"Ekahau on the HUDSON -- Hudson Valley... " a New York State Travel Page by Ekahau

BEAR SIGHTINGS ! There have been numerous Black Bear sightings recently, especially in Ekahau's back yard Straub Dr., Mountain Road area. Please read on to make YOUR yard less attractive to our bear neighbors!!!!

Yes Colbert would love this report in our local newspaper.

10 things to do in New York (But not the normal Statue of liberty stuff)

1) Spend some time in a small village get to know the people.
2) See some of the countryside hike a trail like the Appalachian Trail, Bear Mountain, NY
3) Sail up the Hudson River
4) Raft down a creek or River like the Cattaraugus in the Zoar Valley or the beautiful Genesee River canyon.
5) Rent a Houseboat in the Thousand Islands or a canal boat.
6) Go Fly-fishing in the Catskills places like Beaver Kill (kill=creek in Dutch)
7) Explore one of New York very rich cultural histories like the Dutch heritage from the early 1600s along the Hudson River valley.
8) Explore the rich African American Heritage in New York that have added so much to the sense of what America is. The History, Art, Music "the Underground railroad" to freedom from slavery.
9) Art - some of the best museums in the World not only in NYC but in many places around the State.
10) Learn about the Native American culture at places like the Iroquois Indian Museum Fishing Campsite, Howes Cave, NY or listen to stories about Native American Traditions of the Algonquin & Seneca people in the, Schoharie, NY

Well my company moved me to the USA and now living in New York so thought I better get some pages up. This VTer misses Singapore a lot -- but well this is home now so I should start tell my vter friends about all the great places around me. Having spent most of my life outside the USA -- this is to me a funny thing exploring a culture and place that is officially home and at the same time new. The official name for someone like me is a Third Culture Person. So my view of what I see and tell you about is not that of a foreigner visiting the USA or that of someone who grew up in this culture. My view is different it is one of trying to understand a culture that is your parents but not completely your. My wife is from Asia and my kids just like me did not live in the USA until they started University – this is boring isn’t it.

I now live in the woods in a beautiful area of New York know as the Hudson River Valley. This part of New York State was the home of the Wappinger people who spoke the Algonquin language when the Dutch came to this part of the “New World. Village. The stream and towns close to where I live are now named Wappingers, Wappingers falls and Wappingers Creak. They were part of a culture that dated back thousands of years. In fact they moved into this part of the Americans just as my ancestors were moving from Southern Europe to parts north at the end of the last Ice age. (long time ago). However in less than 50 years from when the Dutch started to settle here the local peoples were all but gone. The clash of cultures and introduction of disease like smallpox just annihilated them. In the Hudson Valley the Dutch, mixed with a few French Protestants and Quakers were who came and settled from Europe. Many of the place names like mountains and streams in our area are Dutch like the Catskill Mts or the Harlem River.