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.