What a wonderful day today was. Woke up early again for some reason, not sure what that is all about since it would of been nice to sleep at least another hour or so. But the sun was up and the trailer was warming up so what can ya do?

   First thing on the agenda after breakfast was to go locate where the dance is going to be this weekend. A very pleasant surprise is that it is less than 3 miles, and 5 minutes away from here. Didn't get out and look around, but the building, a kind of barn looking thing, looked like it will be a lot of fun to dance in.

   Once that was taken care of it was off to explore downtown Oswego. Parked the truck right off the main highway and wandered around for several hours down there. They have a wonderful granite court house on the hill right above the river. Will explore the river trail a little bit more on another day as there was plenty of walking done today as it was. Quite a few cute little shops and restaurants down there, including at least one brew pub that looks interesting. Wandered out toward the edge of the harbor and found the maritime museum on the end of one of the main docks. It was closed while I was there unfortunately, it being most peoples regular lunch time. Didn't want to hang around another 45 mins until they got back so it was off to find something else to look at. Will go back and see it at another time.

  Spent nearly an hour trying to figure out how to get out to the light house out at the far side of the harbor. It was on a long, long, really long breakwater and I just couldn't determine how to get to the shoreward end of it. Wandered all around down there by the docks, which was pleasant enough anyway, until I finally figured out that it was going to be clear past the power plant to the west. Somewhere over there near the east end of the university campus. Even then it took a while to find it and in the end it was a matter of asking a couple students that were walking by where it was.

    Once found though it was easy enough to figure out where it was going to end up, even if the actually walk out to it was anything but easy. Took over an hour to work my way out along the top and sides of the stones and concrete that made up the actual breakwater. There was a certain amount of 'rock hopping' and climbing around and over these tumbled boulders before finally reaching the light house. But what the heck, it was a beautiful, warm and sunny afternoon and there were a few sailboats in the harbor to watch.

   The light house, like most, could use a little tender loving care and some new paint, but was still beautiful for all the rust and broken railing on it. Took lots of pictures and have posted several below. the first 5 are of the Verona Beach light house I saw two nights ago and then the next 7 are from today.

   One last thing of interest is that they closed off one of the main streets downtown this afternoon and had a small farmers market there. Wandered around for a little while looking at all the fresh produce. Picked up a basket of tomatoes, the first decent ones I've had since leaving Florida. These were grown in a green house hydo-ponically, so not right out of the ground, but at least they smell and taste like real tomatoes are suppose too. Also got some fresh out of the ground asparagus and this huge head of romaine lettuce that was picked this morning. (slugs are extra). Added one loaf of fresh baked whole wheat bread made by a couple of little old Amish ladies and dinner was almost complete. The only additional purchase was a small ball of freshly made sheep's milk mozzarella cheese. Oh man, dinner tonight was a nice salad with some peach balsamic dressing I picked up at some farmers market in Wisconsin and open faced tuna sandwiches on fresh bread. It was delicious!

The Light House at Verona Beach on the east end of Lake Oneida in New York. Built to show the entrance to the Barge Canal it stands slightly more than 84.5' high and 3.5' above the lakes waterline

Another view looking from the beach.

Part of the tower was precast somewhere down south near Rome NY, but it was hard to see any joints until I looked at this picture.

A view of the light on top of the tower. They evidently leave it on day and night just in case the weather turns nasty. It flashes every 3 seconds.

 I like this view of it.

Here we have the Light House at the entrance to Oswego Harbor. At this point I have walked about 2/3 ds of the distance to it on the breakwater. Don't be fooled because it doesn't look very far, I was using a 150mm telephoto on this shot.

The local Coast Guard Station had their 47' Motor Life Boat out for drills for a while this afternoon. At this point I think they were practicing anchoring and de-anchoring the boat. They had one of the anchors out anyway. I thought it made a nice picture to see the new and the old together. 

This photo is a bit of an optical illusion. The point of land to the left of the light house in this picture is actually the end to the east breakwater, while the light house is sitting on the end of the west breakwater. The main channel out of the harbor is just beyond the light house then.

This gives you and idea of what the breakwater looked like, though there were several points where you had to climb up and down 4'-6' high ledges.  No real problem, other than the one 500-600 pound rock that moved when I jumped on it. Visions of crushed ankles came to mind as did falling in some very cold looking water. Made it out and back with no problem though.

A closer view of the light house. It really is very pretty, or maybe it's just the day.

A view of the boarding ladders the light house keeper and visitors would of had to climb when they came out by boat. I would imagine that all supplies would of come out by boat also. This is actually the 3rd light house built in this area.

A final view of the light tower. Couldn't actually see anything of the light but I would imagine it is one of the newer electric Fresnel types. It probably originally had a 3rd or maybe even a 4th order lens, not a very big one in any case.