Thanks to old friend Ray Simboli for suggesting a photo safari on a soggy, gray day when rain fell about every 15 minutes and I might otherwise not have dragged my camera out into the wet.

I’m posting these despite believing – as I told Ray – he might have shot all the good ones.

Here’s where we went: At the Albany Institute of History and Art (whose chief Tammis Groft I met on Cuttyhunk Island years ago and who just announced her retirement) we saw cool railroad art, the ‘Tute’s impressive Hudson River School landscapes and historic views by Len Tantillo.

The railroad collection features artworks and artifacts including dining car dishware, menus and photos – EVERYBODY is dressed up, EVERYBODY is smoking – also advertising posters next to their hand-painted originals. I gravitated to a gleaming-black model of an ALCO (American Locomotive Company) engine and tender. Our family came to Schenectady when my dad took a job there.

Then the Hudson River School landscape masterpieces worked their usual magic, transforming places we might know into mysterious marvels where fact and imagination don’t so much fight it out as conspire to awe.

I had to share this tasty Tantillo: I live on Van Curler Avenue…

…in Schenectady

Then we headed to Cohoes, to gawk at the famous falls, and grumble about the power lines

After blundering around Waterford’s confusing – even to GoogleMaps! – streets and Canal-scapes, we found some locks; no bagels, however.

And the super-green, super-swampy Vischer Ferry wet-scape showed us another Great Blue Heron

A few weeks before, Zak and I roamed the same territory – except for the Albany Institute of History and Art, and in drier weather; grumbled about the power lines then, too.

How fun to re-visit cool places, in good company – and good weather: ALL weather is good weather in cool places