It's Fall - and the Leaves Are Falling

Hi All,

If you didn't notice it, the Fall season is here.  Its starting to get blustery and temperatures are starting to drop at night.  Brrrrr.   And with the Fall season upon us, leaves fall.  Turning all different colors and shades of red, brown, orange, yellow and colors in between its a great time of year for taking walks in parks or near where there are lots of trees.

Click on this link from ILoveNY for the Fall Foliage Report.  And another interesting website for accurate foliage information comes from the Foliage Network.  The site has Pictures, Foliage Reports, Place To Stay, Foliage Spotters and Webcams.  Neat stuff.

In addition, there is a site called Yankee Foliage which also has Fall Foliage Maps, Foliage Drives and more.  Note that the site is a variant of YankeeMagazine.com. 

Finally, the library has a bunch of books on taking nature walks on Long Island.  Click on this link for a list of titles the Farmingdale Public Library has in its collection on the topic of nature walks.

Enjoy the hiking, enjoy the leaves.

Regards,
Stu

Eight-Thousander - The Mountain Post - and Mountaineering

Hi All,

We have a tall order for today's post....I recently found that there are very, very few mountains that are over 8,000 meters. Finding this out got me thinking that this might be an interesting topic for this reference blog! As a matter of fact, there are only 14 of them on the planet.  Click on this link to see the names of the 14 mountains. 

Interestingly enough,  there are very, very few people who have climbed each of these 8,000 meter peaks.  Click here for a list of them as well - courtesy of Wikipedia.

For more information on one of the worlds most famous moutaineers, click on this link to learn more about Reinhold Messner - an Italian who people have called the greatest mountain climber in history. 

For some of the most amazing mountaineering pictures, click on this link - from Bing Images. Imagine how these pictures would look on your computer desktop!

Finally, we have lots of  books on mountain climbing at the library.  Witness some of the more interesting titles like, 'No Way down: Life and Death on K2', 'Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations - One School at a Time', 'Top of the World: Climbing Mount Everest' and 'A Mountain Too Far: a Father's Search for Meaning in the Climbing Death of His Son'.

And while this isn't the same thing as mountain climbing, readers can click on this link - which will take you to the Nassau Hiking and Outdoor Club.  It might start you on the long climb to mountain climbing - and perhaps to an even greater appreciation of nature!

Enjoy the mountain climbing links!

Regards,
Stu