Tour de Fleece- Day 13 on Tour

I took my Tour south to PA for a couple of days. 

A few miles into PA, south of Corning, NY is a brand new modern Welcome Center with gift shop, comfort area, displays on logging and a grand view over the Tioga Resevoir and Lakes.

They've landscaped the view incredibly.  I am always amazed at how once one crosses the border the hills of NY get higher, the valleys steeper and become a series of glorious mountains.

  A long time friend, whom I used to teach with now lives there, teaches at Penn State and also writes and directs plays.  It's always fun to get some time to play together.

Spent about an hour spindling this morning before the temp and humidity both climbed into the 90's.  Spindling this stuff is getting easier, not easy, but coming along.  Now I can actually talk at the same time.

So here I am in Happy Valley (a nearby town is named Fisherman's Paradise). This is literally the center of PA as the powers that were took the PA map, drew 2 diagonals and proceeded to build a town to house their state college.  Penn State really takes care of its people as I have heard wonderful stories over the years and the incredible numbers of delighted and giving alumni attest to. The town is clean, full of large pots of flowers and new construction.  Bunnies and squirrels hop and run about in the lanes of Elms. We went to the Nittany Lion Inn for lunch where many alum stay when they return. Pam's son, Andrew, is the head chef so we were treated like royalty.

After lunch Pam went to work with some summer school students while I went to the Palmer Museum.

Note the paws, one male, one female representing the Nittany Lion, Penn State's mascot.

The current show is a Bloomsbury collective with lots of paintings, graphics, books and memorabilia from the group that formed and flowed for about 30 years in England.  Most of the paintings were of one or another of the group and children and the home in the country they frequented.  Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf's sister, was quite the accomplished artist.

I am so glad the show drew me in since I was able to ogle a Dale Chihuly called Seaforms featured in an alcove at the bottom of a set of stairs.

I love this guy's glass work.  Mostly I have seen huge pieces

but his table pieces are breathtaking.

Since it was an HHH day we tried to go from AC'd place to AC'd car to AC'd place.  We stopped at Wegman's to pick up ingredients for a dinner salad and saw the poster advertising Toy Story 2 at 6 today. We called Pam's DIL to invite her and her 4 yo son, Jackson, to join us.   What fun!  Since I had just seen Toy Story 3 it was wonderful to find out where most of the toys came from and how they all came to be in the same toy box.

Time to leave Happy Valley and head back to organic Ithaca.