Playing Hookie - A Bike Ride on the Lakeview Wildlife Trail and Beach

Finally got a chance to type this up. The week before last week the weather reports seemed to be pointing toward there being an extremely nice day, so I decided to just do something for myself and take a few relaxing hours to myself. I always feel guilty; there's so much to do, so much work to do, even on weekends I'm thinking about what I could be doing. Anyway...

So the day came and it was looking overcast, and like it might be heading toward a rainy day but for the time-being it looked good.




So I attached my bike carrier to the car, secured the bike to it, grabbed lots of water and a small easy-to-carry lunch (and my camera and GPS, of course!), and drove down to the Lakeview Wildlife area. The beginning of the trial is on a small lake, and the trail curves around this and then out through the protected dune system and finally to the open beach.

Only one truck was there in the entrance parking lot, and no sign of anyone.

The trail itself was nice, cool, and the day was good for riding. The trail itself is fairly good riding, a few ruts, lots of leaves this time of year but not hiding anything big but the occasional stone.

Once through the wooded trail it was over the elevated walkway and onto the beach.

I headed down to the very edge of the water, and rode right along the interface between sand and fluid. Incredible, something I guess in the back of my mind I had always wanted to do - though I thought perhaps it would be ocean I'd be riding along.

Next time we take a trip to the ocean I'm taking my bike...maybe.

The sand was nicely packed away from the sand dunes and easy riding. I went right first, until I reached one of the Southwick Beach parking areas and then rode back in the other direction - passing where I had exited the elevated walkway.

After riding for a bit I found another elevated walkway (pic below, right), I hauled to bike up the short steps and rode down the short walkway until I reached the other end - a small very-low-water-level lake (or large pond) called Lakeview Pond. After a long look along the shore of the other side I picked out the canoe ramp and then the truck and my car in the parking lot.

I hauled the bike up the stairs and rode down and back to the beach again. Propping the bike up I took a few pics, and unstowed my lunch and sat on a large fallen tree and sat back to unwind. When was the last time I'd taken a real vacation? Years. This wasn't the same of course, but nice for a few hours.

In the distance, in the direction I was heading, I could see a person and a dog getting closer.

After packing my lunch back up and back into my bike's pack, I headed out again. After a bit I passed by the guy with his dog, a polite wave and a glance from the dog. He had walked quite a long ways from the Southwick Beach area or the Lakeview trail.

I continued, at times, speeding up, other time's barely crawling. Even the seagulls didn't really mind me, I rode through the middle of them a few times and they just skipped away without much fear or concern.

Further down I ran across a place where someone had had a fire and likely a party, from the looks of it.

Above this place balanced a piece of wood on another tall piece of wood, an old tree stripped of it's limbs or something. I messed around with it, trying to figure out how it was balanced. It spun, but didn't fall off. Someone must have nailed it on, and then set the whole thing up. Strange (see pic at bottom).

Finally, I had biked far enough, I could have went miles from the looks of it. The day was perfect, not too warm, not too cool, overcast but not dark, and the water was misty enough so that I could only see a short distance - not even the Oswego nuke plant could be seen.

On the way back I rode even slower for the most part, and stopped at the walkway to the small lake again.

After getting back to the main walkway I took the dogleg left toward the Southwick Beach area, biked that, and then headed back.

It was one of those unexpectedly relaxing days, and I neither bike enough nor relax enough so it was certainly welcome. A nearly perfect trip (after packing my stuff back in and on the car I got in and went to adjust my mirror, which promptly dropped off. Now I have to get some mirror glass glue for it, ergh).

Nice day and trail and ride, and if you have a bike I highly recommend it.

Exploring the Old Anthony Farm Near Perch River Dam

Exploring the Old Anthony Farm Near Perch River Dam

I'm interested in history and old structures, especially in the North Country. You can find my history page here, my abandoned buildings site here and more related links in the column to the right.

One of the things that's of interest to me right now is the old Anthony farm on the road going to the Perch River Dam.

This farm was on the gravel road that goes to the Perch River Dam, the road is off from Parish Road. At one time, many years ago, this was the largest barn in Jefferson County and was of a unique design that probably isn't any where else in the US (see photo at top of this entry).

The people who built the barn built it between two high hills, so it spanned the entire valley between them. Some accounts put it at two hundred fifty feet - a large barn for those days. See the photo at right; I took this from the left ramp, high on the hill and looking over the valley. If you look close you can see the the opposite ramp which would have been the end of the barn on the other side.

The cows were at the very bottom in a stable, and above them was the hay loft. Above that was another floor with open sides or open spaces. On either end of the barn was a road going up the hill where the horses and a wagon with hay could be brought up, the horses and wagon would then be taken into the end of the barn and onto the upper floor, where the hay could be thrown off into the hay loft below.

An interesting and innovative design. Nearby was the house and a spring house (photo at left - more photos here), which also was used for cold storage.

There was also a large cistern behind the barn, and what I was told was that water was caught from barn eves and went into this cistern. The cistern in turn would be available to water to cows. Another reference mentions that there was some sort of system for providing this water to the house too.

Under the barn was a large drain.

All of this made out of limestones.

Some local people also make note of some other nearby things connected or loosely connected with this farm. Like a machinery barn nearer the dam (though I've never seen any traces of this). And another house nearby, also long gone, which at one times houses some Indians who helped with farming in the area.

Nearby is the limestone foundations of another house, a short distance down the road. I've always been curious about it as my father hadn't had any info on it (when he moved here the Anthony farm was still standing and the farmer there took care of some of his heifers so he knew it well).

A person who does metal detecting contacted me via my webspages awhile back about the Glen Park amusement park and caves and such, and he contacted me again about the old Anthony Farm and the stone house nearby.

This guy takes metal detecting seriously, does lots of research and puts a lot of thought into it. I know some of the local historians probably aren't too keen on this sort of thing, but oh well...

I told him about my work in trying to find out any info about the old house and we agreed to meet down there along with my father and his family, to do some looking around and possibly for him to get some idea of good places to metal detect down there.

So my father and I met him and his family down there. Eric and his entire family are good people, and we spent quite a few hours looking around down there. We went over the old stone foundations (photo to the left - more photos here), climbed the hill to the right ramp that went into the barn, found the foundations of the barn itself (which was new to me, see pic at very bottom of this entry) as well as the cistern (See photo below - more photos. The cistern was in a raised hill - either natural or man-made, near the center point of the barn) and drain (both also new to me). The cistern was massive, possibly 40 feet long and eight feet wide or so. It was mostly pushed in by the state or had fallen in but there were replaces where you could climb down in if you wanted to.

I wanted to go over to the other ramp which, when I was young, could easily be gotten to as the road to it was still open. But now that area is packed with dense brush.

My father mentioned the other old house on the other side of the road but he wasn't quite sure of where, so Eric took a quick look around without finding it. Later my father talked to a local woman who explained about where it was.

Later I went back by myself and trekked over to the ramp (pic at right, below). I put on an old t-shirt, packed my camera and phone in an old backpack so I'd be fairly "stream-lined" and threw on my shooting glasses to protect my eyes. The brush was so dense it took me the better part of an hour to make it there. I looked around the base a bit and found a rusted out old hand saw as well as a moss-encrusted piece of wood, which I assume was part of the barn.

At the top of the ramp the brush was even worse until I got near the edge of it, where it was completely devoid of brush and only had a little grass. It was a great view, and looking closely I could see the opposite ramp - a long way across the valley. The trees and brush were thick enough where I couldn't seethe foundations of the barn below me.

I tried to bring both the old saw and piece of wood back, thinking that I would leave it laying somewhere that Eric would find the next time he came down to do some metal detecting, but the brush was so dense there was no way I could carry it out easily. I could barely get back out myself.

There were some differing measurements having to do with the length of the barn and I had intended to bring my GPS but forgot it. I thought I could grab the coords from both ends, making sure I had the best accuracy, and estimate the length down to 15 feet or so. Ugh, I hate to make another trip through the brush but I probably will end up doing it.

Meeting People in Person, Natural Heritage Area, Backing Up Your Blog, Finger Stick, Camera Attached to Telescope, Dining Room Remodel

Ema Capite Ad Calc

Blog Action Day seemed to be quite a success, according to the website over 20,603 blogs participated. Not bad. There was a good amount of press coverage too, which helped.

A good blog I found on the Blog Action Site that might be of interest along the lines of recycling - Items You Never Thought To Recycle.

And if you live in the local area check out our FreecycleWatertownNY list for giving away items you don't need or want instead of throwing them in the trash. You can also ask for items. If you live elsewhere go to Freecycle.org and find a local group near you - chances are there is one, or you can start one yourself!

Oh yea, that death threat thing I got? Some sort of scam that's circulating. Apparently the scam is e-mailing people and trying to get them to pay off the contract on them or some such. The one sent to me didn't ask for anything though. It seemed to be just my friendly neighborhood hired killer letting me know he was going to kill me.

According to a recent study 43% of the US is in drought conditions. And this isn't a study by a whacky tree-hugger group, this is by the National Climate Data Center. Wow. Isolated to this year, or sign of Global Warming? If the latter we are in trouble...

Is Wal-mart trying to stick it's big, cheap, Chinese-sweatshop-product-created thumb in everything? A recent article shows Wal-Mart and Hughes satellite hooking up to deliver broadband Internet via a dish. It won't be any cheaper (still about $70 per month and a high cost of equipment, slow uploads and a throttled connection) - it'll just have Wal-Mart on it instead of Hughes, heh.

And if those are enough signs that the world is in trouble - Cheney and Obama are related? 8th cousins, according to Cheny's wife while researching their family tree.

One of Obama's spokesman said -"Every family has a black sheep." [Guffaw]

Yea, I see the end coming.

Giant Dog and Photoshopping

Giant dog, wow.

I've done a lot with trying to find fake photos and are moderately good at using various techniques to find them. Once in a while though, you come across ones like this (or the giant cat one from previous years) that you know are fake; but you just can't find any mistakes with. It has come to a point where even the pros can't tell the difference sometimes, an issue when it comes to using photos in legal proceedings for evidence. And it's only going to get worse.

New York's latest Natural Heritage Area?

If you've ever went on any of the trails down near Black Pond, Lakeview Wildlife Management Area, or the El Dorado Preserve & trail area you might know that this is the one of the largest inland dune systems in the eastern Great Lakes area - there's protected white sand dunes, lots of preserves and wildlife.

The DEC is proposing making that 17 mile stretch of land and making it a Natural Heritage Area.

What does this mean? Apparently the protection of wildlife and the environment in this area will take priority over other things related to and on this state-owned land. I take this to mean that any high-risk area may be shut off from the public, and there may be some constraints that we are not seeing down there right now.

Meeting People in Person Versus Over the Internet

People are sure funny, uh, people sometimes. I've noticed that with many people seem to automatically trust someone they meet in person, especially the older crowd may be more likely to do this. It doesn't matter if they have known the person through chatting over the Internet, on a telephone, the CB (many years ago when it was popular) previously and just met them. It doens't matter if everyone else online says the person is a scumbag. With some people if they meet them in person it's nearly an automatic trust, face-to-face.

I find it amazing. Sure, some people are better at reading others in person - but how many people are really experts at this, or even knowledgeable enough in human interaction to do this accurately? I've seen and heard this happen over and over, and it causes a lot of problems.

In one case I know of a child-toucher was called an honorable person and 100% believed valid over legal evidence as well as what many others (both online and in person) had said.

The ability of humans to be snowed by a simple face-to-face meeting is amazing. On the other hand, as I'm sure we all know, there's so much misdirection and dishonesty when dealing with people over the Internet.

Then again, the same goes for those in person.

Backing Up Your Blog

The only satisfactory way I've found to back up my blog is, well, to just use Firefox's SAVE PAGE AS function (under FILE). You can do the same with most any other browser.

I use Backstreet Browser often, as well as a number of other pieces of software along the same lines. None seemed to do the job as quickly as just saving the page.

I don't need the labels saved, or the searches. Just saving it saves all graphics and text for the particular entry, which I can then edit if I need to. Comments can be saved via clicking the Comments themselves and saving them.

There's a lot of different ways that people are backing up their blogs, but the simplest seems to do the best for me.

And remember - backup your template too, if you've made changes to it. Just go to your Dashboard, click LAYOUT beside your blog, and then EDIT HTML. Save this as plain text.

Damn Those Neighbors For Stealing My Wireless, I'll Get Them

This guy's right long my line of thinking. He found that his neighbors were stealing his Internet by connecting to his WIFI signal. Instead of just locking his system down he split it into two networks; one for himself, one for the neighbors to connect to. He then ran that network through a transparent proxy and had some fun. One time he redirects every link to kitten sites, the next he uses the proxy to intercept the graphics and flip them, another time he makes all the graphics fuzzy. Hilarious.

Finger Stick

I took this down at the above-mentioned Black Pond trail. At first I thought a real finger had washed up on shore, but it was only a piece of driftwood. ;)

Lens adapter & Experimenting with the Camera and Telescope

Wow, check out this lens adapter for the Canon I570 IS. You can basically attach pretty much any lens to it.

Experimenting with mating the camera to my telescope. Check out this pic (below).

This is the warning beacon light on the top of a fairly tall cell radio tower. I need to work on a better tripod system for holding the camera still, as I was somewhat steadying it with my hand. Also, I need to play with the manual focus on the camera. Not bad as a first effort though. And this is with the telescope at it's lowest power.

Another reason I wanted this particular camera over the one with a high optical zoom - no protruding lens to scratch when I'm experimenting with using it on my friend's telescope or mine.

Starting Remodel of Dining Room

We own a very old limestone house. It might seem interesting, the personality of an old building like this and such. But the headache of working on it and maintaining it can sometimes be overwhelming.

We have most of the rooms remodeled at this point, but some not quite to my satisfaction due to floors not being quite level and such. Not much can be done (I've done a little jacking up of the floors but you can only do so much of this before something else breaks, and only very small amounts over long periods of time).

Anyway, here's a quick shot of the dining room. As you can see there's a lot of work to be done, the first being adding supports under the floor in the cellar and adding beams to the existing ones.