Lovely afternoon on South Mountain, in the upper 70’s and drying out after the inch of rain we had yesterday afternoon and last night.  We have been running back and forth from York all week.  My (Chuck’s) Aunt Bernie suffered a calamitous fall on Tuesday while making her bed and broke her hip.  She had surgery on Thursday and was released this evening to a nursing home.  She is anxious to get home to Autumn House and resume her peaceful existence there with my Mother and other friends.  We hope she will be there within a month. 

We have now been home from Carolina for two weeks now and are, among other things, preparing for our expedition to northeastern Italy.  We will join several of the family for time in Tuscany and then traverse north to the Po Valley to find migrating birds and visit the quaint stilt city of Venice.  After that we will stalk the Alps, first the Valle di Cadore from whence sprang my mother’s DeBiasio clan.  From there we will visit the Lake Placid-like resort town of Cortina and make a day hike in the Alps.  Then we drive over the Dolomite Alps to Bolzano where we will see the ice man and tour and hike more high ground.  Finally we will reside at Lake Garda, a finger lake of Northern Italy, and return to Florence, our starting point.  We are very excited and mildly apprehensive about this grand travel.

Our fall plans are more modest; we should be mostly at home closing out this unexpectedly busy year with small projects.  We will be plotting our final hiking on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, probably next April.  Hikers make note!  We will plan some kind of celebration in the vicinity of lovely Grayson Highlands State Park.