A Day out in North Queens.

A road trip is a road trip no matter where you are going and I love road trips, especially on a sunny Friday. This one took myself and 2 others to Caledonia. I have been wanting to visit Giggling Grannies. I love their Facebook posts and they always put loads of pics on as well. That is me to the left sitting at one of the tables in Gigging Grannies. A cup of coffee is just over a $1 and the atmosphere is welcoming. It seems to be  a bit of a hub in Caledonia now. There were people gathering to chat around the coffee station. Visitors arrived to meet our group as well as we were really there for the International Food Luncheon at the Masonic Hall. We were not disappointed. It was packed and the food was fantastic. I tried everything and went back for seconds on the Japanese dish called pot stickers. That is the North American name for them and I could not tell you what the Japanese name is. There were dishes from Germany, US, Canada, Italy, France and India. All made in local kitchens. My personal favorite was the beef vindaloo. I love Indian food and this was an excellent representation.
The desserts were awesome. You had to pass these before you got to the food, so you were

already planning to leave space for the them at the end. I am not one to eats sweets, but I could not resist  the Boston Cheese Cake with a side of German Apple Strudel. It was a wonderful day and I met lots of new people of Caledonia. We had some great conversations and great food. Thanks to all that made my day.

Ship wrecks & buried treasure, a piece of Beach Meadows history.

Hello

    I Just got back from my walk. Today I walked down toward Beach Meadows and on my way back I went down a new road where a one time Brooklyn native is planning to build a house. Its a nice walk down the road through the hard woods and pregnant cat spruce. I call them pregnant because they have them big carbunkles on them like many cat spruce do along the shore.

    Once on the shore there are some nice ledges running out into the harbor there are also tidal ponds to play around in . Good  places to look for crabs especially hermit crabs and other sea friends. I use to love doing that when it was easier for me to get around in rough areas and learning about all the sea critters. There is so much to be seen in these little tidal ponds but and you can spend hours finding wonderful creatures who live there

    In this particular area when I was a kid there were tree stumps sticking out of the mud flats as if the sea had taken the land over in the last couple hundred years. The trees had been cut off by people living along the shore many years ago. Eventually the land got undermined or sunk and the tide came in over the area. This is also where the Clara Friend an American fishing boat ran ashore  and many men were lost. We discussed that on here not to long ago.

    This is the area called the creek it runs in behind the Clam flats for those who know the area. I did a lot of diving in this creek as its where the remains of a ship wreck sticks out of the muddy bottom. It is also the area where the black folks of  Brooklyn lived many years ago they were "Neils" and the ledges off there are known as Neils Ledges. Many lives have been lost on Neils ledges over the years. Its nice to walk in these kind of places when you know its history.

    So you see I was for a part of my walk back in time to the 1700 and 1800 hundreds. Folks then built there houses on the shore as boats were their means of traveling here and there. I know where most of these houses were and I use to scratch around the old foundations looking for relics. Some of the older folks in my time use to go down there digging looking for buried treasure - I doubt if any was found. Most villages had stories of buried treasures as that was the entertainment to sit around nites and tell stories --- no radios or tv's back then. Some story tellers were very good at it and could convince their followers that the stories were true.    

    Queens county has a lot of history and most areas you travel when out for your walks have stories to tell of characters and things that took place in the past. I did not write this to be published  but I will pass it on to Heather Kelly and she can post it if she wishes to do so.

OL BUGGER (down on the shore of Liverpool Bay)

So glad we've made our home in Queens County

When I first moved here, I was very much a girl 'from away' - hurrying, used to more bustle, and driven crazy by the slower pace of this dreaming area. I had no experiences and not much to draw on for the history of this place. (And I was a little....bored.)

But my father-in-law, God rest his soul, changed all that. He gave me books about the area and took me on Sunday drives where he would tell me stories of the houses we passed and the people that lived there. And what we talked about helped me fall in love with this place.
Where else can you swim in the ocean (The OCEAN! It is baffling to me when people are so matter-of-fact about that great expanse of water right out their windows) and raft down a freshwater river that afternoon? Along the Medway, where I live, there are old dams and quiet spots to explore - even amazing finds like a long-abandoned pulp mill to peek into and wonder about, and hundred-and-some year old buildings, still in use today.

The first time I went to Crescent Beach was amazing. All that open space! The fresh salt air! And there's a small store that sells candied ginger ice-cream nearby, too, for recuperative purposes after long beach walks.

I'm so glad we've made our home in Queens County, where there is so much to do and so much to explore!

Jessica, daysgoby, http://jessalogic.blogspot.com