducklings during the spring. We will try remembering to gleam some bread tomorrow and see if they will make an appearance. No fishing allowed, unfortunately!

Here’s another fun family member:

Arrival in Wallkill

Hilary and I were pleased to accept an invitation to work at Bethel for four weeks beginning July 5. After long flights to Africa and my recent red-eye to NY with an early morning layover, the fact that this flight, although a red-eye too, was non-stop from Sacramento to New York was great, plus we had heard Jetblue had good service. They do have all you can eat free snacks and non-alcoholic drinks, but bring your own pillow and blanket if you want to snooze – they charge $7.00 for those on the plane! 

A Brother picked us up at the airport and we were soon winding thorough the countryside toward Wallkill, currently the site of Watchtower magazine and book printing for the United States and Canada.  There are five huge printing presses which can reach amazing production numbers – I remember he said the three older ones can do ~ 70,000 magazines an hour, the two newest ones ~ 90,000 / Hr.  He explained that plans are being made for the three older ones to be replaced with faster presses still and that they are looking for buyers for the old ones….interested?

Monday we met in the main lobby with six other temp workers immediately after morning worship for orientation.  We watched a video to get us up to speed on Bethel standards and then had a brief tour. We are free to roam about after hours, so our tour was shorter and we only snapped a few pics. At 10:00 AM, our tour ended and a Brother from the Computer Department met us in the lobby. I was invited to work with the desktop support team, but he surprised both of us by announcing that Hilary would also be working in the same dept with the website team converting data, nice!

The jet lag was bad Sunday and Monday, but we persevered and made it to the Bethel family Watchtower study. It’s held in the auditorium and the first Monday of the month connect to Brooklyn through a projected live feed instead of conducting it locally. Each morning, the programs has also been piped in from Brooklyn too.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for a quick update…more later…here are a couple pics:

Huge rolls of paper weighing ~ 1 Ton each!

Paper moving quickly by:

Stacks of new magazines: