Waterloo Two

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

We still had a few geocaches we have hidden that required some maintenance. One that we placed at the end of 2011 is at the southern end of Hemlock Lake. This is another one of the Finger Lakes and is just to the west of Canadice Lake. This one hadn’t been found since 2020 and that cacher mentioned it could use some TLC. We had checked on it a couple weeks earlier and realized that the repairs couldn’t be simply handled in the field. With the repairs in hand, we headed to the Root’s View Trailhead. I’ll admit, I don’t recall this trail having a name a decade ago but there is a sign there now. The trail is only a third of a mile long to the end. There are a couple of benches up on some dirt mounds that give a good view of the marshlands on this side of the lake.

Overlooking Marsh Near Hemlock Lake

We were fortunate that the trail wasn’t too overgrown with weeds. I know the trail sometimes gets mowed but not sure how frequently. Given how wet the area can be, I suspect it may only get cut once a season. We made the required fixes to the hide and the two waypoints. Next, we repositioned to a trailhead on the west side of Hemlock Lake. The trails in this part of the forest are a bit more well used although I suspect they are used more in the fall by hunters. We had a nice walk to the cache. We definitely enjoy woods hikes in western New York. We found this one easy enough and we’re again amazed by how well the container has survived the elements for over 11 years. We spotted a small snake by the trail on our way out.

Watchful Snake in Woods

One last stop would be on the eastern side of Hemlock Lake. The trail here is closer to water level and thus has better views of the lake. Plus the trail is mainly gravel, flat and in excellent shape. Our third cache is a bit of a climb but not too bad. This one was placed at the same timeframe as the others and was in great shape as well. A prior cacher had even swapped out the wet logbook with a brand new one. I suspect someone had neglected to completely close the lid and water had gotten in.  I wish we had more time to just explore the area but this trip was strictly a maintenance run.

 A couple days later, we would head over to Oatka Creek Park on the outskirts of Scottsville. This is a beautiful park that is less than 10 miles from our former house in the area so we managed to make it here fairly regularly. The 460 acre park is predominantly wooded with several open meadows. On the northern side of the park, the Oatka Creek meanders through. There are lots of trails with a 4 mile perimeter trail that covers most of the park. While we enjoy hiking here, the real mission was to perform maintenance on another “multi” cache we hid over 11 years ago. A good friend of ours has been doing periodic maintenance for us as required, but we thought it was time for us to take care of the chores.

This cache is a little bit unique. It has a bird theme at each of the waypoints. We knew a couple of the birds had flown the coop at some of the intermediate waypoints. We had found some replacements at a toy store and came prepared to give them a new home. It used to be we had tags that required the coordinates to be refreshed with a Sharpie every year or two but a couple years ago, I had ordered dog tags on Amazon with the coordinates for the next stage  printed on them. Since I had simply had the tags delivered to my friend, I hadn’t had a chance to see what they looked like. I was rather impressed with how good these still look after being in the woods for over 2 years. We replaced the birds as needed and continued on our way.

Found at First Stage of Multi

There were a few more geocaches hidden in the park since we last were here, so we decided to take a few side trails in order to get a decent hike, find some caches and then work our way over to the final container of our geocache. We had a beautiful day for a walk. There were still lots of wildflowers in bloom and we eventually worked our way around to the trail that follows the creek. It’s hard to say how many miles of hiking we used to do here with our dog Shelby, but it was a favorite spot of hers as well as ours. We managed to head into the woods to find our final container. It’s a birdhouse that we creatively painted with the geocaching logo. Since it isn’t your normal camouflage colors, we needed to put it in an out of the way location to avoid being seen by others. The paint job seems to be doing fairly well.

Wildflowers in Meadow

Old Bridge Over Oatka Creek

Creek View from Bridge

11 Year Old Cache Weathering Well

We were coming up on Memorial Day weekend and were looking to see what was happening in the area. Turns out that Waterloo is the “birthplace of Memorial Day”. We likely read this fact or saw some news item mentioning this during our years living in the area but I can’t say I retained that information for the long term. We checked out the schedule of events for the weekend and decided to head in to town on Saturday morning to see the parade and stick around for some of the afternoon festivities as well. It was a nice day and we decided to simply walk the 1.5 miles or so to downtown. We weren’t positive of the parade route but as with most parades, it didn’t take long to figure out where it was going to be.

Entering Town

Waiting for Parade

We’ve been to a few parades during our full time journeys. The two most notable would be the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena CA and the Tucson Rodeo parade in Arizona. We knew not to expect that level of creativity but hoped to enjoy the small town feel. We hadn’t brought chairs with us but we arrived and found a spot to stand 15 minutes before the start. Initially the road was open to traffic but they started to block off the traffic so we knew it was about to start.

A Dog and Its Sidecar

Old Sherriff's Car

It was your typical small town parade. There were several marching bands from nearby high school, fire trucks from surrounding fire departments, and lots of eclectic groups. There was plenty of candy being tossed out to the hundreds of kids that were lining the route.

American Legion Post

Young Fire Fighters

Waterloo Fire Dept

Old Army Jeep

Carriage Transporting Abe Lincoln

There weren’t really any floats, per se, and there was just one horse. The parade did last close to an hour and was fun to watch. As things finished up, I was glad we didn’t have to deal with a car and all the traffic trying to exit the area.

Auburn High School Band

Old Fire Truck

Percussion Group

Bagpipe Band

Old John Deere Model A

Shiny Seneca Falls Fire Truck

We headed over to the small park near the end of the parade route. There were several dozen vendors selling all sorts of arts and crafts items. Fortunately there were a multitude of food vendors and trucks. We surveyed our options, weighed them against the length of the line and picked up lunch. There was a stage area on one side of the park that had some performers so we could watch a couple of them while we ate.

Vendors Setup at Lafayette Park

After lunch, we head south a block to Oak Island situated on the Seneca River. This six acre island was home to a few activities over the course of the afternoon. While there is a road onto the island as well as a parking lot, we were glad we walked since much of the space was taken up by more food trucks and some of the participants of the Civil War history encampment. There were multiple groups spending the weekend here. They had sleeping tents and cooking areas setup to show us what life was like back in the mid 1800’s.

Welcome to the Island

Cooking Lunch for the Troops

Tents Lined Up for Soldiers

One of the groups represented here was a light artillery battery. They had demonstration where they actually fired a cannon - with no projectile! A narrator did a great job describing what all the members were doing during the demonstration. Firing a cannon like this was no small task. I did manage to get a decent shot of the cannon going off.

Kaboom!

One of the other interesting events on Oak Island was a speech by Abraham Lincoln. Okay, obviously not the real Lincoln, but this guy (Fritz Klein) was a spitting image of the former president. It would be one thing for a Lincoln historian to put on some clothes from that era and tell all sorts of stories about Lincoln, or to have an actor get the Hollywood makeup treatment to play a part, but this guy was the real deal. After his talk, he answered questions and was astoundingly knowledgeable about Lincoln and his life and descendants.

Lincoln Speaking

We wandered around the island while we were waiting for the next scheduled event. There is a nice small park with boat launch into the river just above lock #4. There is also a short trail to the other side of the island. As we came back to the encampment, Lincoln was walking through the line of tents and greeting the dozen or so soldiers taking part in the reenactment. I couldn’t hear if they were using their real names or their names and ranks used for this event. Right after this was a demonstration of how the rifles of the day were loaded and fired.

Lock #4 Entrance

Lincoln Greets the Troops

Ready, Aim, Fire!

As we left the island and headed back towards town, there was some sort of display inside the community center that someone at the parade had mentioned to us as being worth a look. We head inside and find a dozen displays created out of non perishable foods. Many of them were rather large and creative. It was a benefit for some local food bank and for a few bucks, we could get tickets to cast our vote for the favorite one.

Mac and Cheese Bridge

We had one last event to check out. It was a short walk to the American Civil War Memorial park but we discovered the most direct route over the river was closed for construction. So around the block we went. It did give us a chance to look at the hydroelectric power plant associated with the lock. The memorial park has many graves from Civil War veterans. Near the back of the park we would meet our second president of the day. This time it was Teddy Roosevelt talking about his life as 26th president of the United States. He too was dressed the part and resembled the former president but we still thought Lincoln was more convincing.

Power Plant

Civil War Memorial

Teddy Roosevelt Speaks

It had been a tiring day and we now had the 1.5 mile walk back to camp to look forward to. While at the parade, I had posted a selfie to Facebook which prompted an invitation from some good friends of ours that have a home on one of the Finger Lakes just east of us. We originally had planned on seeing more of the Memorial Day festivities the next day, but instead headed over to the west side of Owasco Lake and spent most of Sunday catching up with some old friends, enjoying dinner and a fire on the beach before heading home.

A couple days later, we headed back to Mendon Ponds Park to check on another of our geocache hides. This one was a pretty special one. It was a field puzzle cache that looked like a bluebird house on a 4 by 4 post but upon closer examination, cachers would find a 3 dimensional maze that needed to be solved in order to get to the cache log and sign in. We had placed this one on our last day in the area before heading out on our journey almost 7 years ago. It had been found 125 times over the years and had been awarded 82 favorite points. We knew that from time to time, ants had tried to make it their home. So we came prepared to spray the area with ant spray in the hopes of keeping them away for the rest of the warmer months. But as we pulled into the small parking area, we discovered that the whole thing was missing - birdhouse and post! We looked to see if it had possibly be struck by a car and knocked over but we couldn’t find any signs of the thing. There was no indication that it had ever been there. It somebody decided to steal the thing, they sure did a good job of filling in the hole and leaving no trace. That was disappointing for us since this one required a lot of time and many woodworking tools that I no longer possess. Oh well, we did get in a short hike at Mendon Ponds and saw some of the “fairy houses” that line one of the more popular trails.

3D Maze Ready for Stain

Cacher Gets Maze Open

Picture of Inner Section of Maze and Dowel

A Fairy House in Mendon Ponds Park

Besides being a beautiful area, the Finger Lakes are petty well known for its wineries. We are not wine connoisseurs by a long shot. Over the years living in the area, we have visited many wineries, but one of our favorites is Bully Hill in Hammondsport near the south end of Keuka Lake. We won’t go as far as saying this place makes the “best” wines although we do enjoy many of their offerings. We really like Bully Hill because they had the most entertaining tours and were at a very nice spot overlooking the lake. When we used to have visitors from out of state, this was often one of the destinations we would bring them to. We headed down there on a Thursday morning hoping to get in a tour, a tasting and then have some lunch.

At Bully Hill Vineyards

Overlooking Grape Vines and Keuka Lake

We arrived at the winery and headed in to get on the 11 o’clock tour. Unfortunately they told us they aren’t offering tours on weekdays - even though their website says different. Oh, well, we head over to the museum to look around. This part of the winery was new - at least to us. There were lots of displays about winemaking in general as well as the founder of Bully Hill, Walter S. Taylor. Walter was a rather colorful person and part of the famous Taylor wine making family. His story and the early years of this winery are what made the tours so enjoyable. I guess we will have to come back on a weekend if we want to experience the tour but for now the museum will have to suffice.

Goat Statue at Bully Hill

White Oak Wine Cask

Barrel Making Display

Walter was also a bit of an artist and he had created the artwork for many of the wines created by Bully Hill. One large room in the museum pays homage to his creativity with some of his paintings. We spend a fairly long time looking at the displays and reading about what circumstances prompted some of them. We head back to the car to enjoy our lunch with a view of the lake.

Walter S Taylor Painting

More Paintings in Museum at Winery

We then head into the main tasting room and pull up a chair to try out some of their current offerings. Our server was a young guy, but he did have knowledge of some of the older wines that used to be produced here but are no longer being made - at least at this time. We enjoyed the several wines we tried so even though we didn’t get a tour, it wasn’t a wasted trip. On the drive home, we came up the east side of the lake and stopped at Keuka Spring Vineyards. By now it was a hot afternoon so we stayed inside for our wine tasting even though they have an outdoor area with a great view of the lake.

Wine Tasting Room at Bully Hill

View of Lake from Keuka Springs Winery

We took it easy for a few days in early June when it was getting rather warm. We had a couple of days of smoke from the Canadian wildfires. It wasn’t as bad as some parts of the state were experiencing, but it was bad enough that our solar panels were not able to produce enough electricity and we were forced to turn on the battery charger again to make dinner. It was so thick, we could smell the smoke which meant there was a stretch of time where we simply stayed inside. We also had the pleasure of heading in for our wellness visit with our newly found doctor in nearby Geneva. It had been over 7 years since we had been to a doctor so we weren’t sure what to expect. We got several tests scheduled as well as a request for some bloodwork before we come back in 6 weeks for a follow up. Oh, and since we are now in our 60’s, we are due for colonoscopies again - oh joy!

With those first doctor visits out of the way and the smoke having moved out of the area, we decide to head in to the town of Penn Yan. There was a farmers market we wanted to check out. This town is on the north side of Keuka Lake so it is only about 20 miles from camp. We got to where the farmers market was supposed to be and discovered it was really small - maybe 3 vendors. Since this goal was a bust, we start to drive toward the lake to attempt a geocache at Red Jacket Park. As we head thru town, we realized there was some sort of festival taking place. We continued to the park, found the cache and then googled what was going on in Penn Yan. It was an arts and craft festival all along the Keuka Lake outlet trail. It wasn’t on our agenda but sounded like it might be worth a look.

View at Red Jacket Park

Back near the festival, we found a parking spot and headed down to check out the vendors. We realized that many of the vendors that might have usually been at the farmers market were instead here. It’s a very pretty town that I don’t recall exploring much in the past. There were many dozens of vendors selling all sorts of different things. We didn’t find anything we absolutely needed to have. We even avoided some of the food vendors regardless of how good they smelled. We had lunch back in the car and we have decided we need to take our doctor’s advice and lose some weight. There are some neat looking historic building in town and along the canal. Once we got away from the festival the trail was rather deserted and we enjoyed a short walk.

Beautiful Walk Along Keuka Outlet Trail

Metal Sculpture

More Vendor Tents in Distance

Birkette Mill Building

That's A BIG Pancacke!

After eating lunch, we decided to head out to see some other sights along the outlet. This trail continues east from Penn Yan towards Seneca Lake for about 7 miles. If we had our bicycles with us, it would have been a nice bike ride but probably longer than we really wanted to walk. We head to a parking area near the middle of the trail. This puts us in between two places we want to visit: Seneca Mill and Falls & Cascade Mill and Falls. We decide to head east to see Seneca Mill. This part of the trail is just as nice as it was closer to Penn Yan and is about a third of a mile to the falls. It is a very pretty setting. The falls consists of three distinct drops. Next to the falls is the remains of the old mill. It was interesting to check the place out from both below and above. There is some old mill equipment and even a geocache hidden discreetly that took us a few minutes to spot.

Stream Along Keuka Outlet Trail

Falls from a Distance

Closer View

Old Seneca Mill Machinery

One more cache got us to continue a short distance east before turning back to the west to go past our car and to Cascade Falls. This one is a bit further from parking - about a mile but it is easy walking and quite pretty along the way. These falls and the old mill is just off the trail but the route is obvious. The falls here are a bit smaller but pretty.  This one also has a platform just above the falls and there is evidence of parts from the old mill. We really enjoyed this trail and have decided we must come back with the bikes to complete the full trail even though we have seen some of the highlights on this walk.

Cascade Falls Along Keuka Outlet Trail

Another Cascade Falls Shot