MOSCA'S PIZZA Adventure

Sign at THE DEPOT, in Oneonta, NY, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.

I have wanted to try the pizza at THE DEPOT for a long time, so today when Connie suggested we meet up for lunch there, I jumped at the opportunity. I left early and ran a few errands befor meeting hre there at one p.m.

I ordered a pepperoni pizza and Connie ordered a reuben sandwich. The pizza fell somewhere between two opinions that I had gotten ahead of time: 1. That it was awful, and 2. that it was like pizza heaven. It was pretty good but certainly not sensational. Connie did not enjoy her sandwich, she said the meat tasted "off."

After leaving the Depot, we went to New York Salvage and looked around and then we went to FOXCARE and walked for a while, stopping to look at the art displays set up by area students.

It was a nice afternoon.

Weekend away: May 4-7, 2012

Friday morning, May 4th I headed across the state to Lockport, New York to spend the weekend with my sister.  We are in the process of cleaning out my recently deceased fathers apartment, which I plan to move into in about a year.  It's a massive project

As usual, I planned to take my time driving to Lockport, doing some geocaching and flickring.  I had planned my first stop to be in West Winfield, New York, but I happened upon a few interesting places along the way.  The first was between West Burlington and Burlington Flats.  I noticed an Amish woman with her children selling baked goods!

, so I stopped and purchased  a blackberry pie.  Then while going through the village of Burlington Flats, I noticed some old mill ruins along Wharton Creek, right under the bridge.  I had heard about them before and had hoped to see them someday.  Here is a picture:  

I guess I had never driven through the Village of Burlington Flats before, but I found it to be a quaint and interesting place.  There was am Amish fellow on a ladder doing some work on an old storefront. I took one or two other pictures and continued on my way up to Route 20 top West Winfield.    There was another Amish bakesale taking place right on Main Street, and I stopped and purchased some peanut butter cookies.  I also found a neat small diner, which I hope to go to for lunch someday.  I found a geocache on a bell in front of the W. Winfield fire station, and then continued on Route 20 a bit before turning north to find TROYER'S COUNTRY STORE...an Amish owned and operated grocery store that I recently found out about.

I purchased a couple of items at Troyers and then looked for a couple of nearby geocaches.  The one in the bell in front of the church in Perryville was missing, but the one in the cemetery was there, and in a very neat place.  After that, I got on the thruway and headed towards Buffalo, but I got off at the Pembroke exit in order to look for another cemetery geocache.  This one was not as interesting as the one near Perryville.  And then it was on to Lockport.  I stopped at TOPS and purchased some food for the weekend (mainly ice cream).

     I had eaten so much along the way including a meal at Roy Rogers on the thruway, that I was not hungry for supper, but I did have a piece of blackberry pie with ice cream.  

     On Saturday morning, Peg and I attacked Dad's bedroom and we made a lot of headway.  We went out around lunch time to eat at REID'S and to the book sale at the Lockport Public Library.....I purchased two books and also was able to use a computer to log the previous days three geocache finds.  In the afternoon we worked in Dad's family room closet and we made some progress there.  We went out to supper at Buffalo Wild Wings and it was a great mea

    On Sunday, we went to Peg's church and she was having a Senior Saints Luncheon after church, so I attended that and helped her clean up afterwards.  It was a good way for me to meet some woman who may end up being my friends after I move to Lockport.  I really enjoyed the luncheon which was my very first offical seniors event!  After church we went to 17 and rested a bit and changed out of church clothing and we went out exploring later on.  We returned to the ruins we saw the last time.  Here are a couple of pictures!

We put a new geocache near these ruins, and hopefully it's not too close to any other geocache, so that it will be published.  We looked around the canal area and found another spot for IN HONOR OF DAD, and Peggy is going to

try to do a coords check to see if that spot is available.  Peggy and I had supper at BUFFALO WILD WINGS and really enjoyed it.

     That night, Gail and Mike came over and we dealt with some details of Dad's estate.  I headed for home early Monday morning.  I drove down the west side of Seneca Lake,stopping to geocache and go to the tiny hamlet of Himrod.  I had lunch at the CROSSING DINER before I got to the Himrod area. 

Watkins Glen, New York, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.

The last picture I took was of this old warehouse type building that has been made into a restaurant/bar.

 Watkins Glen looked like it had a lot of interesting places to explore, but I just did not have time to look around. Maybe another time.............. I arrived home around 5:45.........very exhausted.  

TABLE ROCKS ADVENTURE: May 1, 2012

My workplace closed at noon today so that all staff and our spring interns could spend a fun afternoon together and show our interns how much we have appreciated their help in the past few months.

Eleven of us (Mary, Geneen, Eileen, Carol, Kim D., myself, Vera, Kiehle, Jaycee, Jaclyn and Kim met up at Brooks House of BBQ and we had a great lunch! I had the sampler platter, and brought most of it home with me. After lunch, we went into the gift shop. This old truck is parked outside of the shop, it was once owned by Frank Sinatra!!!

Upon leaving Brooks, we headed to Hartwick College to hike the trail up to TABLE ROCKS. We drove in four vehicles! 

We stopped at the safety office to get a permit and then we had a hard time finding where we wanted to go.  After driving around circles and up and down hills for a while, Mary stopped and asked a student and he told us how to get there. We parked and walked to the entrance and then proceeded to hike to the to a fork in the path. Unfortunately, we chose to go to the right instead of the left. The left hand pathway took us away from TABLE ROCKS and up to a huge fenced in field, maybe they play soccer or football there. There were a few workmen there and Eileen suggested that she would pay them to drive her down the hill. Here are some pictures I took. While there, Eileen found the geocache TO THE BATCAVE. She and I had found it before about two years ago and I wanted to return the joke book to the cache. 

Here is a picture of Mary under an interesting rock formation.  

 Here is another picture I took.  You really get a good view of Oneonta from Table Rock!

On the way down the hill to the parking area, we saw this salamander:  One of the interns thought it was fake!  

After leaving Hartwick, we went to THETFORDS, so Kiehle could show us her car which is there for repairs.  She was in an accident on Chestnut Street this past weekend.  Then it was on to the Golden Guernsey where we all had ice cream.  

Then we called it a day and I headed for home.  It sure was a fun afternoon.  I felt a bit high from the fresh air, exercise and good company.
TableRocksEtc5_1_12 048, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.

Otego Creek, Audubon Sanctuary and The Emmons Bog

Otego Creek, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.

It was a beautiful spring day that started out a little bit chilly, and I was determined to spend most of it outdoors. I met up with Connie at the Otego Creek fishing access spot and we spent close to an hour walking the loop. Then I met up with Leslie at the Audubon Sanctuary where I found one of her geocaches. Then we went to THE GOLDEN GUERNSEY for lunch and then went up to "The Bog".

This time we didn't have any trouble finding it. Our goal was to find a geocache there. It was a long walk which involved LOTS of mud, walking across a creek and some uphill walking, but we did it!

BIBLIOADVENTURE!!!

I set up a time to meet with the proprietors of the BIBLIOBARN, a used and rare book shop in S. Kortright, New York. This morning I loaded up the back of my station with several boxes of books that I had collected over the years and headed to South Kortright. I used my GPS navigator and it took me on some back roads. Not too far from HANFORD MILLS, I saw this interesting decrepit house

and on the same road but closer to S. Kortright, I saw this old cemetery.

I would have hidden a geocache here but I did not have one with me! The BIBLIOBARN was easy to find and I knew the minute I saw it

that I was going to LOVE IT! And I was right!!! H.L. came right out to my Pacifica and loaded my books onto a small gurney and took them inside. He and his wife,Linda, looked them over quickly and Linda even went on the internet to find information about values on a few of the books. They bought some, and I donated the rest to the "dime shack". There were three more that they found to be valuable, but they do not have a market for that kind of book, so I decided to keep those three. They gave me a tour of the place. Originally, they had the entire upstairs as living space, but the bookstore part kept expanding and now their entire living space consists of a small corner upstars: an area smaller than my living room. Linda pointed out a folded up futon that she said they pull out at night. All in all, this is an amazing place. I am glad that I have MORE books to take out to them. Here are a few pictures taken inside.

The BIBLIOBARN is for sale and they will be moving their 39,000 books to their shop in Margaretville. I am glad I found this place before their move. When I left the BIBLIOBARN, I spent a few minutes taking pictures in the Village of South Kortright. And then I went on to Stamford where I found one geocache (GENESIS ONE), and had lunch at the Peachtree Cafe

before heading back towards Oneonta. It was a good day!

From HORSES to HOPS Adventure: Sunday 22, 2012

Carol and I decided to go to the open house at Taylor's Tack and Field in Brookfield, New York. We arrived around 10:30 a.m. Nothing seemed to be happening and things were somewhat disorganized. We looked around in the tack shop and got some free coffee, hot chocolate and cookies in one of the barns. After that, we hung around a while, thinking that things might liven up as it got closer to the time for the auction. A nice young boy named Jonah must have noticed that I was looking bored, so he offered to show me his horse, Merlin. I think Jonah's grandmother lives next door to the tack shop, and he lives further away. He goes to school in Madison, New York.

After they started putting the auction items out and Carol had a chance to look at them, she said that she wanted to leave. While in Brookfield, we went right by the location of BROOKFIELD STEEL ANGEL geocache, and Carol suggested we stop on the way back, but I mentioned to her that some geocachers have mentioned the large number of bees that found them while they were searching.

After leaving the open house, we stopped here so she could say hello to her friend Karen. Carol enjoyed petting Tom the turkery: This was much more interesting than the open house. Karen has several LARGE turkeys and lots of other animals. This is her goat, Houdini:

For lunch we decided to see if we could make it in time to the Pittsfield Fire Department which was offering a chicken dinner. Although it looked like they were cleaning up when we arrived, we were not too late. The chicken dinner was great:
a half a chicken, potatoes, two sides (I chose beans and coleslaw), roll and butter, drink and desert for $8.00. We thoroughly enjoyed this!

After Carol dropped me off, I headed back towards Pittsfield so I could take a picture of the Beardsley Hops House that I read about in LANDMARKS OF OTSEGO COUNTY.
here it is:

Hops House: Pittsfield, NY, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.

The Beardsley Farm was originally settled in l799 and the hops house which remains is
one of the few surviving examples in Otsego County.

It was a great way to spend part of the day!

Friday: April 20th, 2012

I accompanied Terry to Lakeview Cemetery in Cooperstown, New York for the burial of her friend, Bill Every, who passed away a few months ago.

It was a short service, conducted by the local Episcopal Priest or Minister.

After the service, we went to the library in Cooperstown to look at an art show. It was very good. Some of the paintings and photographs were of local places.

We decided to have supper at Gerster's Family Market because they offer a buffet for nine dollars per person on Friday evenings. We checked out the buffet when we arrived and it looked good. There were chicken and biscuits, broccoli soup, beef and noodles, pork and sauerkraut, chicken wings, scalloped potatoes, salad fixings and bread pudding. I took this picture in Gersters.

After that we had time to spare, and Terry wanted to go home and change her shirt that she had spilled food on. I did some shopping, went to the library and looked for a geocache. Once again, I could not find JUST FOLLOW THE CREEK.

Terry and I met up at LIVING WATERS and took a short walk before going in to find good seats for the concert. The concert was VERY good, but I think the group (Heartsong) was disappointed at the low attendance.

Heartsong: Singers for Christ, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.