When we brought GeeWhiz into the shop we weren’t sure what our next steps were so we decided to unload as much of our personal belongings as we could in a couple of trips. Instant house move out! As I started pulling hats out of the large storage space over the couch and putting them into a plastic storage bin, I felt like the sorcerer’s apprentice. the more I pulled out, it seemed, the more there were to grab. I knew as I was doing this that I was going to have to leave many of these off the coach when we moved back in. 🙁

I never thought of myself as a hat collector. There must be many people who have many more hats then I do. But then, here is the oldest hat I know of in my “collection” (not as old as the head its on):

That’s Yiddish for Grandfather

In Japan, just when I had given up on finding a great hat, I found this beauty.

Now I had to go into the closet and see what was lurking there. I found four bins of assorted hats and this wonderful Baileys western hat:

 and these mostly winter caps. Those two hats in the top left that say Lester Lanin are from a birthday party my Dad threw for my mother. She wanted a big band and Dad hired this group from NYC a part of the Lester Lanin Orchestra. The hats were party favors. Just next to them is the Pink Cap my Dad wore when driving his white BMW convertible. I wear it now on special occasions.

and finally some baseball caps, many collected in our travels.

We started out with leopards on our first game drive. In the attached album the first 8 pictures are from that drive. We met the leopard crossing the road between our safari car and another from the lodge. When he went into bush we turned off the road and followed him through the brush until he turned down a gully where we couldn’t go. I say “he” because the guides identified him as the dominant male in the territory. The next 5 pictures are of the same male on another day when he has invaded the territory of a female guarding cubs. There was a lot of hissing and growling until he was run off. The rest of the pictures were taken over a period of 30 minutes or more of a single young male who changed position and “posed” for us in the sun. There are several pictures with his face in shadow and then it seems as if he realized we were not getting the shots we wanted and he moved into the sun. then he posed sitting up on another part of the same tree. We drove around to get pictures from the front.Leopard Pictures

The lions were being lazy and we only had one good chance to photograph them. Lions The pictures are not my favorites, but some people really want to see lions.

I know hyenas are not everyone’s favorites. They are actually classed among the Ugly Five. We came across a youngster in the den – obviously our driver and tracker knew about this den – and after creeping the safari car through the brush we got some pictures of it and then the rest of the pack came in to give us these pictures: Hyenas

Each days late drive ended with sun downers. They had selected sites for gorgeous sunsets and we would pull in and have drinks while the sun set as we prepared for a night time game drive back to the lodge. So here are some of my favorite Sunset pictures.

There will be more pictures to follow. Please understand these are lightly edited and mostly as the camera caught them.

We are still having a busy social life in Rochester and also some community involvement as well. Latest reports are that a November 15 departure is not beyond reason. We shall see.

I am still working on pictures and stories from our Africa trip, but life goes on in Rochester as well. We have watched a couple of interesting old movies. After touring Grand Canyon and other National Parks we are well aware of the Fred Harvey Company now Xanterra which provides accommodations and food in the parks. The Harvey Company’s hotels  were built at the depot of the train serving the parks and they were noted for the caliber of wait staff and food they provided. A movie, “The Harvey Girls” was made in 1946. Somehow we had never seen it. It is a wonderful musical and among the songs that Judy Garland and others sang is “On the The Atcheson Topeka and the Sante Fe” There is also a wonderful tap dance number with Ray Bolger. We really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who appreciated the old musicals. While I was cruising the shelves in the library I saw “Oklahoma!” and decided we needed to watch some more cliches. But they aren’t really cliche because this is the source.

We have had dinner out with many friends and dinner in with others. Our lunch times and even breakfasts are filled with social events and some business things too. As comfortable as we are in our apartment and gathering with our friends here, I am beginning to experience “itchy wheel syndrome”. I miss our life on the road and the delights of wandering across the US with very little plan. We have a thought schedule, sort of like a thought experiment in physics. Carol has planned to go to  a Jewish Community Women’s event on November 1 and, assuming the coach is ready for us we should be rolling no later then November 15. Following a visit to our Charlottesville family we will move on west, trying to stay in the 70 degree zone or at least well south of the snow line as we move. There are many people we hope to visit as we make the crossing.

For those who wonder where we will venture next as we try to visit all the parts of the globe we have signed up for “The Stans of Central Asia Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan plus Kyrgyzstan & Kazakhstan” This trip doesn’t leave until mid May so we have plenty of time to make other trouble for ourselves between now and then 🙂

Oh dear, way too much time has past since this was written and I still haven’t gotten around to posting. Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur have come and gone. this computer has suffered a major hard drive crash and I have been restoring all my software – no data loss thanks to double backups. So I will post this without further editing.

I have been trying to figure how to display the pictures we took and the experiences we had. I will start posting some category albums for those who like to browse through other people’s travel photos. I am starting with 166 pictures of African Birds. It may seem random, but they are in date order and are selected from many more, most of which went into the bit bucket.

In a day or so I will post Cats.

The Link to African Birds  This link will open a new window.