Saturday, May 24, 2014- Oswego

We're all so ready for school to be done, and getting antsy waiting for summer.  We decided to take a weekend for a getaway.  The destination was supposed to be a secret, but Anna got into her Mom's email to learn that we had reservations in Oswego.  We chose that because there's an 1812 Walk for us to do, and it's kind of a homecoming for Julie to SUNY Oswego.

We left after school yesterday and drove to Syracuse.  We went to the Carousel Mall, to shop.  Julie enjoyed looking in the Disney Store.  Anna had to shop at Pink for a swimsuit.  Scott needed to buy underwear, and Emma got some caramel corn that she really liked.  We then went to our hotel in Oswego.

We really liked the hotel.  The balcony on our room looked out over the Oswego River and the town.  Since the girls didn't have a chance to swim last night, we started with breakfast and a dip in the pool this morning.

There's a series of 1812 walks, set up along the Seaway Trail.  When you do a walk, you can get a pin.  We've had a lot of fun doing the four of them in the Buffalo area, and now we want to finish the other five this summer.  While the girls were swimming, Scott went to the hotel next door to get the directions and the pins for the Oswego walk.

The walking tour took us through the historic district of Oswego, and the girls had a lot of fun looking at the architecture of the many large old houses.  There are certainly some beautiful neighborhoods.  We went by several parks, and down to Lake Ontario and the marina, where a World War II era tugboat was docked.  We passed markers showing where the original forts in Oswego were, during the French and Indian War period.  It was a 5K walk, so it was a little more than 3 miles long, we think.  The weather was cold and overcast, and we were all glad we wore sweatshirts and jackets.

We were a little surprised that the 1812 Walk didn't actually go to Fort Ontario or the battlefield where the Battle of Oswego took place, so after lunch at Subway, we drove a couple of blocks to the fort.  Once we were inside, Emma ran up the star-shaped earthworks, so we started our tour from up there.  Unfortunately, a thick fog had rolled in again, so we could barely see Lake Ontario at all.  Then we went through the half-dozen or so stone buildings inside the fort walls.  Even though the military has been active at Oswego since before the French and Indian War, the buildings in Fort Ontario now date mainly to the post-Civil War Period.  

We made one more stop on  the east side of the fort.  A nice interpretive sign showed what happened 200 years ago this month as the British attacked Oswego.  We were standing on the ground they landed on as they pushed the Americans out of the fort.  Since it's Memorial Day weekend, there were small British and American flags placed throughout the battlefield on this side of the fort and up onto the walls of the fort itself.  Each one had the name of a soldier who was killed in the battle (or who died from wounds or as a POW afterwards).  It was a moving touch, made more eerie from the fog.

We stopped by the SUNY Oswego campus where Julie spent her freshman year of college.  We found Johnson Hall where she lived and the Lakeside Dining Hall next door, where she worked.  Both buildings had been renovated so much that she said she hardly recognized them.  We wondered if she might be in the wrong place, but she insisted she wasn't.

We followed some country roads out of Oswego, heading west.  At one spot, a family of Canadian geese with many young fuzzy goslings was on the shoulder of the road.  Julie slowed down to let the chicks run away, but one of the parents fluffed out its wings to threaten us and nearly hit our car's tire.  

The girls fell asleep and were surprised when we woke them up in Pultneyville.  Here there was another 1812 walk to do with another pin for Scott to get, but Emma wasn't happy about the surprise walk she felt she was tricked into.  This walk started at the Pultneyville Deli Shop, which was a pretty fancy place actually.  We started with some ice cream and snacks before the walk.  

Pultneyville itself is a very small place between Lake Ontario and the middle of nowhere.  It's too small of a place to have a 5K walk so the "trail" heads on the shoulder of some country roads that have no sidewalks.  We passed some cute houses, but they weren't very old.   The trail loops back on itself, and we decided to cut the walk short.  We did get to see the Selby House, built in 1808, which was hit by a cannonball, and a good interpretive sign by Lake Ontario.  It told how in May 1814, a small British force came ashore here, ransacked some of the houses in the settlement, and the left.  

For dinner we stopped near Rochester at a place called Donuts Delite.  Half of the building was a Salvatore's Pizza and half was for doughnuts, and the whole place was done in a 50s diner style.   We split a doughnut and had a pizza and both were really good.

We followed the Seaway Trail taking the long way home to enjoy it.  The girls slept most of the way back, but Anna was awake long enough to watch some of the big houses go by on the lake shore and picked out the ones she liked the most.  Now we're home again in Cheektowaga for the night.