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After 17 years of living in California I've moved back East. I'm now living in North Petersburg, NY, just a few miles from the NY-VT-MA border. I'm living on my parent's 62 acre "estate" that borders on the Little Hoosic River. Below are some pictures of my new surroundings.
To start, here is an aerial view of my new home.
It was taken over 10 years ago so some of the details have changed but it gives a good idea of the layout. The large circle in the middle is our home. The circle at the top indicates the Webster Road bridge over the Little Hoosic River. And the lower circle is my kid brother's home; he lives across the river from us -- literally. The "main" road shown on the left is NY Route 22. The large white circle between the red circles was part of a NY State Highway Dept. facility; among other things that's where they store salt for the roads in winter. It no longer exists; it's been replaced by a newer rectangular structure. The buildings at the top to the left of the bridge are a sawmill.
Their property starts at the "road" just above their house (it's an access road for a neighbor's property.) On the left its border is the Little Hoosic River. It includes most of the land to the right of the river and below the "road,", along with a strip along the river up to the Webster Street Bridge for a driveway. (I haven't yet been able to accurately map their property to this aerial photo.)
To the right of the house is an open field that now includes a go-kart track and a small man-made pond. The clear strip of land extending below the house is the runway -- it was originally cleared for my kid brother to land his ultralight. After an accident he gave up the plane, but the name has stuck.
Here is a picture of the house.
It's an interesting "evolved" structure that was primarily built by my father, a carpenter, during years of weekends. The original plan was a 40' x 40' x 12 ' high garage/workshop with an attached 20' x 40' apartment. The shell is an insulated metal building that he paid to have erected... but everything inside he did himself. The idea was to use this as a weekend/vacation spot, and when he retired he would build a new home nearby, renting out the apartment to winter skiers. But after a few years of working on the original building he decided that instead of a new home he would build an addition on the old. So he added a Great Room with an attached dining area and two additional bedrooms.
Off of the Great Room is a building-wide deck.
All of the interior trim and most of the furnishings are oak, much of it custom-made locally.
Here is a view from the house towards the field.
You can see a bit of the go-kart track on the left, and the pond is behind that slight rise to the right.
Panning a bit to the right you can see the upper field, and in the far right the lower edge of the runway.
This view is looking down the runway.
This is the view from the top looking down the driveway. That's the house in the upper right corner.
This is further down the driveway, looking back up at the house.
This is the view from the beginning of the driveway at the foot of the Webster Road Bridge.
Here is a view of the bridge from the property a bit upstream (this is one of those rare rivers which flows north.)
During the heavy rains in October 2005 the water level reached the bottom of the bridge.
Finally, here is another view of the Little Hoosic River, a bit further upstream from the view above.
It's definitely a change from the San Francisco Bay Area! As I write this I see the snow falling outside, reminding me that I'll have a real winter with which to contend for the first time in seventeen years. I'm looking forward to the change.
