FINGER LAKES WINE TOUR & CYMRU

On a visit to my Mom's house in Geneva, NY we went on down the farside of Seneca Lake and found this little gem of a letterbox in an old church cemetery. Scott and I love exploring cemeteries as I mentioned in prior posts. There were two stamps and they were hand carved and very nice. It was just a perfect Saturday afternoon. The scenery was just stunning and it made my heart proud to be able to say that I am from the Finger Lakes region.

The next day after church we took a ride over the hill to Nelson and did another old church with a sweet old cemetery. This is the Welch church in Nelson, NY. It only has summer services as they do not heat the building during the winter months. Scott and I have wanted to go there, but never did. Some of the grave stones were in Welch.

Another beautiful day! The sky is perfect and the air was so sweet smelling.

SWEET VIDALIA ONION AND GREEN ZUCCHINI SQUASH

Could us mothers have asked for a nicer day? I really could have letterboxed in the woods all day long, but ...... well, I had other things I wanted/needed to do. These boxes (the two we did and we "left" two there to do another time) are in a little known Madison County historical park site called Nichols Pond. The planter of the boxes gives a lot of nice history about the area in their clue. These signs should give you a quick insight to how historic the area is:

Nichols Pond is located among the wonderful windmills of Fenner Wind Farm and you can see one through the trees in this photo, which is right where one box is hiding.

When the planter talks about the grain pits the Indians created - you can actually still see them.

Checking out all the sunshine and green??????? My fave colors!

OXBOW ROAD FALLS PARK

Scott and I have lived 5 miles from this park and have only been here once. When our children were toddlers. Wow, it is so very nice now with well groomed trails and just breath-taking views!

Everything has greened out nicely and the walk down the trail was just filled with new growth and my favorite color - green!

I happened to look UP and got this view - wow, my second favorite color!

The whole time we are walking the path there was this lovely smell. I traced it to these little flowers. The honey bees loved their smell too!

Walked along quietly running little streams, dabbled with sunlight.

The lboxes were hidden near the bridges we crossed. And all on the forest floor bed were newly "hatched" white trilliums.

Perfect day for letterboxing!

CANAL - BABY BARRUS

Another LB near the Erie Canal. We were once again out of time at the very end of a busy day and we needed a quick find. This was near the Erie Canal Boat landing site in Chittenango, NY. The walk was quick, it was busy on the path but we were able to get a break. The stamp was a tiny store bought stamp - almost like a flea but not quite. I took a few photos of the surrounding buildings of interest.

This is an old factory of some kind that has long been left to crumble and look totally in need of being tore down. Some of its exterior show the construction type from the era that it was built.

This building use to host field trips and canal open house events. They have since built a nicer facility and I am not sure what they use it for now.

This is a display of a dissected canal boat from different levels and angles. I have ridden on an actual restored canal boat and it was very cool. Those must have been some exciting days!

NESTING NEAR BY

Here in CNY we are currently between two rain storms. Yesterday (4/21) was a total washout, but the promise of getting at least one letterbox done today looked pretty good. Armed with all type of weather gear for whatever may befall us after church, away we went. It did not rain but it was damp and cold. We had a couple other boxes on our list to try and get, but ended up just doing one that was planted by dear friends of ours from church. She wanted us to let her know how everything was doing with her box because she had not been out to check on it in a long time. This box is located along the tow path of the Old Erie Canal that goes from one end of NY to the other going West to East (or East to West). Most people know the history of the Erie canal even if you are not from NY State.

We had no trouble finding the box and it was in great shape. I will have to tell Mrs. B that she needs to put a new log book in and the main zip lock camo outer bag is not closing and everything inside is in danger of getting wet. She only has two empty pages left on the log book! Mrs. B makes very nice handmade stamps.

The canal just seems to be endless and go on for miles and miles and miles. (Which it does!) We started to get cold and I still didn't feel good coming off of some virus, so we called it done and didn't do the other boxes we had talked about doing. I think we would have if the sun was out and a few degrees warmer.

ON MY ARMOR

Scott and I don't do an awful lot of "city" letterboxes. Not because we don't like them, but when we are in the city it is usually on errands that we do not have time to stop and letterbox etc. We decided to pick up a city letterbox because we actually had wonderful weather and time on this early Saturday night. It was very easy to find, it was behind a small school. No school in session, but the big problem arrived AFTER we found the box and was logging in. I imagine that the summer time will hide the area where the box is hidden better than right now, but I know that all the neighboring backyards were able to view us fully while we reached in where the box was hidden. What also didn't help was in one of those neighbor's backyard was a HUGE dog and he announced plainly that we were bothering him! We still were fine and went to the nearest spot to sit and log in:

All of a sudden appears a full grown man (out of nowhere!!!! I suspect one of those neighboring backyards) who "pretends" to start throwing hoops. He signals to another person (in the direction of the same backyard) and a young man shows up on a motorized scooter. We now have a full fledged audience! We calmly finished up logging in, packed up all our things, including the letterbox and walked to the car to drive away. We both agreed that we would come back when it was dark and rehide the lb because it was impossible to do so with our inquiring minds watching us. It was a little inconvenient, but it was necessary. I think that is also another reason why we don't do too many city locations. Too many people and too many things can go terribly wrong. Now swinging back to replant took about 10 minutes out of our time, but what if you were just passing through a city on a trip and something like that happened? I am not sure what we would have done! I guess if I could talk to the people who plant letterboxes in cities I would strongly suggest that they think about ALL the seasons before putting it in a spot that, in the down seasons, the place would be directly out in the open! Nice stamp and it still was nice to find!

P.S. The pictures are small because we forgot the camera so I took the shots with my cell phone.

WHISTLE CODE AND HIGH FOUR

We could not stay home on such a wonderful Easter Sunday, even though we had company coming around 5:30! One of our favorite questions is: Do you want to do a quick letterbox? Usually neither one of us has to ask twice - and it's out the door we go. Scott and I are very familiar with the Link trails sprinkled all around our area BUT had not been on this trail where the letterboxes were planted and had a wonderful time exploring new territory!! And so close to home!

It is part of the old railroad bed that ran all through the hills of Madison county in the 1800's. Still able to see lots of signs of the tracks, rails, spikes etc. laying all over the ground. It is still early spring so everything in the photos look pretty blah right now. There is a tiny tint of green in there if you look hard enough though. The above photo is of the trail heading north and this photo is of the trail heading south.

We missed the High Four box on our way south, but we were rewarded for our extra walking with this spectacular view of the countryside and this HUGE gorge!!! Not just a ditch or a drop off but a gorge! It was deep and it was awesome! I bet in the fall it was just alive with colors. We made a point of saying that we will come back in the fall to check out the colors. The boxes must have just been planted because we were the first!

Happy Easter to all!