Caching, A Mess & Moving Up Day 6/19-21/2008

First of all we Mom and I would like to congratulate Nikki on her moving up from 8th grade to her adventures in high school. We went to her moving up ceremony on Friday at Camillus Middle School and enjoyed it very much. We also want to congraulate her on her perfect attendance from 2006-2008, her Presidential Education Award and her Presidential Physical Fitness Award. The Physical Fitness Award is based on 5 tests she must complete in a specified time. They are curl-ups, shuttle run, endurance run/walk, pull-ups, and a 1 mile run in 8:32. GREAT job Nikki.
Thursday we did some caching around Burnet Park Zoo and western Onondaga County. 1st cache was in a wooded area close to the zoo, 2nd was in a pine tree in the James Pass Arboreteum, 3rd was located near a WW2 monument, 4th was near a natural spring that had a stone enclosure around it, 5th was near a creek and was anothe Pink Floyd cache, 6th was near Eckerd Drug store, 7th was in Elmwood Park near Furnace Brook (story follows), 8th was also in Elmwood Park near a rock wall, 9th was in Sanlaro Memorial Park, 10th was in Walnut Grove Cemetery established in 1798, and the 11th and last cache was in a small cemetery on Onondaga Hill overlooking Seneca Turnpike and was the burial site of 2 local War of 1812 veterans.
ELMWOOD PARK, 204 Glenwood Ave., of 25 acres, is a natural beauty spot with a deep gorge through which Furnace Brook runs, so called because the furnace of Nicholas Mickles, in which he cast shot for use in the War of 1812, once stood on its bank. The foundry cast thousands of cannon balls during the War of 1812 for the U.S. government as well as iron goods for settlers of Central New York. The furnace also cast kettles used for boiling brine in the local salt industry. Nicholas Mickles died in 1827 and is buried in Valley Cemetery not far from where his furnace once was. One of the foundry assistants, Thurlow Weed, grew up to become a powerful Albany newspaper publisher and the state political boss for the Whig Party before the Civil War.
Friday was spent cleaning a mess we had on the RV. As you know we are parked in Tim's driveway and we are under a locust tree. Well these trees have seed pods when they blossum in the late spring early summer. As they blossum they fall off and land wherever, well that whatever was on top of the RV and it rained Thursday night we noticed a rust colored water dripping down the sides of the RV. We looked and the top was covered about an inch deep with these pods and needed to be cleaned. We needed propane and had to dump our tanks so we went to Camping World and did both and picked up some things we needed and drove back to Tim's. We parked in his driveway and he got up on top of the RV and hosed all the pods off and then Mom and I washed the whole thing and it was a mess. After we were done we parked the RV and showered, ate dinner and went to Nikki's moving up ceremony.
Saturday we had more cleaning to do on the RV as the inside needed cleaning as well as all the windows. So I did the windows and Mom did the inside. That took us all morning and then we showered and took off for Cody's soccer game. Unfortunately they lost 2-0 but he did a great job when he was playing. This is a very competitive traveling team so the playing time is split equally. After that we came back and watched the Yankees lose to Cincinnati and had dinner. That was about the extent of the last 3 days so we will say until next time and we love all you guys.


Picture List:1-Nikki a very lovely young lady, 2,3,4,5-War of 1812 Cemetery on Onondaga Hill, 6,7,8,9,10-Walnut Grove Cemetery established in 1798 pic 9 is a grave marker of the cache we were doing and is not stone....it's metal, 11,12,13-Onondaga Furnace, Furnace Brook & the old stone house located there, 14,15,16-Natural Spring, 17,18-Hiawatha Lake Park.