Busy times recently. Highlighting the past few weeks of "ramming the roads". Also talking about Golden Hill State Park in Barker and fun discoveries.
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If you look at the definition of adventure in the dictionary, one of those definitions will be an exciting or remarkable experience. This week I'm going to highlight the adventures I've had over the last several weeks across Buffalo and western New York and we're going to talk about Golden Hill State Park as we put the first pin in the park trail. The Buffalo Brews podcast starts right now.
Welcome everyone, it's Brews Day Tuesday and you know what that means. I am Jason Edinger your host and thank you for joining me this week as you do each and every week for the Buffalo Brews podcast available each and every week on your favorite podcast platform. New episodes drop every Tuesday just like today at 7 a.m eastern standard time.
I wanted to start out by thanking everyone who downloaded and listened to last week's episode with Randy Fenton from Main Street Ice Cream in Hamburg, New York. Such great feedback from everyone as they really enjoyed the story on how Main Street Ice Cream got started and even noticed on the Apple podcast platform that we picked up a few five-star ratings so we want to thank you for that. I'm recording this episode on Sunday as I just got done with an incredible weekend of adventuring and running around all over western New York and drinking an Estate Reserve from Black Bird Cidery located up in Burt, New York.
Their Estate Reserve is a 6.9 ABV that's considered a classic American Session Cider. It's a medium dry texture very fruity obviously because we're talking about Apple Cider here. Crisp with a very light finish and this is going to be as it has been for years a definite summer sipper for me.
So I picked up a big old growler of this and it is being hugged and kept safe and cool by my buffalo or I'm sorry my hoppy buffalo growler koozie from Traveling Growler and boy everyone I have a lot of ground to cover so I'm going to jump right into it here. A few weeks ago I was able to brag about the fact that I had enjoyed ice cream for dinner two nights in the same week. One of those ice cream adventures had to do with taking in the Taco Tuesday event that they do every week at the Cereal Spot that's located on Hurdle Avenue in the city of Buffalo.
Now you've probably heard of the Cereal Spot on television or you've read about it in online media or in the newspaper. The Cereal Spot is just that. They sell cereal.
They sell cereal by the bowl. They sell cereal in so many creative ways. Over 100 types of cereal that they have in stock.
Pair that with your choice of milk and toppings and you're off to a great start for your day. But for this occasion I went down for their Taco Tuesday event. So that takes place every Tuesday from I believe it's 4 30 p.m. until 8 p.m. And what is Taco Tuesday? They essentially take cereal.
They press that into a tortilla shell. You get your choice of two scoops of ice cream inside of that taco shell and then they top that with cereal and toppings and it's amazing. For me I'm a big fan of Fruity Pebbles and I don't eat it very much because I don't keep cereal in my place.
Why? Because if I have cereal around I will eat it. So instead I'll go down to Hurdle Avenue. I'll go to the Cereal Spot and I'll eat their cereal instead.
Then I'm one done. So take the cereal tortilla shell, two scoops of ice cream, cereal and toppings on top and yum. I highly recommend it.
A fun thing to do on a Tuesday night away from the norm. Hey we're young. Life is short.
Go eat ice cream for dinner once in a while. It's fine. It's fine.
Last week I was able to take in Rusty Nickel Brewing down on Center Road in West Seneca. That's located behind the Ebenezer Ale House. I got together with my hiking tribe there for a night of basically beer and debauchery.
It seems like every time that we get together it's a laughing joking time and then we forget to get to the subject matter until the very end of things at the end of the night. So Rusty Nickel. I was able to enjoy some beer down there with good friends and looking forward to getting together with my tribe to hike in Ultra hopefully sometime in the month of June.
Now the following day I was able to attend the KIA Toast the Fallen event. That is a fundraiser event for the KIA Memorial Road March and it is in place to commemorate the western New Yorkers who have died during the Iraqi and Afghan conflicts. It was a cold night.
It was a breezy night but we had a lot of fun taking in the sights. They had an ice bar where you could try 13 Monkeys Whiskey or their now famous Monkey Beer. They also had an ice carved cornhole set outside as well as music on hand.
I did call that an early night around 10 p.m because I had to get up the next morning for what was going to be an entire day of ramming the roads as my mother used to say. So our travels took us about an hour from the pickup point in North Tonawanda and we went up to Golden Hill State Park and that's up in Barker, New York along the Ontario shoreline. I'll talk about the park in more detail after the commercial break but what I wanted to say about the hike itself is we did about 4.5 miles and that trail is considered a double loop trail so there's a western loop and there's an eastern loop.
When we did the western loop we started along the water front back into the woods and then came out alongside the park's campgrounds and we were able to check out the the lighthouse and the lighthouse cottage that's there and then back down along the roadway to where we were parked for the eastern loop. That was a lot more trying for us because that turned into quite a wet often muddy mostly watery and I'm not even talking about the fact that Lake Ontario was there it was just a wet wet hike and at one point we got to the point where there was so much standing water we knew we were going to go in over the tops of our boots so we doubled back and hit the roadway for a little bit of a stint before finishing up the trail on a wide basically roadway loop so that was that was the end of that but 4.5 miles we knocked out there and then from there we drove down the way about 15 minutes to Blackbird Cidery that's located on like I said in Burt, New York and went down there to enjoy some of the flights they have. Their flights include a light, a seasonal, and a semi-sweet.
We ended up trying them all and I'll tell you it's not like drinking beer flights where you have ABVs that vary between four and a half and let's say eights and nines for the heavier ones these are all in that that six and a half to seven and a half eight range and when you don't have any food and you're just sitting there drinking cider flights that'll uh that'll get to you pretty quick so I ended up walking out of there with my growler filled with the estate reserve that I talked about in the and I also got a bottle of the Buffalo Bluegrass that one's in an 8 ABV it's a semi-dry hard cider and they age that in Kentucky bourbon barrels so you get a lot of the vanilla and clove flavors that come from come from that barrel and what I love about this one is that the next time I get a really good steak for this summer that's when I'm going to crack that bottle open because I think this is going to go really well with steak then I picked up a four pack of the dry oak dage that's a 6.7 ABV that's made with the certified organic apples it's a blend of apples all across New York State that they purchase and those are aged in French oak barrels it's a very full-bodied flavor and it was the second one that we got from the uh actually from the light flight and both of us like that one very much as well as their extra dry needless to say we did plenty of damage there financially on both of our credit cards and then we were on our way and from there we ended up at the Olcott Lakeside Village shops which I would recommend to any family who wants to take a trip up to the Ontario shoreline to check out imagine tiny homes that are in a row but they're all connected like townhouses and each of them are individual little shops with great proprietors selling fun and different things some of them selling snacks some of them selling trinkets some of them selling clothing etc so we spent about an hour hour and a half walking along and there weren't too many of the shops that are open this season they suffered a lot last season because of covid the intention was to shop and eat up there but there was no food and there were no eateries that were open along the store along the village so we had to take everything that we had purchased back to the car and away we went and then from there we ended up in in Pendleton on the way back to North Tonawanda. One of the little shops that I've always enjoyed going to is called the Craft Coffee House that's on Campbell Boulevard in Pendleton. I will tell you that it is a veteran owned business by two great minded Air Force veterans.
Their place is bright and cheery and some of the best food specials that you can find around and I hear they make a great cup of coffee too. So we were starving after all of our running around and we ended up there. Now I had a fried chicken sandwich which was very tasty.
She had a ramen bowl that came before my food and the aroma that was coming off of this ramen bowl was incredible. The broth was to die for and I look forward to when they put that back up on the menu because based on my food experimentation right now there is a chance I might be able to indulge in this myself the next time it comes around. So if you're looking for a little out of the way place or you happen to be in North Tonawanda for the day pop up Campbell Boulevard up to Craft Coffee House.
It's located just across from the bike path from the Pendleton Town Park. Sunday we met back up and we made our way out to East Aurora to meet up with friends at Hunter's Creek Park. Now this is my third trip that I've made to Hunter's Creek in the last six months.
The first time we went in a driving lake effect snow storm, snow falling two inches an hour. We hiked about four miles all the way back to Hunter's Creek and sometimes shinned in deep snow and then stood literally on Hunter's Creek as it was frozen over and we really took in an atmosphere there that really was capped off by standing on Hunter's Creek and you could feel and hear the water bubbling underneath your feet. It was really amazing.
Now fast forward this actually is the second time that I've been there as part of the summer challenge. The first time I went with my hiking tribe that was a very rainy event but again you know lots of laughs lots of fun times and in this time it didn't disappoint at all. So we met up with friends there and the the issue that we ran into is the hiking challenge always has coordinates to the parking locations in the packet information.
Unfortunately for my friends they did not follow the proper information and they ended up at the wrong lot. We discovered this because they are always on timer early for everything that they do in their life so five minutes after they're supposed to be there we realized they're not there we realized they must be at the other lot so we drive to the other lot and take in a completely different hiking experience. The same hiking experience I did with the hiking tribe last month and it once again did not disappoint.
A lot of terrain we only did about three miles but there was plenty of climbing involved. We went all the way down to Hunter's Creek walked out on the rocks to catch our photos and then hiking back up the hill to the car. One of the things that we wanted to do afterwards was to head over to 42 north there in East Aurora to grab a little bite to eat and have some beer.
So did a beer flight there as well and I cannot remember honestly which ones without looking at the menu that I had and then from there you think that your day is done but it's not. So from there we ended up at the Aurora Brew Works which was a great experience of seeing beers from not only all over Buffalo and western New York but all over the country. Mostly you know there's a lot of Rochester a lot of downstate a lot of New England breweries that are represented in the shop and then you can buy individual cans there and then sit at the tables and drink or they have some concoctions and some drink specials that they do right there at their bar.
A fun little place I do plan to go back there because there's some questions I want to ask and I want to take in a little more of what they have on hand there. So the intention was then to pop over to 189 next door but we're going to save that for another time down the road because I just can't get enough of East Aurora. It really is one of the only areas of the country where you can get the experience that you get there and it's one of the only municipalities in the nation where you can buy a beer, walk outside, open it, walk down the street and drink your beer and the cops will not give you any hassle at all because they have an open container law that allows you to drink and carry open container on the streets.
So if you want a different experience to have during the summertime on a hot day and take in all the shops up and down Main Street in East Aurora, Viddler's, have a burger at 189, grab a beer at Aurora Brew Works and you know take a stroll down the street and enjoy with friends. So we thought our day was going to be over there. Oh no it wasn't.
Now we're going up to Williamsville closer to where I live here in the in the 14225 and we took in Moorpat. Moorpat, that was my very first experience there. That is the site of the former Sweet Jenny's ice cream shop which is now located just down the hill from Moorpat.
Great outdoor seating, side street and being as close as that is to Main Street in Williamsville. It is quite the atmosphere there. Another place I look forward to going back because they have such a selection of New England beers there as well as local beers.
So I'm definitely looking forward to going back there. Hey the day's over there. No no it's not.
Now we're going across the street now to Brightsmith. This is now my second visit to Brightsmith and I'm never going to get enough of this place. I love this place.
I love the building. I love the people. I love everything that they have to offer and some of the best wood-fired pizzas that you can get your hands on.
So we got to sit out on the back patio. We took in you know beer and a little bit to eat there to kind of wind things down and and make plans going forward because you know what when it comes to hiking the more the merrier. They're in the challenge so we're looking forward to more opportunities to get out with people and hike.
And that pretty much wrapped up my weekend and then that brought us up to around 5 p.m. or so and then you know just in time for me to keep falling asleep on the couch throughout the night until I called it an early bedtime. You know I'm I'm old you know what are you gonna do. So as I mentioned in the opening I went hiking at Golden Hill State Park over the weekend and took in not only a great hiking experience but also learned quite a bit about the park itself including the lighthouse they have on site.
I've always enjoyed looking at lighthouses and reading about the history of them and I know that there are approximately a dozen that stretch from Erie Pennsylvania up through the Ontario shoreline. So hiking Golden Hill made me want to sit down and read a little more about the park and here's what I found out. Golden Hill State Park offers camping, fishing, boating, shoreline hiking, picnicking, nature walks, and walking tours of their lighthouse site.
They have summer events at the park that are too numerous to really mention and winter activities that are available also to include snowshoeing and they have five miles of snowmobile trails that run through that park as well. It was acquired by New York State back in 1962 and in addition the lighthouse that's on the grounds of the park is operated by the New York State Office of Parks Recreation and Historical Preservation. The park offers a small boat launch facility.
Of course I mentioned the the hiking trails they have about seven miles of trails there and this is all located around what's really to be considered a tranquil shoreline which is Lake Ontario. The campground that is there they can accommodate tents, trailers, and motorhomes of all sizes and they have completely furnished tent rentals that are also available. I looked into that a little bit additional and I don't see where that changed with the COVID protocols but you would have to call ahead if you were looking into that.
So as far as the lighthouse is concerned it's known as the 30 Mile Point Lighthouse and Lighthouse Cottage. It was built in 1875 and the light was operated by the U.S. Lighthouse Board until 1939 when control was transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard. Over the years the light was lit by various methods, initially oil, then it was followed by kerosene.
There at one time was a coal fired steam generator and finally municipal electricity in 1903. With its original third order fensnal lens the 70 foot high light was visible up to 18 miles out onto Lake Ontario. Upon assuming control the Coast Guard enlarged the keeper's quarters to house both the keeper and assistant as well as their families and at the same time a fog signal building was constructed adjacent to the light.
The double diaphone signal that was there could be heard 10 miles into the lake and five miles inland. The facility was decommissioned back in 1958 and it sat vacant for nearly 40 years and today after extensive reservations by the Friends of 30 Mile Point in conjunction with the State of New York, the lighthouse tower, the keeper's quarters, the fog signal building, the outhouse, and the coal building are all open to the public. Also on the grounds the original two kerosene storage houses and the carriage building.
The assistant keeper's quarters on the second floor of the residence is available for rental year-round. Known as the Lighthouse Cottage it contains three bedrooms all containing queen beds. It has a living room, eat-in kitchen, and full bath.
I thought that was quite amazing to find out. The lighthouse is not only listed on the National Registry of Historic Places but the Historic American Buildings Survey. So this lighthouse is the only Lake Ontario lighthouse that also showed up on the 1995 Stamp Collection Lighthouses of the Great Lakes.
It's a beautiful spot to enjoy a picnic with fantastic views of Lake Ontario. Took some incredible pictures there this weekend. Now this episode drops on May the 4th but May the 3rd is considered National Paranormal Day and an article that that dropped in the Buffalo News back in 2006 talked about reports of unexpected sights and sounds that raised talk among workers at the 30 Mile Point Lighthouse and Golden Hill State Park with recent clairvoyance.
And this is again the story was from 2006. So while visitors can rent the three-bedroom apartment off the lighthouse they're invited to record impressions of their stay in the special guest book there. And they had noticed that there had been about a dozen people who had written about noises or the television coming on by itself or the alarm clock going crazy and they had other people who never wrote anything in the guest book but when they were dropping off their key they would say things like oh by the way and then they would tell us these things that would happen.
This was according to the the park coordinators. Then over the period of in 2006 when the story was written it was noted that there was a woman from Ohio that said while she sat on the bed in the green bedroom she felt someone come in and sit on the bed next to her and another woman a few days later from Hanoi Falls said the same thing almost verbatim. Some of the park workers that are at Golden Hill have heard stories over time about tales of shipwrecks and supernatural happenings that are set against the background of a brooding Lake Ontario.
And during an evening tour back in 2005 the nearby grounds that they were talking about the mood set for Halloween. The tours that followed by an owl prowl, fireside conversations, and local shipwrecks and ghost stories that took place at the park at that time. So 30 Mile Point Lighthouse built in 1875 to warn ships of the rocky shoal and the shifting sandbar that existed at the time back in Lake Ontario.
One of the most famous shipwrecks occurred on Halloween night back in 1780 when the Ontario which was a British naval vessel sank losing all 75 crew members and approximately $15,000 in payroll. The sinking of the Ontario provides for a good campfire story but in recent events has shown that with some guests they get more of a get more of a goose bumping feel to that. Unexplained noises happenings and even sightings that were reported over the years at the lighthouse and the adjacent lodging.
Those stories have always explored been explored around the campfire. Two people had claimed to have seen ghosts in the apartment as well according to some of the previous park managers. One person claiming to see an older gentleman dressed like a lighthouse keeper going through the kitchen drawers and kind of shrugged like he couldn't find what he was looking for.
Or one from a cable television crew from Rochester that had showed up for an event to do a special. They had brought a clairvoyant who spent about five hours going through the whole place. She felt that there was a presence of up to 24 different spirits in that location and saw a gentleman dressed in similar clothes standing between the kitchen and living room watching a little girl run back and forth.
Visitors are always asked to inquire about events that are coming up. Right now they're still in the COVID protocol so not a lot happening there but this is going to be definitely on my paranormal list to check out in the future. I may even consider looking into renting out this lighthouse cottage.
I think it would be quite an event to bring friends along and maybe take in a paranormal experience. So as I mentioned earlier there was an east loop and a west loop to this hike and when we were going along the east route we hit a lot of wet and mud and a lot of times the water would get up over the tops of the shoes and then we got to the point where the water just got to be far too deep. When we got to that point we were up near County Road and Golden Hill Road and what we discovered was that there was a path that was not on the map but I noticed on the map that there was a symbol from the legend that just said historical site.
I couldn't see it on the other side of the vines and the brush and the trees so we did the cut through to that site and we found this vast ruins that was kind of butted up against the shores of the lake and it looked like something out of an old war scene. There was a lot of demolished walls there were still pillars that were standing in the middle of the site there was a pond that looked like it might have housed fish and we found other structures there such as an outdoor fireplace and portions of walls and foundations that could be still be seen on the grounds. So in my research I looked into this further and found out that this is known as the Drake House Ruins.
It's not listed on the Golden Hill State Park website and I had to find it through looking at newspaper articles for the local area. So on the far eastern side of Golden Hill State Park the captivating and ornate features that hint at an elaborate estate that once stood on the banks of Lake Ontario from the curved top terracotta stucco finished walls to the herringbone design brick patio which is still there from the rectangular fish pond that I just mentioned a moment ago and then there's a frog fountain that that was found there in previous years it's been since moved to a safer location. The brick and stone walls that are whimsically inlaid with painted tiles and ornate designs there was even one part of the wall I saw that had mosaic tiles that were built into the wall as well and the remaining features hinted in an era of opulent taste and lavish investment that was once a summer estate.
The only part of the story is incredible in the survival of the you know the evocative features that this site had was when the state brought bulldozers through that site back in 1962 it was the way they were rediscovered and it was reclaimed from the encroaching woods and the underbrush in the soil that was there. So most of the features some of which were knocked down by those state bulldozers back in 62 they weren't crushed and removed but they were just simply obscured and well on their way to being forgotten until two names Mike and Cheryl Workman came along and this goes back to about 2017 from what I can read here with loppers shovels they cleared the briars the brush the saplings and the trash from much of the five acre plot when I said that this was sprawled out over a large area and it looked like something grand used to stand here I wasn't kidding it's almost five acres it's it's absolutely massive what's what's sitting there so in their work they exposed the walls the river stone pillars and a large stone barbecue and other structures that remain there the management at the park knew about the wall and the fish pond and the stone fireplace but they had never dreamed what they would be finding when the workman's went in to do their independent work and probably their most ambitious effort they noticed a small cement curb near the shoreline and they began to dig so the excavation of about 12 inches of soil uncovered a 50 foot long smooth stone path complete with an area for a seat with a view of the lake when we were there we saw that same area it's kind of dug out of the ground and then it's marked off with stakes and ropes there the workman's believe that that path may have led to the original house that was on the site so in a 1990 article the then Somerset historian by the name of Lorraine Wainer recalled that seeing that the house on the property was a large two-story white frame house with an enclosed sun porch so although the workman's and that they had found few photos that show the house and some of those features on the grounds they have appealed to the community to search through family photo albums for more photos that might solve the mystery of the property they feel all they need will be a few pictures to be able to help them out to to get them to where they want to be so through records research it was found that that land was originally owned by the Holland Land Company as pretty much all of western New York was and it was purchased by an individual by the name of Stephen Jackson back in 1834. By 1952 a farmer named Aaron Drake owned that land and was documented as living there with his wife Lodema as late as 1875 and Aaron Drake would have been about 77 years old at that time.
Drake could not have owned that land anywhere past the year 1900 but there's a gap in the known records until an individual by the name of Robert H Noel owner of the Noel Shirt Factory of Medina New York bought it reportedly sometime around 1915 or 1916. While Noel and his wife Anna lived there the property boasted a spectacular rose garden a sundial a fish pond that was stacked with huge goldfish and according to Wainer who visited there as a child she wrote that I had never seen a sundial before and I found it fascinating. She said the Noel's had the estate open air tea room belt built which is where a solid herringbone brick floor remains and it's still there we saw that and it was actually in pristine shape.
Talks to several now elderly people in the area who recall that as children they were warned by parents not to set foot on the property but Wainer and others said that the Noel's were always welcome to neighbors on the property especially every fourth of July for an annual fireworks display and a photo that was believed to be from 1922 which actually I saw shows a crowd of about 50 people identified as workers from the Noel Shirt Factory of Medina standing on the house's porch and front lawn the women in light colored dresses and the men in light colored shirts with neckties and dark pants. On February 26, 1936 Anna Noel died after 39 years of marriage and several months later her widower sold the property to a gentleman Dr. Harry Parker who is a physician out of Lockport, New York. According to the Lockport Union Sun and Journal it reported the purchase of the home by Parker took place on April 30, 1936.
The brief article read that Robert Noel has sold his summer home on the lake shore at the end of Country Line Road to Dr. Harry Parker of Lockport. Mr. Noel's beautiful flower gardens have been visited by persons from all states of the nation who have been made
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