On our way to Boston we decided to take a "scenic" route by driving through the Delaware Gap National Recreation Area. We exited I80 immediately after crossing into New Jersey and I do mean immediately since the road north actually goes under the bridge crossing the Delaware river. This shot looks due Southeast along the river.

The first stretch of the road is single lane and you have to wait your turn. This was our first clue that this little detour might take a bit longer then we figured. While not as exciting as some of the roads out west this part of the road was carved out of the side of the mountain.

Most of the road was well maintained but a number of old iron bridges had been retained. The woods alongside the road didn't differed all that much from those in Michigan though the trees tended to be a bit bigger and there were lot of stone fences.

The river widened quite a bit as we headed north (actually north by northwest) and there were a number of pick nick spots along the way. The weather was perfect and the road was indeed "less traveled". It was hard to believe that we were in New Jersey.

One of the reasons we tried this detour was that the road's name was "Old Mine Road" and as the sign says there actually is an old mine at it's end... sort of. It turns out that the actual mine is a half day's hike away so we didn't get to see it. We were told that the copper in the U.P. is MUCH better anyway.

After we got out of the park we ran across some rather odd "trees". I couldn't get close enough to see what the "branches" were really made out of but I hear bioengineering has made some great strides lately.

Our little detour has cost us several hours so sunset catches us crossing into New York.

...And at last we make it to the con. Noreascon 4 was a fun convention but very strange in one respect. The first two days I don't remember seeing a single person under 30! Once the weekend hit some demographic balance was restored but I do get the feeling that a whole generation went to Dragon Con instead.

The convention hall looked a bit like the core of the spaceship in "Sky Captain". Actually there were a few really cool moments like opening the curtains and seeing a blimp flying by almost at eye-level.

The real purpose of the "core" was to house these escalators though it seemed like a bit of overkill to me. The convention center was connected to the main hotel and a huge mall. A bit like San Diego only more so.

The dealer's room was ok and though we were in the back of the room (as usual) there actually was an entrance to the hotel not more then 40' away - very convenient. We got a number of people to help us out since Amy had a heavy on line class load. Here Howard demonstrating the Zen of ray gun salesmanship.

As usual a number of interesting people came by. Here one is demonstrating a blinking led yoyo-like device. This fan is also carrying one of the Isher Magic Wands(tm) at her hip.

Though the GT contingent wasn't large this year we still managed to run a decent suite. Here Bill is taking a rare break from almost non-stop panel appearances. At one point it even seemed that he was scheduled to two panels at once. Fame has its burdens.

One of the bad part about being a dealer is that you go from being bored silly when nobody comes by for hours to trying to conduct multiple sales at once while trying to talk to old friends you haven't seen for years. One of the pluses at this con was that they had WiFi in the dealers room we could check on our cats back home via the Ishercam.

Renee' and Henry came by and we were shocked by the lack of color in her hair (last year it was orange). She explained that she had a good reason since she was up for tenure. It seems like just yesterday that she was just the learner now she is the master, err.. doctor actually.

Japan won the bid for the 2007 Worldcon and they were really happy campers. In spite of the language difference interest was high in going to this con and it looks like it will be big for an overseas worldcon. The fen from Japan were very nice and worked like hell to get the bid.

This con did a number of things right. One was having a large well-stocked con suite that was reachable by escalator. The other thing that they did was to force everyone to wait in one line for elevators. This was actually rather effective but the lack of easily reachable stairs was a real bummer.