11:22pm: The Park, The Whole Park, and Nothing But The Park
Click for Photo Page: Central Park Carousel
Well, I taped the World Cup Final while I was sleeping, and woke up and rode out to the park to play some softball, as usual. There were a couple of guys hitting and fielding on field #3, and they invited me to join in, which I gladly did. Around noon some associates of a law firm came by with a permit for the field, seems they had a firm outing planned, including B.P., fielding, and a game to follow; but they invited me to hang around, which I gladly did. I even played an inning and a half of the game, until the rest of their peeps showed up, by which time I was more than happy to relinquish my post in the field. There was another game starting up on diamond 4, but I was ready to hit the road, and felt like tooling around the park a little bit with my camera.
First stop, Turtle Pond. There is a little observation deck on this side of the pond, just behind Delacourt Theatre and overlooking Belvedere Castle, and from there you can watch the turtles, fish, and birds conducting the business of existing in the Turtle Pond Conservatory. Here is a nice picture of the resident egret, who I found sunning himself on this side of the pond before taking to wing and nestling in the branches of a shade tree on the far side of the pond.
Resident Egret
Next I hopped on my rig and rode around the pond to Belvedere Castle, and stopped half-way around and snapped these photos of King Jagiello, with crossed swords astride his stallion, and this wonderful shot of the pond...
King Jagiello
The statue portrays the first Christian Grand Duke of Lithuania, King Jagiello, who united through marriage his native land to neighboring Poland. The monument depicts the moment at the Battle of Grunewald of 1410 when the King crossed over his head the two swords handed to him by his adversaries, the Teutonic Knights of the Cross.
Right across the path from the statue is a small rocky bank at the far end of the pond, from which I snapped this nice photo:
Turtle Pond
Then I rode up the path to Belvedere Castle, and took some photos from the observation deck; here's a nice shot across the pond of the Great Lawn:
The Great Lawn
From there I took the long way around, stopping at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre before riding along the west side of the big loop, and heard some nice music coming from the bank along the lake, so I stopped to listen and purloined some nice photos of people boating and listening to the nice music played by, I was told, a guy named Dave:
Concert at the Lake
From there, I went down through the Hekshire softball fields to the Carousel, and took the panoramic shot at the top of this post, as well as this cute little pic of a horse & carriage passing along the loop:
The Headless Horseman
After that it was off to home, but first I stopped by one of my favorite haunts in the Park, the Sheep Meadow, where I can often be found tossing the disc around with Rand, Barnes, and the rest of the usual suspects. Anyway, I took a couple of panoramic shots and stitched them together, like so:
The Sheep Meadow
So, after that I tooled on back home and booted up that video of the World Cup Final, and got a real kick out of Ronaldo's two goals in Brazil's record 5th World Cup victory over Germany. AND, I got to watch live--as I booted up this blog and the accompanying Park Tour Photo Gallery--while the Yankees took the series with the Mets on a nice 3-hit shutout by Andy Pettitte (and, surprisingly, only the 3rd shutout in Pettitte's noteworthy career!). So, all in all, another great weekend here in the big apple, and I'm happy you were here to share it with me.
Posted by cronish at July 01, 2002 12:27 AM