Last weekend’s visit to Letchworth State Park, NY
Posted By RichC on October 10, 2008
After reflecting on the doom and gloom of our economy and state of most investors, I thought I would go back a few days to a nice autumn weekend in western New York. We enjoyed pleasant weather and time with my mother and father-in-law at Letchworth State Park. If you’re looking for a great weekend trip with plenty of autumn color and hiking trails, I can highly recommend a visit to this area in October. What surprising is that over these past 27 years that I have never driven those couple of hours east of my wife’s home in Jamestown to even see this beautiful park.
The history and natural beauty of this 14,350 acre “Grand Canyon of the East” New York State Park on the Genesee River is impressive, considering a significant chunk of it was a gift from William Letchworth in 1906. It is located 35 miles south of Rochester and contain a huge canyon with 600 foot walls and three waterfalls. There is a trestle bridge at one end, a century home turned restaurant (the Glen Iris Inn) and many parking and short hiking opportunities — 66 miles of hiking trail in fact. While not quite on the grand scale of a hiking trip to Montana, the Grand Canyon or the Canadian Rockies, its a perfect weekend trip for those of us within a reasonable drive or a great place to rent a cabin or camp. While traveling from Jamestown NY to Letchworth Park, we passed through my mother and father-in-laws college alma mater as well — Houghton College; it happened to be homecoming weekend and was fun to listen to them reminisce — a nice weekend.
No buyers on Wall Street — the collapse continues to drive stock prices lower and cut even deeper into ordinary Joe and Jane’s retirement and college savings. Not only has today’s drop put the DJIA to extremely low levels, it is frightening all who have savings associated with stocks and mutual funds. Blood is flowing and the survival of many companies is also on the line. It is looking more and more as if this world impacting crisis might threaten what we see as normal life in the U.S. for a long time to come. I’m no longer worried about future prosperity, but am concerned more and more about today; job losses for many are right around the corner — start watching for company and store door closings. Without a fast change, its going to get very ugly.
The National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of numbers and as a temporary fix has replaced the “dollar sign” with a digit to move past the $9 trillion and to $10 trillion. The sign was put up years ago by a real estate developer when the U.S. national debt was approaching $3 trillion. For a temporary time the clock stopped when the U.S. started running a surplus, but has picked up the pace after 9/11, the War on Terror and heavy government spending. With the recent economic crisis and slowing economy there is little chance that this 10.2 trillion dollar debt will be worked on soon, so perhaps the sign needs to be permanently expanded?
This half-point rate cut included the central banks in the U.K., Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.S and in Europe. These cuts followed separate rate cuts in China, Hong Kong and Australia. The Fed’s reduction brought its interest-rate target down to 1.5%, ahead of its regularly scheduled meeting October 28-29, as the U.S. economy faces the prospect of deteriorating significantly in the coming months due to credit-market turmoil. Until recent weeks, Fed officials had resisted further easing due to worries about aggravating inflation risks after watching volatile swings in commodity prices throughout the past year.
