A Day with Geocaching Friends

(Colden, NY) Hi 76 Lo 56 – Cloudy. We spent today with our Geocaching friends Dominic and Ellen. We met them in the St. Louis area a few years ago.  It all started when we looked for a geocache that was hidden at the famous "catsup bottle" landmark in Collinsville, IL. We couldn't find it, so we contacted the owner for a hint, and the owner happened to be Dom.  It was a continued friendship from that point on.  Dom and Ellen maintain several caches around the area here, so today they took us around to let us look for them.

Dom and Ellen


Here’s some of the caches we found today. This will give you an idea of what they can look like:





This is a small version of an old fashioned milk container. It's about 8 inches long.


One of the locations was near a tiny water fall coming out of the side of a hill.


One of the caches was in a very old cemetery. I like cemeteries, so I couldn't resist this picture of an old tombstone. It says on it that the man was killed by the indians in 1865.


We had a good time and found a total of 10 caches. If you want to learn more about geocaching, go to this site.

We also took time today to take my car to have the brakes checked. They've been making noises every now and then and with all the hills around here I didn't want to take any chances. The brakes themselves are in good condition, but the two brake hoses are worn and about to split, so we had them replaced. They also did a complete check of our entire suspension system, and everything checked out fine. Nice to know my car is safe.

We went to dinner with Dom and Ellen, and seven other members of their Harley-Davidson riding club. They go to dinner together every Friday night. It reminded us of our Friday night dinners with our ham radio friends back in Cary, NC.  Tonight we went to Lisola Doro, an excellent Italian restaurant in Hamburg. The food was super.
 
We saw on the GPS that Lake Erie was about a mile from the restaurant, so after dinner we headed that way before going back to the RV park. I’ve wanted to see all of the five great lakes since I learned about them in school.  I grew up around Lake Michigan, but I've never seen any of the other four lakes. I got to add lake Erie to the list today.

This is looking northwest, with the coast of Canada in the distance. (Click to enlarge)


Looking north at the downtown Buffalo skyline about eight miles away.



One of the famous Canadian chains is Tim Horton's Donuts. They have a few stores on the U.S. side of the border. Jim, being a donut connoisseur, just had to stop and get breakfast for tomorrow morning. :)


We had a great day, and we're looking forward to more time with Dom and Ellen while we're here. Thank you for a great day, you two.