Category Archives: Brian

Oct13

Geocaching trio

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Today Sean, our adult son, (he is a grad student studying GIS-mapping) joined us for a little geocaching outing back to Southern Chester County. I got an email notice that a Halloween themed cache was out there and fairly new, so we decided to see it. (First we stopped at Saladworks for lunch). We got there and it was a very small cemetery and where the remnants of small church had been. Sean had his phone and I had mine….the GPS was a little jumpy but I saw both a big tree and a trio of bushes-hmmmm….so I peeked under the bushes and there was something all covered up-kind of weird as it was in a cemetery! Brian got under and pulled it out and uncovered it-yikes!

 

The ‘little guy’ sat up when the lid was opened! The most clever cache we have seen! Thanks!

Of course I needed to look for a few more caches. The area is getting swamped with housing developments, but this was a pretty area near the Little Elk Creek, that flows into Maryland.

So we encounter this bridge…again the GPS is jumping between both sides of the bridge. We get within a few feet and it goes up. So I look at the hint and it says ‘near the plaque’. Then it’s a piece of cake.

We all posed here-lol

I like that the ‘guy’ above me said  ‘construction, found by accident’

We then ventured to an Old Meeting house from about 1862. The place was in bad shape, and we tried as we might, even inside, we didn’t spot the cache. I think it was missing. We took more photos and the two inside the meeting house came out a bit out of focus-from the phone camera and the Canon. Spooky!

All the windows are shuttered and the foundation must not be good as there are huge cracks and the windows aren’t straight.

See how blurry this one and the one of Sean and me are?

We then went toward the town of Oxford and I remembered there was one near a florist shop. We stopped and I found it quickly as I had seen photos of where it was, though I think it was changed.

We drove down past where I thought my pal from high school lived and we saw his house! There were a lot of cars in the drive, but I know they have a few. When we got home, Brian read where John’s mom had passed away today. : (   It’s like we were drawn to that area as something was going on. Deepest sympathies pal.

We went and I got the yummy pretzels from the Amish place, but the place in general was going to close in 15 minutes. We also went in the new Walmart and got a few things we needed (and Sean gets a discount). There was a Chinese buffet and we got take-out and brought it home.

So it was a nice day. I am a bit achy from changing out my summer clothes to winter clothes. I am still working on that. Plus I brought in plants. I am not sure if I am going to save the coleus, maybe I’ll take cuttings. I also got a flu shot a few days ago, and that may be a side effect. I went down to take my mom and she had a runny nose and got one anyway. She woke up yesterday feeling crummy and she has a full fledged cold. : (

I may do yard clean up tomorrow!

Got email about a Best Buy needing a person to demonstrate the Keurig coffee maker for 4 weekends before Christmas…thinking about it. But that’s 8 hours on my feet and my back is still bad. I have to go back to the chiropractor to find out about my x-rays and what treatment I may need.

Oct7

Caching 3 days in a row

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I’m counting my solo trip to Tweed’s Tavern in the trio.  Brian had off on Friday, so we headed south to the Oxford, PA area. Brian use to work out of an office there, but we didn’t go near the town, but another town, Lincoln University which has a college and upper Oxford, more in […]

Oct2

FTF-finally!

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Yesterday I saw that there was a new cache located up in the next town over. I quickly got dressed and went out the door. I got to the area and went wow! It was in a memorial garden with a pretty moderate traffic flow. It’s a good thing the butcher/deli was closed today. I had the car pointed right in front of the cache, only had to cross the street. I got to GZ and it’s a big rock with a plaque on it commemorating the War of 1812.

Below this were pebbles, in the front of it about a 30 foot long garden space, like a tapered triangle filled with roses, etc. I ‘evaluated’ the area and felt a lot of eyes on me. I looked at the traffic pole and street signs-they were really tall….and the fire hydrant.

So….

I went to the chiropractor at 2, a younger Alex Karras (remember him) kind of guy. I lifted, he lifted…thinks my left hip is out of alignment. I will get an x-ray soon. His receptionist is a nice wheel chair bound lady with a big black, fluffy service poodle.

We decided to go look for some caches (Brian’s day off). We headed to a local park where we had found a ammo-one of the first ones. Well this one was a bugger….near lots of rocks, branches and cement ruins of something. We almost gave up and I kicked a rock and there it was- looked like a playing card box! The log wasn’t in a bag and it was wet and icky.

I asked Brian if he wanted to try the one from this morning and he said ‘why not’! So it was around the corner and he zoned in on the fire hydrant and again there it was-‘our’ first to find in geocaching! How cool!

Tiny!!!

So we were sitting in the car and a truck pulls up next to us. The guy motions to roll down the window, so Bri did a bit. He says, ‘so you found it?’ It was the cache owner! He said he had read my entry and was going to put in a hint and we told him not to. It made sense it was on the fire hydrant. I don’t know how he would put it on the plaque itself.

We headed to Applebee’s and starting talking about geocaching to the hostess-she knew all about it and her brother had hide the one we had just found in the park! Small world.

We headed for another cache down the pike, but it looked like too much brush to tackle. We tried a gazebo one again, no luck. We didn’t check one spot where a busy yellow jacket nest was-good thing!

I found another listing down a back road and part of a orchard/farm series. The Navigator took us to a back road, but we saw a field of cows.

The GPS said it was 1/4 mile away-the main entrance to the dairy. We drove up and there’s a little barn where they sell their goods, on an honor system (mostly). We were told this later. We didn’t have cash at this point or a check. We’ll have to go back as I saw coconut ice cream! : ) The man there knew about the cache and we thought the place was closed, but he let us look. More people came along anyway to buy goodies.

The cache was down between two fenced areas. One side contained two sheep (we got sheep kisses) and the other side was goats and sheep. They were a little interested in us for a while, but we didn’t have food, so off they went.

I think that’s the cache pole!

 It was on a corner pole! I had to lean over to unscrew the bison tube and retrieve this.

We went to a park near here too-it was getting dark, but we found the container under an evergreen. I had to chuckle at the logs of seasoned cachers complaining about this one. It wasn’t hard to find…big babies! : ) I see a few names of my new pals on this log.

I see I need to burn a CD for my geocache computer folder. It’s taking up a lot of room! My phone made me clean out a few apps too. Sean never had that problem when it was his phone.

One for the road! Moooooooooo!

Sep26

Didn’t work out

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Hey pals,

Just to let you know that I tried the merchandiser job and while I was okay with replacing and tidying up the magazines, I could not lift the 40-50 lb crates for the new ones or returns. The man that hired me did all the lifting today. The second time we went in the stock room, I told him I was having doubts about being able to lift. I’ve been hurting with my arm and lower back lately. He said he had told me lifting was involved and I thought I could get around that part by unloading the magazines without lifting the crates. No room and not the right carts. So I told him I’d have to pass on the job. : (

On an up note, Brian is interviewing with Kellogg to place their merchandise at local stores. Their products are not dead weight like magazines. He needs to figure out what he could handle, if he could do two jobs.

I shed a few tears in the parking lot as the guy made me feel bad about myself saying a lady in her 60s use to do the magazines where we just were working. I bet she had to have someone lift those crates-she had to! So I will do something to earn money whether it is eBay or something.

Sep23

Geocachers Picnic on the Brandywine

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It turned out to be a nice day here in the low 80s-almost perfect for a picnic! I have been having lower back issues for a few days and it really began bothering me after that 2+ mile walk last weekend. I thought my feet were going to fall off after the trail walk, then we kept going and that final walk up the hill at the Brandywine Battlefield did me in. I did start to house clean my kitchen a few days later, but I have been wearing those ‘walking shoes’ all summer by Dr. S. I think they are throwing me off too much. I plan to get new sneaks soon.

So anyway, after I used the heating pad, we headed to the picnic, not too far away. It was so neat to match those cacher names with faces! We talked to people who work right near my garden cache hide in our town.  Another nice fellow, got a hint from me about that same hide. He had told us about a hide in a sign down the road.

The couple in the green had travel bug shirts on-I logged them. I am up to 14 as I got some off of cars and they had a big bowl of them and I took a couple and left one.

Here’s helpful Tony

I find it amazing how cachers know so much detail about the caches they have found, even when they have found thousands of them-wow! I noticed that a lot of them are left-handed too. We had a bingo game where we had to mingle and ask people if this was ‘their first event’, or ‘they cached in a snowstorm”, etc.-and they added their name to the appropriate box. I was able to say ‘first time at event’, ‘did over 5 challenges’ and ‘have a travel bug on my car’ (that was put on yesterday). When we got all the boxes filled in, they went into a drawing. We didn’t win anything. : (

The park is so pretty! And get this the ‘owner’ is the host of the event as he is a cacher also!

Waiting on the door prizes, etc. Didn’t win, but two of the people in the first photo with me did win. They had a few ammo boxes there too.

Signing in…should be above the last one.

They had burgers, hot dogs, bbq chicken and pulled pork along with mac and cheese, broccoli salad and cole slaw. The soda was out of dispensers, mistake-it was like  yellow jacket heaven.

We could have gone tubing, etc. They had a large chess and checker boards too!

The animals were staying put in their shelter.

Cute sitting area

I got a few travel bugs off of cars

Brian and I came home and changed and decided to go down to California Tortilla for dinner. We looked for a cache behind this area-an evil one….a fishing line hanging off a metal fence that is about 300 feet long. We knew we were expecting rain, and felt drops as we looked and looked-they gave up.

We went in the restaurant and got very yummy fish tacos. So we are watching the now pouring rain (and got stuck in it going in) and I see two ladies come in from the picnic! They order their food and they see us and came and sat behind us. So we found out they were caching in that shopping center and got the ‘evil one’ earlier! I told them we had been looking for it and  they said after they ate, they would help Bri and me. So true to their word, they drove around to the back (one has a white PT Cruiser!) and they had to really look for it again and helped us find it! Crazy hide. I may have some lady buddies to cache with-both in their 50s and live in the Wilmington area. Cool huh?

My nails

Geonails!

On Friday Brian and I did a little local caching down the road (got help from Tony above) a few towns over. The one down the road was so tiny and easy to miss. It was a tube about 1 inch long! I was too short to get it and Bri barely could.

We went to West Grove, PA and the cache was near an ice cream shop. The GPS bounced from one side of the street to the other. It bounced near mailboxes-I didn’t think so. We got some ice cream and was asking the lady if people ever asked her about Geocaches, and she said she really didn’t know what they were when people did ask-so they did! So we told her about it and if I found it, I’d show her. So lo and behold, I walked by this metal tube thing on a telephone pole, but there were cobwebs over the top and I did find the keybox stuck inside-right near our car (right opposite the mailboxes). And I did show the lady at the ice cream parlor. Every piece of paper for the log was rolled in a ball, so I smoothed them all out. Very strange.

We then went to a park where there was shredded rubber tires on the path-wonderful to walk on.

Nano on the fence-Bri has a good eye for them!

Then we went to a Quaker meetinghouse/cemetery. It would have been nice if the CO had put the cache under a step (see in photo), but they stuck it under rocks in a wooded area in the back.

We’ve had a couple of busy days!

Today (now it’s the 23rd) is my mom’s birthday. We’ll be seeing her shortly.

Sep16

Hiking along the Brandywine Battlefield

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We have lived in the Brandywine Valley for 26 years and are surrounded by the rolling hills of  this area where the great battle that defeated  the Americans by British and Hessian troops occurred on September 11, 1777. So almost to the day, but 235 years later, we took some time to check out this area while we did some geocaching.

I always route out our geocaching excursions and try to keep them to a few hours and close by. Of course I should count on some taking longer than others, which was the case for a few of them yesterday.  We looked for 9 and found 7! Not to bad for 4.5 hours. Some had us walking through terrible high grass  and prickers and I get itchy and nervous because of ticks and bees. However, the first one left us ‘stinging’ all day and evening. The cache was a few miles away in a roofed sign post. Underneath here, but no place else, was a big patch of Stinging Nettle. We saw it and tried to avoid it, but it found us! Ouchies. We should have gone home to take care of that, but we didn’t do that. And no cache to be found. The same person hid this one and the one down the road that we never found (though someone told me where he thought he found it,  just haven’t gone to look again).

So the next stop was a ‘dog park’. We think we missed the entrance and parked near a back entrance to a business along Rt. 1. We had to bring along a liter of water. There was bushwacking from the road and then some to the cache, leading me to think we missed the entrance. Always nice to see this:

We had to cross a little platform and climb up to an area that use to be fenced off as Brian spotted the cache below.

We were to fill up the PVC  pipe with water and the bison tube on a float was suppose to come up to the top-there was nothing in there. Bummer. The cache owner knows about it, but it would have been neat to see this happen. Brian even questioned if it was the right thing-we saw nothing like it and the GPS went to like 8-10 feet, so I think so. LOL  We did count it as a find.

The next cache lead us to the Birmingham Quaker Meetinghouse. It was actually a Letter box, but I forgot my rubber stamper. It was hidden in a cut off tree’s big stump.

Look at this octagonal building on the property. It looks like someone lives here.

Then we looked around the road to where the next cache was. We were to take a 0.8 mile hike to find it (a multi-cache-but we never saw the sign for step 2). We could have driven that, but we knew the cache was in a hollowed out tree along the way, plus who wants to drive? I would eat those words coming back, but we had a mostly nice walk seeing a heron, horses and blue birds.

See the heron taking off?

Bee keeps!

Bri retrieving the cache along the trail

The last leg back, while enjoying the frolicking bluebirds was very hard on my feet. Brian however made a new pal!

After I revived a bit, I remembered the house from ‘Marley & Me’ was around these parts. We didn’t see it yesterday, but it was within a few thousand feet of the Brandywine Trail cache! Rats!

Then we did a ‘cannon’ run. The first one was right down the road from the above.

The nano (micro container) was under the mount on the other side.

Another nano on this one. I didn’t take out the log in the first one as it was too tight, but as you can see I did with the Vietnam Memorial one.

We ate some Arby’s and headed for a few more!

Can you see the green bison tube? This was called ‘Twin Towers’ although the other one like this is gone now. Not sure what this was part of in the past-wells? Anyway, as we walked up near this in terrible overgrown weeds, etc. A snake fell down on top of the cache! Then he slivered back up inside! Eek!

Next we found one in a hollow of a tree in a neighborhood park. Finding the park was the hard part!

So it was getting dusky and we were about to pass the Brandywine Battlefield park. I haven’t been there in years. In fact, my memory of it is as a toddler getting yelled at for floating a Styrofoam cup down a stream! I think this is that area…

Sean’s been there for school, but we only drive past it coming home from my mom’s house. We pulled in and there is a big hill to climb. They had the parking roped off, but people were still there taking walks. We got to about 350 feet and the GPS wanted us in the grassy area. I couldn’t win with not going in tall grass today. It was even darker in there and we think we needed to go in the woods  higher up, but we decided to quit (past post mentioned animal carcasses, etc). We saw an overturned  ‘ancient’ outhouse and one of those broken benches with cement sides. Very unexpected and why don’t they get rid of them?

And a pretty sunset was to be witnessed

Sep11

Lovely Oakbourne Mansion and park

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There is a little gem of a park on the property of Oakbourne Mansion in West Chester, Pa. I’ve been  to the glorious mansion a few times for a craft sale. It was nice to walk through the big rooms and check out the crafts.

We came to find a cache in this whimsical ‘water tower’. The cache was on the outside, but I really wanted to see this amazing structure.

This was near the back here…Brian spotted it first. His only find of the day. I found the rest-hee hee! They say that bats live up in the eves here. We didn’t see them or their ‘guano’.

Then we walked down a path to find one near a pond. We happen to meet a lady coming out of the woods from a hike and she pointed us to which we thought was the right direction. Well if we had gone straight down a road, we would have avoided a root covered trail. We got some exercise and when I see beautiful natural spots like this:

I am in awe of how pretty it is!

There were suppose to be turtles around, but we didn’t see any. : (

The cache was behind the pond. We went down the wrong path at first. I am so going to write stuff down after I read the posts. We did have to bushwhack a bit and I spotted the cache almost out in the open.  It didn’t have much in it, so I added a nano travel coin and swag.

So we went after cache three in this location and it was opposite of where we had just been. We could have driven around to a different entrance, but walked down another road. I am pretty sure we walked by a half way house. There were some guys there with shaved heads standing around outside, just hanging around. I was a little nervous. There we were at that pretty place and then come across this group. They didn’t say anything…right away. We heard one say ‘walkin’ in the woods’. So we looked around a basketball court area and noticed an old stone wall. The cache was a ‘pole’ and we didn’t see any pole except for the basketball hoop. Brian saw a path and we went down it. Then we saw a pole which happened to be the ‘the pole’. I saw some wood piled up around the bottom of it-yep, that’s a sure sign it’s hiding a cache. There was a little bison tube hanging there! I didn’t take a photo of it as my battery was going.

We walked by ‘those guys’ again and headed to a cache near where my late uncle lived. It was placed by a big new electronic billboard. I got out and looked first, but there was a fence up with narrow planks and I couldn’t see on the other side of it too well. There was a long silver nail hammered near one fence post and I swore that was where the cache was suppose to be-think it was a decoy! When I got home I saw where people were dodging sprinklers, so it must have been on the other side of the fence!

We were heading home thinking Sean needed me to make dinner, but he was going to the town where his school is to meet up with his girlfriend. So I said I wanted to see this:

I needed to frolic in them!

I saw a local artist on Facebook who had a photo of himself painting these. Spectacular!

Since we were in that area, I saw a cache that looked fun and cute. We drove a few miles and we found it quickly. I like creative caches!

The cache was the egg! Ha ha!

Traveling down the road we did a cemetery cache that’s been on my list for a while. Gee cache owner, thanks for putting that one way on the other side-near the road. It was neat to read the different stones, some very old.

Look at this marker! I was in the car and saw this and jumped out to get a shot of it!

Actress Linda Darnell is in this cemetery. She passed away in 1965, being a fire victim.

We went and grabbed a roast beef sub and headed to ‘just one more’ even though it was 7 pm.

Thanks to the previous logs, I knew the bees were gone from a cache, but it took 3 lamp post skirts before we found the pill bottle cache.

The night wasn’t over though. I had a cache to hide. I went down near where we go to the doctor and dentist as I saw a great area to find one. We get there and a guy was snoozing in his car. My GPS wasn’t coming up, so we drove around to an upper parking lot.  We went down to the first lot and the guy had left. I guess we scared him! I went for a guardrail instead of the lamp skirt.  I came home and put up the cache for review. Within a few hours it was up and someone had found it already!

So we surely had a fun afternoon finding 6 out of 7 caches!

Brian is still learning at his job. He had someone call about stocking stores with magazines. He said he’d think about it, but I went online and applied right afterwards. Why not?  A pal said she did it before and enjoyed it.

Such a sad day of remembrance  for our nation. It’s hard to believe that 11 years ago, our lives were changed forever. Seeing the memorial back in February made the events of that day real and surreal. 

Sep8

27th year of the Mushroom Festival

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Brian and I headed up to the next town where the mushroom festival was in full swing. It was a bit warm, but a breeze was blowing once in a while. This festival grows every year! There were rides for the kids, more than last year and lots of vendors. Not an exciting shot, but so hard to take photos

It was up and down the main drag-that walk is getting longer, but I didn’t mind it as much this year!

Almost every restaurant that lines the town on both sides was represented . Absent again was Longwood Gardens who has the best mushroom soup, hands down. I did purchase soup from another place and it wasn’t as thick and rich as Longwood’s is. We bought this sampling of food-not that cheap. Almost $33 for this:

Two cups of mushroom soup, two beef portabella burgers, mushroom/asparagus risotto (with very little asparagus) and stuffed grape leaves. Ouch right? I wanted one more thing, but we ran out of cash. The food was good, but not wonderful. I want to make that risotto and I will load mine up with mushrooms and asparagus.

Outside the Kennett Inn, Chef Antonia Lafoso was signing her cookbook. She was on ‘Top Chef’ about 4 yrs ago. We didn’t go to talk to  her as I wasn’t interested in her cookbook ‘Busy Mom’s Cookbook’.  If you remember when we saw Maria Muldaur, I do not care much for ‘celebs’ sitting or standing behind tables.  A few years ago at the festival, Food Network star Sunni Anderson was so sweet and put her arm around me for a photo. Standing up greeting people. That says a lot to me.

It’s an event we like to attend, a chance to sample food and maybe see someone interesting.

A few hours later, we had heavy rain, so it was a good thing we went when we did! I may go up again with Sean in the morning. He’s not much on moving fast on days he has to work though.

This evening I worked on some Artist Trading Cards! It’s been a few months and it felt good to be using my papers again.

Sep8

It’s always 2 out of 3

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It’s been kind of a slllllooooowwww week here. When there has been a whirlwind of activity and then you are grounded, days creep by. I went to the doctor, she prescribed very pricey gel rub for my aches and pains. Did she not hear I need  to get generic stuff? I got a little discount because of the Key Ring Phone app, but not as much. And my blood pressure reading, the first time they took it was 132/82! That’s the lowest it’s been for a doctor visit in 2 years! I still need to try and lose weight, which has been hard for me, but maybe I have more muscle than fat? My weight varies 2-3 pounds all the time and of course it was higher at the doctor’s visit. The doctor is probably in her mid 30s and was wearing a peasant dress with the tube top under her lab coat. At least she is a relaxed doctor.

It’s been wet too, we aren’t use to wet lately and so I sorted out piles and piles of papers from Brian’s old job which he should have tossed months ago. Speaking of Bri, he’s getting use to his job as a cashier. It’s just part-time and he may have to look for another part-time job in a few months times. The manager said they only hire p-t. It’s something and it’s experience.

My PT Cruiser is in the shop. It needs a few things repaired: rotors, brake pads, transmission cooler hoses and a tire-really all 4 before the winter, but we will go to Wally World for 3 of them. An unexpected surprise. I don’t know why my rotors rusted out like they did. We don’t have a garage, so that didn’t help matters.

Today Brian finally cut the grass after 2 weeks and late in the afternoon (a little too late) we ran out to do a few caches and grab a pizza dinner.

The first place we stopped was a little town with a park. From what I read it was in the gazebo…we went right to it…and I ‘thought’ Brian checked around the ceiling ledge well and he said he didn’t see anything. So we walked around the park thinking it was a bigger box….nothing. We went and sat in the gazebo and I remembered the hint was octagon, so he started looking again and ran across a Altoids box painted white to blend in with the gazebo! What a relief for him to find it! He needs to use more stealth at times. I mean with that phone booth cache, the GPS was awful, but I went back in the booth, saw the chain  hanging off a raised spot (probably where the phone book was) and felt around for it (I am scared of bees and keep an eye out for any flying about) and there was a key box painted red to match the booth! (I forget if I shared the photo!)

 

This had logs dated back to 2008. I didn’t bring my swag and didn’t take anything.

Next we went to one called ’70 Windows’ which was placed less than 2 weeks ago. There is two levels of stores in a ‘u’ shape. The hint was ‘neenah’ which means ‘little’ (or micro, right?) There was a Talbot’s Petite store there and 3 foot lights with shades running along the back of the sidewalk and their shades were metal. However my GPS was bouncy. We got to ’17’ feet and it went up to ’54’ feet, that kind of thing. The other cachers left good hints. We even thought it was on the second floor and there wasn’t anyplace good to put it. But, all was not lost, we ate some awesome pizza at ‘Pizza by Elizabeth’. The menu has the pizzas named after last names of famous Elizabeths-Taylor, Montgomery. I got an artichoke and spinach in fontina with crispy fried onion on top…with wheat crust. I had a spring mix salad with Vinaigrette-just delicious, even the toffee candy the sweet waiter gave us at the end of the meal. Brian had a BBQ chicken pizza named ‘Shue’ for the actress. Mine was ‘Jackson’…Betty, Beth? I don’t know.

We saved some for Sean and headed to a cache in church parking lot. It was way back off the main road and a lovely area. I want to go back and take photos.

This is called Christ Church. Near Wilmington and Greenville, DE. Our Vice President Joe Biden lives around this general area some place. On the way to the church, we saw some huge homes. I did a Google search and his home is on a lake or pond that is more in the open.

So we had the entire parking lot to ourselves. Again bouncy GPS. We checked in the only lamp skirt that we came across that moved and saw a few bundles securely wrapped in plastic bags. Not sure what they were, but we didn’t even touch those as they had been there a while, were wet and guarded by spiders. After 10 minutes and going in a little wooded area where there was mulch, etc., I decided to check out an additional parking sign (think that’s what it said) and looked behind it! Voila! There was a silver bison secured with velcro. Sneaky!  My phone camera died so Bri took a blurry photo. I just got that awesome shirt last night at Wally World-camo!

So that was my 2 out of 3 caching day. Up to 110!!!!

Sep5

Caching around DC

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Before we went the 10 miles or so to Washington, DC  (on the 2nd) We went to find a cache in a neighborhood near National Harbor. You could tell it had been there many more years than 4 years like the town. I’m pretty sure it’s Oxion Hill, MD. We drove by a Cirque du Soleil tent. That would have been fascinating to see. Did I mention it was raining? So we pull up to the area and I see a fence and guardrail. Sometimes I get so excited to find the cache, I forget the hint and things I have read about it! Plus I am getting out of the car in the rain in a strange neighborhood. Brian and Sean stayed in the car. I looked along the fence and turned around-the GPS showed it was close to the road-come on mush brain-it’s the guardrail! And there it was! I brought it back in the car and dumped it out and stuck a travel bug in it, then squeezed everything back in.

Didn’t I get a tick on me from this 5 minute caching! All the times I’m in the woods and I find a tick on me in a neighborhood!

I was checking out the phone for another cache and brain fog set in again! Brian had said he needed gas and drove by a nice gas station looking for another cache. We turned around as we thought we missed the road and as we approached the station again, the numbers went down! He had decided to skip the gas and it was there at that station-rats.

We got to DC in about 20 minutes and the hardest part was finding a place to park, next to the crazy streets there. We had to get ourselves around to the back of Union Station and then we did park on the roof of the garage. We looked around the station a little and the guys got coffee. We headed out to look for the caches (marble brain #3 episode-2 hours sleep just doesn’t cut it for me).

So we walk toward the Capitol. It is quite a sight. Oh, I’ve seen it in 5th grade (been in it also) and seen it many other times, but to see it from other angles is amazing.

Getting close to the Capitol

So here it is in all it’s historic majesty!

The only problem-I forgot it was a ‘virtual’ cache until we looked around a park nearby-that was a waste of time because are they going to let you put a box next to a historic place like this-really? Anyway, when I figured it out, I was suppose to take a photo of  the other side, where the Presidents take the oath of office! Grrrr-well, I had seen that area too, and I am sure a kid in my 5th grade class fell down in that general area (I’m talking 1970) and Cam broke his leg! It may have been Arlington, but it was in DC.  I told the C.O. what happened on geocaching.com and he didn’t say anything.

The next was also a virtual and within 10 minutes I remembered something about turtle eyes in the questions. This was across the way from the Capitol at the Library of Congress. Another issue was I had forgotten my geocaching bag with the GPS device and my phone’s battery was going. It was making the screen darken up. So I looked at the description again and answered the questions. The turtles were in a fountain near the sidewalk. The ‘authors’ were along the top of the building show below. That was all we did as we were tired and had a 6 block walk back to the car.

We grabbed some pizza and headed home. Well we started to head home and I mentioned that DC Cupcakes was in Georgetown. We tried to find that for almost an hour-Sean’s GPS took us to the incorrect end of  ‘M’ St. When we located it, it was 6:30 and it was hopping in that town with limited parking with no place to park in the area of the shop. But the shop was going to close at 7:00 and there was a line going out the door! For cupcakes! I guess because they have a tv show and all. I am going to make my own cupcakes for the fellas after all that running around. And we want to go back to Georgetown-it looks like a nice place, similar to New Hope in PA.

So again we are on the road to home-we are going through downpours every 5 miles or so. I then mention a easy virtual cache in Baltimore-you just get info from a memorial. We get off the exit and run into traffic and roads that we had needed to take being closed. No baseball game, but Sean remembered there was a Nascar show there and they were letting out! We never got near the cache and ended up going through an ‘iffy’ part of town. We were all getting tired of city driving. Did I tell you how awful it is to drive in DC? This was pretty bad too.

I’m glad we stopped, but I would have liked to see the President exhibit at the Madame Tussand  Museum, which I didn’t remember about until we got home. Not a good day for remembering anything! I truly do research my cache hunting well and things go smoothly-most times. Big city caching is harder! There aren’t a ton of box caches, but there are a ton of virtual ones to be found-in the future.

Union Station

Seen anything familiar from the roof of the garage?