Forest Lawn Adventure: August 29, 2015

Peggy, David and I went to Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo for the GATEHOUSE WALKING TOUR. We were allowed to go into the gatehouse, which was built for the Pan American Exposition.

On one side there is a reproduction of a funeral home scene from around l925 or so. The walking tour took about an hour and a half. I was allowed to take pictures but warned to NOT post them on the internet. After that we went to ECMC to visit our Uncle Norman. Then we headed back to Lockport. After lunch, Peg and I worked on cleaning the garage while David put up a railing on the small back porch.

Solo Medina, Olcott and Appleton Adventure: Find One and Hide One Geocache!!!!

After an early morning medical appointment, I realized that it was a gorgeous late August day and decided to spend some time outside. I tried to reach two friends, but one was unreachable and the other was busy, so I decided to just GO. I headed out towards Olcott, thinking that it might be a nice day to walk on the beach and see if I could find some "sea glass". Driving along Route 78, I decided to stop and park and walk on Main Street, Newfane to see what I could find. I found a very nice gift shop and browsed and took a few pictures. This small building used to be the State Bank of Newfane.

I saw a poster for an upcoming festival at a museum, so I typed the address of the museum into my GPS and headed towards it. I found the HRVOL MUSEUM, which is laid out like a small village. There were cars there, but it seemed to be closed. A man drove up and got out of his car and told me that the museum is only open two days a year, but that he could either take me around after he ran an errand (pick up lunch for the prisoners who were doing some work on the buildings) or I can call him and set up another time. I told him I will try to get a couple of friends together and then I will call him and set something up. He told me I could walk around and look at the buildings so I did. I particularly liked the mercantile! I took this picture of one of the prisoners painting the tiny schoolhouse.

Note how he is wearing a red and white striped outfit! Then I headed to Olcott where I found out that the beach was closed and the gate locked. I decided to try to find SOME TREES ARE BIGGER THAN OTHERS, an elusive geocache that I looked for twice before. This time I found it! By now it was lunch time but nothing in Olcott appealed to me. I recalled a place in Appleton that I went to last summer BAEHRS, and decided to try to find it. I was successful in finding it, and happy that it was still open, but without the crowd that was there last year in early July. I had a burger and onion rings and a small twist frozen custard. Then I headed back to a small village or hamlet that I had driven through: APPLETON. I saw this gift shop and stopped:

I went in and talked with the owner and purchased an inexpensive bracelet with beads that appear to be made of wood, but are most likely plastic. I talked to the owner (Jeannine Desmarais) about geocaching and she gave me permission to hide one. I showed her the spot I liked and also the geocache container and I hid it. She mentioned that this building across the road used to be the mercantile

Continuing down the road towards 104 on my way home, I noticed an old cemetery so I stopped to check it out.

I took several pictures. When I got home, I went to FINDAGRAVE.com and found out that it is the APPLETON CEMETERY. I really enjoyed my solo mini road trip today!

Lewiston Shopping Adventure: August 25, 2015

My friend Betty wanted to go to Lewiston, so i agreed to go with her. I picked her up at ten fifteen and off we headed. The Main Street was not terribly crowded when we arrived, so we did not have any trouble finding a good parking spot. We went to several shops and had gelato at the Main Street Bakery.

We had lunch at GRANNY'S APPLE.....we both had the fried scallops and sweet potato fries.

I found a store I particularly liked because it sold mostly sauces. I found a couple of items I needed here: Lewiston was "in full bloom" and here are a few pictures I took. \ s

Lyndonville, etc. ADVENTURE: Agust 21, 2015

I picked Mary Ann up and we headed to Lyndonville to look for some geocaches. We looked for two in Lyndonville: one in a park and one in a cemetery, but we did not find them. So we headed north towards the lake. We remained unsuccessful when we searched for two more: one near where there used to be a pier (Yates Pier)

and another two part at a small settlement of cottages along the lake. Our first FIND was in BEECHER CEMETERY,

and then we found LEAVE ME A NOTE, in another settlement along the lake. We headed back towards Lyndonville to find a place for lunch and chose The Hojack Ice Cream Shack and Grill.....only outdoor seating. We each had a burger and ice cream. I loved the sixties music they had playing.

Basilica Adventure: August 18, 2015

BASILICA Adventure: August 18, 2015 My cousin Becky has been wanting to go to the OUR LADY OF VICTORY Basilica in Lackawanna for quite some time. Today was the day. She met me at my house this morning and we headed out the Transit, south towards Buffalo. After finding parking, we entered the front door of the Basilica. We were wandering around looking at the beautiful carvings of The Stations of the Cross when we ran into a worker who suggested we pick up a brochure that tells everything that a guide would tell us. Here are some pictures:

I think this was my favorite: The Grotto.

Father Nelson Baker is interned below the Grotto. We went downstairs to the Father Baker Museum. It is really well designed and tells the story of his life and his ministries, as well as how the basicila came to be.

Father Baker saved many children from death and starvation by starting an orphanage. I wanted to return to the sanctuary for one more look around, so we did. Then we got the car and started to look for THE MESS HALL, a restaurant I learned about on tripadvisor.com last evening. It turned out that we could have walked to it from the basicila.

We enjoyed our lunch there. Then I suggested that we find a geocache before leaving Lackawanna. We found it behind a thrift store. Then we went inside the store and met the store owner (who is also the cache owner). Becky found a hip pack and purchased it.

We decided to take a different route back to Lockport, Route 62. It took us through the eastern part of Buffalo, until we finally came to Route 325, which we turned on. It took us (more or less) to the transit.

Sixtieth Bowler Family Reunion: August 16, 2015

The night before the reunion, I got together with Peggy and David, my Aunt Linda and her son Matt (my cousin) and my cousins Susan, Terry, Bonnie and Tom, also Terry's stepdaughter Presly. We got pizza at Lock City Pizza and took it to Faith Tab and sat in the shelter and visited. Sunday morning, I skipped church and went out to Outwater Park to see if Becky needed any help setting up. She did, so I helped her put the past reunion pictures up. She forgot a few items she needed, so I went to my house and got the items. Roger Bowlers son Steve arrived to help out, and he cleaned the tablecloths. Finally! Everything was ready and the three of us relaxed a bit and waited for people to arrive. We had a buffet lunch, family meeting, a white elephant sale and a lot of fun!!!! full set of pictures is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juneny/sets/72157657476541455

TONAWANDA ADVENTURE August 13, 2015

A few days ago while looking for SUMMIT EDUCATIONAL CENTER, for a political meeting and lunch, I made a wrong turn and found myself driving along ELLICOTT CREEK PARK. I looked across the creek and saw some interesting ruins, but I did not have time to take a picture. So, at home I did some research to try to find out what the ruins are. I was not able to find out any history of the ruins but I found info about a geocache that I thought might be hidden in or at the ruins. Mary and I agreed to meet up at nine thirty a.m. at my house. However, she overslept and we got a bit of a late start. We headed to Tonawanda. Our first stop was to find a geocache called ICE CREAM OBSESSION #3. It is a micro and was hidden under one of those skirt on a light pole in front of a frozen yogurt place. This little shopping center just happened to be right in front of a parking area for Ellicott Creek Park. I parked and we crossed a footbridge and it took us into the area of the park where dogs are allowed to run free. The coords took us right to the ruins.

We walked in and around them and looked for the geocache, but the coords seemed to take us to areas where it would not have been hidden. So, it was a DNF as far as the geocache but not for the ruins. My research yesterday did not yield my any info about what this used to be. Here is a view of the creek from the bridge that goes between ELLICOTT CREEK PARK and ELLICOTT ISLAND PARK.

From there we crossed over to ELLICOTT CREEK PARK where we parked and found THE FLASH'S CREEK CACHE. This involved a short walk in the park before entering the woods for a very short walk to an area where there were several felled trees. There were a LOT of possible hiding spots but luckily I noticed the hiding place after a couple of minutes. As we walked back to the car, I checked my GPS to see what the closest geocache might be: it was FEED ME -- HOT DOGS. I suggested to Mary Ann that we go find it and since it was a bit after noon, we have lunch. We headed to "the boulevard" and following the coords, ended up at TED'S HOT DOGS. We quickly found the cache in the BEE Box at the corner. We decided to cross the boulevard and have lunch at JOHN and MARY'S

instead of TED's since there is a Ted's in Lockport that we can go to any time we want. We both had the Greek Salad, which was huge and very good. I decided there would be time for one more geocache, so we headed to WELCOME, which is near the botanical gardens. It is hidden in the crotch of a tree that is hanging over a creek (Mary Ann thinks it is Tonawanda Creek), along a nice paved walking path and we found it quickly and I retrieved it. We headed home watching for the road that leads to the botanical gardens. We saw it but continued to turn right on 425. As we turned, I said to Mary Ann "watch for a place to get ice cream". She saw it a second or two later, a convenience store which serves Perry Ice Cream cones and sundaes so we stopped and each had a small cone. It was a great day. The weather was perfect and we found three out of four geocaches that we looked for.

Niagara County Fair: August 6, 2015

I had not been to the county fair since I was a kid, so I wanted to go this year. I recruited Barb and Mary Ann to go with me. Mary Ann picked Barb and I up and we headed out. We arrived at about ten thirty a.m. We watched some kids putting their horses through their paces before finding the tents with vendors and displays. I collected a lot of "freebies". For lunch we had a bbq chicken dinner: a half chicken, roll and butter, coleslaw and corn on the cob. It was very good. We watched some kids put their goats through their paces. We watched part of a performance by some Scottish singers. Complete set of pictures is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juneny/sets/72157656816977236

Urbex, Geocaching, Reids and more: August 5, 2015

Peggy told me about an abandoned park here in Lockport that used to have a geocache in it. I was able to find the archived geocache and get the coordinates. I messaged Chickie on facebook and she was very interested. Chick picked me up this morning and we headed to the park. We did not need the coords since she remembered going to the park years ago, and how to get there. We found it easily and parked and walked right in. Here are pics: Chick said that the area beyond the fence with the NO TRESPASSING signs was once used as a dump. Then we headed to the fishing area where HIDDEN PARK is hidden. Using her new GPS, Chick walked right to it and found it.

Chickie was familiar with this area, having gone fishing there in the past. After that Chick had a couple of errands to run, and then we decided to have lunch at REID'S. We both had the double fish sandwich, which was very good. Then we hid a geocache in lowertown, in a wooded "island" adjacent to the area where the old gas plant was demolished recently. Then we decided to go to the Town of Lockport Nature Trails. We had a hard time finding it, but finally arrived. The first thing we did was retrieve the cache I hid last fall since geocaching.com rejected it because of it being too close to another cache. We attempted to find that cache (in honor of barkeater) using chickies new GPS, but there is something about that GPS that we do not now since the arrow did not seem to work correctly. Unfortunately, I had left my GPS and the coords in her car. We enjoyed walking the trails though except when we saw a snake....Chick REALLY hates snakes (since an incident when someone emptied a bucket of them over her head years ago).

When we got back to the car I found he coords for this cache and put them into my GPS, and we were within three hundred feet of it but Chickie had a sore toe and did not want to look for it. Chickie suggested that we check out the foundations that are the remains of the old Cotton Batting factory on Elmwood Avenue. Since I had the retrieved cache with me, I found a spot and hid it. On the way to my house, we stopped at a small farm stand near Molinaro's for some sweet corn. It was a good day.

Geocaching, Reids, Food and Ice Cream Adventure!

What a day!!!!bsp;The best part of it was that it was cool in the morning and stayed that way all day!!!
After doing some banking, I picked up Mary Ann so that we could do some geocaching.

Our first stop was HIDDEN PARK.  We started looking for the new cache there but after a couple of minutes, it started to sprinkle, so we ran to the car.

After that, Mary Ann offered to show me two old Roman Catholic cemeteries on Old Niagara Road.  We took an address off of a nearby house so that we can check to see if there are any geocaches hidden there.

Then we went to the new bike/walking trail along the south side of the canal.  It is so new that the new parking lot is still roped off but we were able to park along the road.  We found this one pretty easily after a one third of a mile walk.  It is an ammo can.  I added a few pieces of swag to it.

Then we tried to find parking for Canal Side Quest, but were unsuccessful.  By then we could see REID'S, so we stopped there for lunch and we ran into Lynette, her husband Al and their two grandsons.

Then we headed out towards TOPS at the end of East Avenue and found the small geocache hidden in a huge bush at the west end of the parking area.

And then we decided we HAD to have ice cream so we headed to OLEARS and we had custard cones.

I dropped Mary Ann off and rested for a bit and then met Peggy at FAITH TABERNACLE.  We drove to ECMC to see our Uncle Norman.  We were very happy to find out that he is no longer in ICU but has been moved to an "intermediate" room on the sixth floor.  We had a great visit. Then we headed back towards Lockport, but we stopped in Clarence for the TASTE OF CLARENCE. It was very crowded. I won a very nice bag at one of the booths, which came in handy in order to take home the freebies that were offered. We had supper from the food booths, a half a reuben, cheese/beer soup, and a salad. We decided to have desert at PAULA'S DONUTS since we had to drive right past it to get back to Route 78. However when we got to it, it was closed!!!! I was so disappointed. We stopped at JOHNSONS and had ice cream cones!