Where's Blue Bird?: Upstate New York - History and the Sapsucker Woods

After leaving Niagara Falls we traveled across the state heading toward Seneca Falls. On the way we stopped in Waterloo. Waterloo, New York is small town America, but the patriotism here is huge.

The first stop was the Civil War Memorial. We spent quite a bit of time here because a man working there, who was very involved with this project, gave us a guided tour and told us all about the different monuments and all the stories behind them.

Here's the man talking to Ray.

Everything there has a reason and a story,

But I don't remember them all.

They even honored the women.

Our next stop was the Memorial Day Museum. Waterloo is know as the birthplace of Memorial Day. Henry Welles thought it was a good thing to honor those who fought in the war when they came home, but he felt that those who didn't come home should be honored too. Read more here: Memorial Day History

At the museum I noticed a display about the Women's Relief Corps. The framed document is from the Sanitary Commission. As a quilter I have heard quite a bit about the Sanitary Commission and it's value in the civil war. It was the forerunner of the Red Cross and was created to relieve the pain and suffering of soldiers. One of the things they did was donate quilts for the wounded soldiers. Today we do the same thing and there is a local group that makes quilts using a pattern that was used by the Sanitary Commission. Check out the new group here: Home of the Brave Quilts

We made it to Seneca Falls and the National Women's Hall of Fame. I recommend it if you're in the neighborhood. They honor women from every walk of life for their contributions. They will be moving to a larger building when they get enough donations to fund the move. But it is very impressive even in the small building.

We headed south along Cayauga Lake; one of the finger lakes. There are so many trees in this state that the lakes are hard to see, but we found this opening and a chance for a photo.

A bonus here was Taughannock Falls.

Then at the bottom of the lake near Ithaca is the Cornell University's Ornithology Lab. Because my brother Mike has been interested in birds his whole life, I have heard about ornithology my whole life. Here they have the Sapsucker Woods. We took the hike through the woods and it was beautiful!

Too bad there isn't sound because there were lots of birds here.

We heard lots more than we saw - Mike would have seen them all.

Make way for ducklings.

Beautiful!

Look who's hiding.

A nest.

Another nest.

Close-up view.

Another family.

Rain is coming.

We went across the state line to spend the night in Pennsylvania just cuz we could. Plus it added another state to our list. In the future we plan to returning to Pennsylvania, but for now it was just an overnight thing.