KY means travel means boxing

We couldn't have asked for a better day to box. 

 It wasn't wicked hot like it was in July and a nice breeze with sunny skies

 followed us for the day.  We chose to visit several cemetery's in 

Louisville and wish we could have spent more time in some of them 

One of the things I love about cemetery's is the vast diversity of plant material. 

 My photo of this Ginkgo Biloba doesn't do it justice.  

It was huge and intensely yellow.  

Our first cemetery was behind a Kohl's store.  

Unfortunately, it was locked and I wasn't able to have a better 

read of the stones but I did manage to shot the one below.  

 When I first glanced this stone I chuckled at the tennis rackets until I read further

 and realized it was her passion. 

While this was a lovely cemetery we were dismayed 

because the box was no longer there. 

Next we drove to Cherokee Park because it is so lovely to drive through 

and made our way across Bardstown to three smallish cemetery's.. ....

St. Louis, St. Michaels and Louisville Cemetery. 

 This cemetery had three boxes hidden there - I'm pretty good at reading clues --- This one had me scratching my head.  We found the 1st location but no box. On to the second and learned that a row in a cemetery in Kentucky is not what a row is to me here in NY. 4-5 rows at the base of a large tree according to the clues - i needed to cross two roads and six large trees before I found the correct one.

 Public Vault --- no one was present. 

 Cemetery's hold clues to what happened around the area, are gold mines for history and architecture buffs and to me sobering when I come across the gravestones of babies. Many times they aren't buried with the family, the stones are small, sometimes they have personal verses.  

I can upon this spot (the box is in the tree) and stopped to read the dates and names.  These were all babies and young children - perhaps 100 or more.  And I got to thinking about how they might have died and were there other children in the family,  I thought of the mothers who held their babies for an hour, a day....who lay them to rest to never be held again.  

  

 a beautiful old yew tree with shaggy bark - about 15 feet high

 a far different look that what we are used to seeing in front of peoples houses.

 One of the things I love seeing is the ivy that grows on all the trees -

Kentuckians don't think it's so nice though.  

What is pretty to one is a weedy nuisance to another.

  

These are columns of ivy covered grapevines hanging down from a huge elm tree. 

And our last cemetery of the day before going to get my grandson from his party. 

We had a wonderful time - and really laughed when we spent one hour looking in one

 cemetery for 4 boxes.  Again,  the clues - just passing the entry gates into a cemetery doesn't necessarily mean you have entered the cemetery - in Kentucky anyway. 

CSA - Pewee Valley's Cemetery

On July 4th, I took Tyler to a unique cemetery.  We love cemetery's so this is not unusual 

but what did make it different is we would NEVER see this in our home state.  

300 stones set out equal distance in a cemetery layout I have never encountered before.  

Kind of like a Circle with parallel chords intersecting as road ways. 

 Rusty, old and no longer usable.

The wonderful poison ivy we encountered EVERYWHERE we went. 

And I thought we had the corner on poison ivy in our orchards.

Tyler - my woodsman in the making. 

AKA The Riparian is getting the handle on letterboxing.

He gets VERY excited when we stop at a cemetery to plant or to find.

We had a big laugh at this sign.  Under notice -

no out of season artificial flowers - so does that mean you can put in season artificial flowers there?

 On  the Nation Register of Historic Places.

Pewee Valley Confederate Cemetery 

Pewee Valley Confederate Cemetery is the site of the old Kentucky Confederate Home. The cemetery is not only on the National Register of Historic Places, but an individual monument within it, the Confederate Memorial in Pewee Valley, is separately on it as part of the Civil War Monuments of Kentucky MPS. It is the only cemetery for Confederate veterans, 313 in total, that is an official state burying ground in Kentucky (taken from Wikipedia --which has a lot more if you're interested. 

We had a difficult time finding a good place for this letterbox.  Well groomed cemetery and way to much poison ivy we kept looking and finally found a place suitable.  The only thing I came away with was a tick ----  got to love the summer. 

Big Bone Lick -- Union Kentucky

Today we visited the Big Bone Lick in Union, Kentucky.  WHAT a fascinating place.  First we visited the herd of buffalo - bison.  Not an easy feat considering the heat wave KY is experiencing but we took it slow and steady.  Then we visited the museum and read the historical markers (my favorite).  Tyler really enjoyed seeing the huge mastodon and mammoth bones.  One was of a head with "tusks" and he thought it looked like a car.  It was a nice way to spend the day because we got to play on the playground which as you may remember is Tyler's favorite.
If you want to know more about this remarkable place check out http://www.big-bone-lick.com

Aren't these renditions marvelous.  Growing up in the foothills of the Adirondack mountains we had a camp on a bog lake.  I remember reading with amazement in Conservation magazine that there were big bones underneath the mucky bottom we all hated to touch while swimming.

I wanted to plant a letterbox as a continuation of my Buffalo Theme - Leaves of New York State but the poison ivy is worse that what we have in our orchard at home.  I am hoping to convince the driver to stop someplace near by on the way home to plant one nearby in a Poison Ivy Free place. Like may be a cemetery?

History was boring to me when I was in high school.  Homeschooling my children made it come alive and visiting places like this that talk about Jefferson and Lewis and Clark make it all the more real.

Meriwether Lewis traveled to Big Bone Lick in October 1803 on his way west to join William Clark and the men assembling in Louisville for the Corps of Discovery.  

Being the New Yorker that I am and Aggie from Morrisville State I couldn't pass up the recognition - a poem byRobert Morgan, Kappa Alpha Professor of English at Cornell University. 

Big Bone Lick

At Big Bone Lick the first explorers
found skeletons of elephants they said,
found ribs of wooly mammoths, tusks.
They dug out teeth the size of bricks
and skulls of giant bison, beavers.
In salty mud licked bare by elk
and deer and buffalo and bears
for ten millennia, the bones
seemed wreckage from a mighty dream,
a graveyard from a golden age,
or killing ground of titans. Here
they saw the ruins of a world
survived by its diminutives,
where Eden once gave way and shrank
to just a regular promised land
to fit our deadly, human scale.

Poem reprinted here with permission by the author.  Poem was first published in August 2011 by Southern Cultures journal (Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011 edition).

Low Bridge - It's the Erie Canal

I have always had a love for the Barge Canal - a water way that transverses New York State.  As a child my family would put our small outboard motor boat on the water in Marcy and would travel through the locks.  It was great fun back in the 50's and 60's.  We belonged to a now defunct Utica Outboard Motor Club complete with Gilligan style hats.  

My dad so loved the out of doors so a boat just naturally fit in.  

In fact,  he even named it after me.  My sister must be a pretty cool sis 

cause she never felt jealous cause she didn't have something named after her.    

But then she WAS mom's Pride and Joy while I was just Dad's Chuck of Luck 

which lead to our nicknames Peachy and Chucky.  

They don't make nicknames like they used to.  At least my children don't have any.  

I started an Erie Canal series 5 years ago.  It has been fun carving stamps that are creatures 

and giving them prepositions to describe there actions.  I have had a lot of trouble though with them going missing.  Wouldn't be so bad except I hate loosing the stamps I have "so lovingly" carved. 

ERIE CANAL this web site has some great pics of old erie canal photos and post cards.

Crawling Over Erie Canal Heritage Trail Mohawk Finning About Erie Canal Heritage Trail Oriskany Flying Through Erie Canal Heritage Trail Utica Hopping By Erie Canal Heritage Trail Oriskany Jumping Above Erie Canal Heritage Trail Utica Leaping Around Erie Canal Heritage Trail Rome Swimming Along Erie Canal Heritage Trail Marcy Swooping Down Erie Canal Heritage Trail Marcy Tweeting Past Erie Canal Heritage Trail Utica Growing Beside Old Erie Canal Heritage Trail Canastota Nesting Nearby Old Erie Canal Heritage Trail Wampsville Slimming Across Old Erie Canal Heritage Trail Durhamville

Grand Island was a Grand Adventure

Friday - ahh a day off from work and a time to take number 3 son to Buffalo so he can get new glasses.  I, of course, thought only of being able to go letterboxing.  Since I keep all my "stuff" packed and ready all I needed was the clues.  An easy feat.  We took advantage of the early season to visit Beaver Island State Park on Grand Island - no fee yet. 

Boxing always get a trip to the "outhouse" first and today was no exception. 

I held my breath hoping it would be open. 

The clues to our first box I found enjoyable however the other half of the search team

 just couldn't get it.  He didn't get the smelly part which of course refer to all the chives

 or wild onions growing around the path. 

All the boxes here were under the name of DISC-WORLD.  This park has an amazing disc golf course. We had several series to chose from so picked ours and set out.  As you can see from the above photo this hiding place was a bit of a challenge.  After making our way through the blackberry bushes we found that the big branch on the left had fallen in such a way as to wedge the box deeper into the tree.  

It was tough but we finally succeeded. 

See what I mean.

On to our next clue - on the nature trail. 

This was a six box series that was planted quite awhile ago.  The trees were old and falling apart. We found three of the six which wasn't to bad.  There were beautifully carved stamps. 

Our time at the park was rewarded with some nice bird sightings.  

We saw a red headed woodpecker and a hairy woodpecker 

 on the nature trail.  The other half of the team 

thought the red headed sounded like a purring cat.  To each his own.  

My children always called red winged blackbirds - trick or treat birds. 

Must run in the family. 

Why I Love to Letterbox

from big trees and hidden forests

to intricate stamps and fancy books

secluded fish hatcheries

and city "gems"

Letterboxing has taken me to places I never would have visited before.  

My favorite places have been those secreted waterfalls that Lock Wench led us to.

And a boxing I did go.

Had a business meeting this afternoon in Syracuse so I took the morning off and went boxing.  Was able to attack 10 of those boxes that were planted in Madison County and what fun I had.