June 13-14, 2013: Oswego and Rome ADVENTURE: TWO DAYS!!!!!

Peggy and I left my house early in the morning and headed to Liverpool, New York(just outside of Syracuse) to visit an old family friend, Mary Ellen Cheshire.  She lived with my fathers family for ten years when she was a child.  She is 98 years old!!!!!   We had a good visit with her.  Our plans for a picnic lunch were scratched due to rain, but we managed to make sandwiches and ate them in the car just before heading to Oswego, New York.

In Owsego we visited the Safe Haven Museum 
This small museum is in memory of the 1000 refugees (mostly Jewish) whose lives were saved because the USA brought them to Fort Ontario during World War Two.  Then we visited  Fort Ontario, which has some grand old buildings, like this one   and then headed to Rome to spend the night at our brothers cabin at Delta Lake Bible Conference.  We unpacked the car and turned the water heater and space heater on before going to TEDDY'S for supper.  It was a great, but tiring day!

Friday morning we got up and went to look for the abandoned military housing at Griffis Air Force Base.  After some driving around, we found it, and we kind of snuck into it via a sidewalk between the backyards of two houses.  It was eerie walking those abandoned empty streets.  Many of the houses have been vandalized, and we went inside a couple of them.  After that we looked for five geocaches and had NO luck.  Two of them were associated with the abandoned houses, but we would have had to go beyond POSTED signs to get to them.  One of the others was one of those located on a certain side of a river, and we just could not seem to find the right spot.  The other two were just plan elusive.  We were getting discouraged!

After lunch at Subway (tuna sub)We resumed our explorations and decided we MUST find at least  ONE geocache before leaving Rome.   The neatest thing we saw in downtown Rome was this old gas station 

which has been turned into a small museum.  Unfortunately, it was not open.  

In the downtown area we easily found four geocaches.  While attempting to find the location of the fifth, we found a really nead abandoned building right down on the canal so we did some urban exploring! We did not find the geocache supposedly nearby.
     We went into two interesting shops in the former LITTLE ITALY area of Rome.  One was DELICIOSO (candy and some baked goods)

and the other is old Italian Grocery.

Our last stop was so Peggy could find UNADILLA FLATS CEMETERY geocache.

We arrived back at my house tired but happy, and had Beef on Weck for supper!  It was a great two days, and we hope to use the family cottage at Rome more in the future.   Pictures from this short trip can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juneny/sets/72157634157144632