WEEKEND of June 15-18, 2012

I drove to Lockport on Friday the 15th. I looked for a couple of geocaches near Waterville, without any success. I arrived around four p.m. to find myself locked out of my sisters house, even though she had given me a key a while back. Apparently, it was not the right key!

That evening, my brother had a cookout at his place. We surprised Peggy with a mini-FIFTIETH birthday re-do, since we kinda skipped over her actual fiftieth birthday last August 27th, because we were so caught up with our Dad's medical issues. Janie had picked up a cake and she got ice cream and candles, etc. and it was truly a surprise for Peggy which was great!  Mike, Janie, her three kids, Jen and her boyfriend, Peggy and I were there for the festivities.  

After that, Peggy and I went to the park of East Avenue where there are monuments to men who fought in the various wars.  My brother recently had these two bricks placed there, for our father and grandfather: 

    Saturday morning and well into the afternoon, Peggy and I worked on cleaning the rear portion of our Dad's family room.  We boxed lots of stuff up, some for me to bring back to Oneonta to donate to FSA, and some for other purposes.

      Late Saturday afternoon we went to the local RELAY FOR LIFE where we met up with our other sister, Gail.  We arrived in time for the opening ceremonies  After that, we each purchased a bunch of chinese auction tickets and placed them, purchased luminaria and decorated them, had pulled pork and salt potatoes for supper, walked around and looked at the displays and met up with our cousin Becky for a few minutes.  Then Peggy and I went back to her house for a little while, but we returned at ten p.m. for the LUMINARIA CEREMONY.    It was absolutely beautiful.  Here are the front of the three that Gail, Peggy and I made:    

Sunday morning we went to church.  Peggy won some free meals at a huge buffet restaurant, so we went there for lunch, and then back to 17 where I took a nap, and then we worked for about an hour on sorting

through Dad's kitchen items.  We only made a dent in that.

We decided to go out for some geocaching, and we each found three and had a good time, ending up at

Reids for banana milkshakes!  It was a great day.  

I headed home this morning.  While looking for a geocache (unsuccessfully) in Seneca Falls, I saw a sign for SAUDERS STORE and I followed the area to a very large, and very nice Mennonite store.
  It is well stocked with all sorts of Mennonite products and run by the Mennonites.  I bought a sub for my lunch and a couple more items.

I explored the Village of Munnsville a bit before I got back onto Route 20 and headed for home, arriving around four p.m.  It was a wonderful weekend!!!

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June 11th, 2102 The Secret Woods and More

The Secret Woods, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.

Recently, I found a couple of trails in a wooded area behind a facility/business in Oneonta. I don't think I should give out the location, so I will refer to it as "The Secret Woods". I told my friend Connie about it and she and I set up a time to meet and take a walk.

There are two trails and we chose the one that appeared shorter. It was wonderful! We encountered a falling down log cabin,

 a creek, some huge old hemlocks, a skull, some giant ferns and more. It seemed like every few feet there was something to take a picture of.

After our walk, we decided to meet up at SIMPLY THAI  (former Corfu Diner)

 for a late lunch. Our meals were delicious and we vowed to go again as soon as possible.

I noticed the FORD ghost sign on top of the old Ford dealership as we walked towards the parking garage and stopped to take a picture, and I also stopped in West Oneonta to take a picture of this: 


It was a great afternoon.

Basswood Pond State Forest Adventure

Leslie and I met up in Laurens for a short trip to Basswood Pond State Forest to find a few geocaches.

Along the way we stopped to do a bit of birdwatching and also so I could take a picture of a home that looks like it may have been a one room schoolhouse in a former life.

I need to try to find some information about this schoolhouse (if indeed it was a schoolhouse at one time)

       A local geocaching family has hidden a series of twelve geocaches in the BASSWOOD POND STATE FOREST.    We had a bit of trouble finding the way to get there, as we never found Basswood Road.....but eventually we found the parking area which was the place to start the caches from.  We grabbed our walking sticks, GPS's, cache information and put our boots on and got started!.  


Her is a view of the picnic area.

Here is a view of the pond from the trail:

It was a glorious morning in a gorgeous and so PRISTINE forest.  We found all five of the five geocaches that we looked for. Here is a picture of one of the geocaches!

  The last one required a walk through a pricker patch, and since I had capris on, I opted to skip this one.  Leslie found it fairly easily, though.   I think both of us were pretty worn out by then and we  backtracked to the parking/picnic area.  We had our lunch (which we each had brought from home) and then headed back to Laurens.

In the Village of Hartwick we saw an Amish woman who had a tiny corner stand set up where she was selling baked goods.    I would like to stop if I ever see this set up again.  I did not know that Amish had moved into Hartwick.

It turned out to be a glorious day!  I am always amazed at the new and interesting places geocaching takes me!!!

WORCESTER ADVENTURE

I decided it was a good day to go see my friend Judy, who lives in Westford, and does not drive.  A phone call confirmed that she was free and I arrived at her place around ten a.m.   Judy said that she needed to have some copies made, and she said that she could do that at the Worcester Public Library, so we headed out.

We arrived at the library and found out that it would not open until one p.m.  So, we decided to do a few other things and have lunch and return at one p.m.  I told Judy that I would like to go into the newly reopened hardware store,

 and she said she wanted to, also.  The store has kept its old time feel and look, and I took several pictures.  The owner was happy to point out some of the old things and tell us about some of the work he has done since he opened the store.

Then we went to the second hand clothing shop (I think the name of it is the WEAR HOUSE, and Judy found several pairs of shorts and a couple of shirts.  Then we went to what Judy refers to as THE WHITE HOUSE (I think thats a slang name for THE WORCESTER INN) where Judy treated me to lunch as an early birthday gift.   We both had the cold salad plate for lunch, potato salad, chicken salad and macaroni salad on a bed of lettuce.  It was VERY good, but not very filling and we both ordered a piece of pie for desert.  I had chocolate cream and she had lemon.

As we finished up our lunch, it was around one p.m., so we went back to the library for the copies.
Once back at Judy's place in Westford, we visited for a while and then I headed home.  It was a good day.

Geocaching, history and exploring under the viaduct ADVENTURE!

Under the viaduct: Oneonta, NY, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day and Leslie and I met up at her place in Oneonta and headed out to Otego for some geocaching. Our first was a multi/puzzle cache that took a while but was very enjoyable and held just the right amount of challenge! The second one was a bit of a challenge, too, because it required a stepladder to get to. But anyways, we were successful with both geocaches.

We headed back to Oneonta, debating a bit about whether or not we wanted to do anything more. Leslie asked me if I wanted to do one of her historical walking tours. She has been working on putting together short pamphlets that have pictures and descriptions of historical walks in Oneonta. This sounded great, so we went to her house so she could print out the materials.

We picked up sandwiches at Foti's and started out on the "walk" which really turned into a driving tour with brief walks at various places. Our first stop was at the Stella Luna, an old train depot which is now a restaurant. We stepped inside and the owner was gracious enough to show us around a bit, pointing out the items which are original (mainly the walls and parts of the ceiling). He has been unable to locate any pictures of the inside of the depot.

We continued on our way, stopping to eat our sandwiches in Neahwa Park. We went to several of the monuments in Neahwa (which was originally known as Neahwah) and then we parked at Stewarts on Main Street, and talked about the sites that formerly were on that site.

We walked down under the viaduct and explored for a few minutes before continuing onto more historical stuff.  I thoroughly enjoyed this outing.   After picking up some milk at WalGreens, I came home and took a nap and then met Carol K. at Christ Church in Gilbertsville for their monthly community dinner.

BIBLIOADVENTURE TWO and more: May 21, 2012

I decided to take another batch of old books to the BIBLIOBARN in South Kortright today and I asked Carol M (not to be confused with Carol K) if she wanted to ride along. I met up with her at the library in Oneonta at 9:30 a.m. and we headed out.

On the way there, I noticed two old buildings in Doonans Corners.  This old store

and this old school:  

I did not turn on my navigation system, I tried to rely on my memory of my last drive to S. Kortright, which was a mistake, since I really did not remember well! Anyways, we arrived at the Bibliobarn around 11:00 a.m. 

We quickly went through my books and H.L. found several which he purchased and I donated the rest to the "dime shack". 

Once again H.L. had a few stories to tell including one about how his wife Linda learned to use a pistol after someone broke into their place down south, and when she was attacked, she had an opportunity to use it. He also told about how they were on a vacation driving up to New England to look for a place to relocate and their car broke down in this area, and they fell in love with it and decided to relocate to the S. Kortright area. 

After leaving the Bibliobarn, we drove around and explored a bit.  We went to Sackrider Cemetery (where we ate the lunch I had packed) and then we found another old schoolhouse on Betty Brook Road.    We saw an interesting private residence that appeared to have been an old, small mill.  We were going to go to Stamford to look at the old hotels, but it started to rain, so we decided to head back to Oneonta.  Along the way, we stopped to see this old train depot in Davenport
Center.  

Former Train Depot: Davenport Center, New York, a photo by JuneNY on Flickr.


It was a great day!  

Friday Geocaching Adventure

I met up with Leslie at her house this morning so that we could do some geocaching.  The tentative plans had been to go out looking for old cemeteries for my 500 finds milestone cache.  But, she had already taken care of that and she handed me the unpublished cache page when I arrived.  We changed our plans to go to the Edmeston/Pittsfield area to find a bunch of geocaches.  I had already found most of them, all except for two that I expected to find today.

Our first stop was at CEMETERY WITHOUT A NAME just outside of Garrattsville, New York.  This is my geocache, but Leslie had never found it.  The cemetery does have a name, though, and it is Glendhill Cemetery, but I did not know that when I first hid the cache, because there is not a sign.

Along the way, between caches we just happened to find another two very old cemeteries, which we stopped to explore.  My favorite one today is this one:

This cemetery is narrow and deep, with some very old stones, and some very old trees. Notice that while the name in the middle is QUAKER CEMETERY, it has two a/k/a's. WOOLLY HILL CEMETERY and CHASE CEMETERY.  If I am correct, my OTSEGO COUNTY CEMETERIES map lists it as Quaker Cemetery, and it is on the southern border of the Town of Burlington.  Here is a picture of part of the cemetery.  

Not too much further along the way we came to another old cemetery, which was somewhat more maintained than the Quaker Cemetery.  Here is the sign for it: 

Here is one of the many pictures I took at GROSS HILL CEMETERY.

After that, Leslie found a couple more Jeopardy Caches and then we had lunch in Edmeston.  I know I was going to have a large meal (buffet) with Connie, so I only had an ice cream sundae for lunch.  It came from this place (MooMoo's) and it was delicious!  I plan to take my grandkids here this summer.  

Then we headed towards Burlington to look for a few more caches.  I think altogether, Leslie found eight geocaches and I only found one because I had already found the others.  

We made it back to Oneonta with just enough time for me to get to Gerster's to meet Connie.  The buffet tonight was very good even though they did not have a REAL desert, we had to settle for watermelon.  We joked with the waitress, asking her if we could have a substitute desert like APPLE CRISP, and saying that we belong to The Society Against the Early Harvest of Watermelons. It turned out that the watermelon was especially sweet and delicious and we appreciated it!

Leslie did not want to tell me WHERE to go to look for my 500 Finds geocache, the only clue she let out was "go to Sidney".  I have to admit that I cheated and typed in the coords and brought up a map showing where it is!