Clock in Cape May, New Jersey, photo taken in 2009

Next Week: WEATHER (Snow, Sun, Cloudy, Rain, Lightening, Rainbow, Tornado,…)

I think they painted a mailbox zebra colors and wrote “Zoo Donations.” The zoo is free, so donations are greatly appreciated.

I don’t know what kind of bird this is, but it was wandering around, mingling with the zoo guests. Maybe a guinea fowl?

This is a bald eagle. It was hard to photograph him in his cage.

The flamingos were fun to watch. See that gull who looks like he owns the place?

Here’s Mr. Gull again, resting with the flamingos.

I cannot remember the name of this animal, but it had tons of energy.

Giraffes are beautiful animals.

Animals behind fences, like the leopard, were harder to photograph.

This zoo guest had a great time. Photos of family come out nicer when everyone is having fun.

NJPlaygrounds has more photos of the zoo and the nearby playground.

Thanks for coming with me to the zoo!

Woven and embroidered cloth at Cold Springs Historic Village, Cape May

This week’s Thursday Challenge theme is CLOTHS (Colorful, Unusually, Fashionable, Komonos, Sari, Suits,…).

The murals were not painted in the 18th or 19th centuries, the periods the village is supposed to represent, but in the 1990′s by an artist who decided to depict what she thought life was like during those periods.

Maybe this is supposed to be the mural painter, teleported back in time? The village is fun and friendly, though our visit did have its anachronistic moments, like when the tour guide’s cell phone rang when she was explaining the layout of the old schoolhouse.

For more photos with a little or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday:

Gull over the water by the beach at Cape May, New Jersey

This is probably a greater black-backed gull. Thursday Challenge theme is FLIGHT (Birds, Insects, Kites, Helicopters, Jets, Boomerang,…). Nature Notes is brought to us by Michelle of Rambling Woods. I didn’t include the nature note button this week because the colors conflicted with the photo and upset the mood.

      

      

      

Bottom left and bottom center is the Southern Mansion. Bottom right is the Chalfonte Hotel, built in 1876, which has “Victorian” air-conditioning (a special method of cooling off the large hotel with the attic windows).

For more photos with a little or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday:

Ghost of Cape May on Lafayette Street

Here’s the above ghost on Lafayette Street in her setting on the porch of Elaine’s Bed and Breakfast. Maybe this is Elaine?

We went into the office of original Cape May ghost tour at the Hotel Macomber, which was across the street from this dusk scene. The woman behind the counter assured my son that the tour was indeed scary, but my son didn’t take the bait.

We visited two great haunted houses when we were at Lake George a few years back. Do you have any memorable haunted house stories?

MrsMoNJ posted about some ghost tours in Princeton, New Jersey.

For more summer fun, visit Robin’s Around the Island. Only one more week of this meme before it gets shut up for the summer!

Hibiscus Outside a Restaurant in Cape May, New Jersey

Recent Images on My Blog

  

For those who want to get more out of Twitter: Twitter Chats
And be sure not to miss: An Interview with Hannah Katsman of CookingManager.com

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

• I admire Ilana-Davita for being able to write beautifully about spirituality in the parsha the same week she starts teaching school again.
• Jew Wishes reviewed Laish, by Aharon Appelfeld. When I first started blogging, I wrote about Appelfeld.
• G6 remembers how her father blew the shofar.
• On this day in 1609 the Maharal of Prague, Rabbi Judah Loew Ben Bezalel, passed away: “…For many the Marhal’s greatest claim to fame was tied to a fictional creation called the Legend of the Golem. That legend is a medieval version of the story of Frankenstein, according to which the Maharal breathed life into a human-like figure by sticking a slip of paper with the Tetragrammaton to his forehead.”

I started working on my tech-business blog, and I wrote a whole post about it. On a piece of paper. That I haven’t re-read in over a week. Maybe I’ll have something coherent to say about my new upcoming blog on Sunday or Monday. Meanwhile, this existing blog is where I give myself permission to talk about struggle. Does one really have to present oneself as never struggling in order to be successful? I don’t think so.

I learned a lot about birds at the museum near the Cape May lighthouse. Can anyone guess what this is for? OK, I’ll tell you: it’s for housing purple martins. Which apartment would you take if you were a purple martin? To me, a purple martin looks like someone dunked a bird in a oil slick.

This big stuffed thing in the museum was the closest I got to photographing an osprey.

For more Nature Notes, visit Rambling Woods:

See all my Cape May posts.

Waves against the Rocks by the Beach at Cape May, August 2009

For more watery photos, visit Watery Wednesday:

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I had a whole slew of scenic Cape May photos I wanted to post for Ruby Tuesday yesterday; however, life (family, work, and need for sleep) got in the way, so I am glad next Monday is Labor Day and I look forward to posting them for next week’s Ruby Tuesday meme.

See all my Cape May photos here.