Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center-National Harbor, MD
Inside the hotel, an interesting wall hanging
A park near the Capitol with a very overgrown bush. Looks like it has multi-beards.
Outside the Library of Congress
A park on the way back to Union Station
Butterfly weed
Very tame squirrel! There were two of them right outside an office building, so they probably got fed all the time.
The three of us went down to National Harbor, MD on Saturday the 1st for Abbey Road on the River, the musical tribute to the Beatles. We went last year and stayed at the Gaylord and had a fun time. I changed the room this year to the atrium area so we wouldn’t have as far to walk. That helped, as did bringing foods for a few meals, but that’s about it. It was very humid and just standing in the sun for a few minutes was miserable. We purchased ‘general admission’ tickets and not ‘preferred seating’. Even though it was suppose to be half price for two days, it was still $70 and we had a hard time just standing and finding a place to stand. Last year they had seats open and we usually got to sit down, almost at every venue. Many times this year, there were empty seats for the P.A. and people standing elbow to elbow everywhere even up and down the walkways for G.A.. To me that isn’t too safe and not very organized. Saturday night we sat in a little area for hotel guests near the pool with tables-we could barely see the singers, but we could hear them fine. That isn’t right.
We took a few shots of the bands-I have to ID them by looking at the schedule later, but I think we saw maybe 4-5 bands and last year twice that many.
See all the empty seats for the preferred seats? Behind this fence it was jammed.
That evening we did have a nice dinner at McCormick and Schmicks Seafood right on the waterfront. Sean and I had their McCormick Seafood trio of salmon with grilled shrimp and stuffed shrimp with green beans (under cooked-ugh) and cheesy kind of potatoes.
Brian had Mahi Mahi with a corn bisque. We also got a huge, delectable piece of carrot cake to share.
We took a little walk to find a cache. It was about 1/4 mile away and we had to cross over 4 roads, two which had a lot of traffic on them. It was near an interesting rock formation:
This is my early 1970s look.
The hint for the cache made it a little too easy to find. I ‘always’ look at the hint since I have gone to the trouble to go and look for the cache in the first place. It was down from this area behind a rock. Not in good shape. I forgot to bring my bag with my geocaching stuff, so I had no travel bug or swag to drop (really didn’t want to take it to the restaurant). The pen was between another rock which I didn’t see right away, so I used a crayon from the swag-lol.
So we walked on back up through the town to listen to more music and I started to have a coughing attack. It happened when we drove into the place a few hours earlier. I think my sinuses decided to act up. I was okay after I got into the hotel’s air to revive. I am spoiled by a/c. So we ventured out to ‘good ol’ general admission and right smack in the middle were 4 hotel chairs-with papers on them. I had seen them earlier with papers on them. I watched those chairs for 10-15 minutes and then decided to go sit down. You don’t save hotel chairs in this area. I was the only brave person to do so and another 10-15 minutes went by and sure enough a woman came back and said they were their chairs because they put papers on them. I said you don’t save chairs in this area and I needed to sit for a few minutes. She had a chair next to Brian and her hubby was very nice and said to stay. I said we will leave in a few songs anyway which we did. (We did see her later at another concert and she decided to sit in the 1st or 2nd row-now that’s not a good idea in a closed room with big booming speakers).
Look at the nice view they were stealing from other people. If they wanted preferred seats, they should have paid for them.
On the pier
It felt like about 94-that fan with the mist was worth every penny I paid. I seemed to be the only person with one-crazy!
So after the above fiasco (this was at the night show) Sean took a water taxi over to Alexandria like he did last year. Brian and I walked along the river and still heard the band and saw them from the back. And then…
the lightning show began….
in all my years I have never seen lightning like that-truly spectacular and scary at the same time! We decided to go in as the rain began and they cancelled the show! Inside everyone was going upstairs, so we did also. They did the firework show anyway which was pretty awesome.
‘Fire and Rain’
Not a fun way really to watch fireworks
We sat and waited for an indoor concert and listened to a few songs, but we had Sean on our mind as the rain was coming down in buckets and the power had gone out in the bar he was in. He asked the bartender how often that happens and he said about once a year! The roads in those old towns tend to flood out and Sean had to wait a bit to come back on the water taxi. We could have driven over to get him, but thank goodness that worked out well.
DC tomorrow!
Our plans were to go to the Delaware County Community College (where I graduated in 1979) to a flea market. My brother decided to take my mom and I messaged him and he said it was ‘so-so’. Brian and I decided to go south to one of our favorite stomping grounds, New Castle, DE. They also had a flea market going on, so not all was lost in the looking and haggling department.
However-since we found 3 caches last night and were up to 99 in total, we just had to get to #100 today-somewhere. I thought maybe look down the road again. I’ve looked there several times-I just don’t want anyone I know see me look inside a guardrail-lol.
We started to look for one and the parking was in a neighborhood where they didn’t want people really coming in as it said ‘private road’. We then went to a lovely Presbyterian church with a nicely kept cemetery. We had to walk through the cemetery and saw a few Shakespeares in a few different areas. How unusual:
And check this out!
Yay for us!!!
We also looked for one in an old electric box near a Sears store and the door refused to open! We had to walk up a hill above the parking lot-it was narrow and there were stones there to slip on. A bit unsafe and we won’t go for those kind anymore.
We then ventured on to the farmer’s market flea market and there were still vendors there. I saw an ammo box I would have liked to have, but the guy wouldn’t come down from $10. Bummer. I bet in a few weeks, it will still be there. Like something I got my mom today in the actual market. I can’t say what as it’s a gift, but we got it down to $10 from $20! We found a vendor who sold really nice books for $2 each. I will tell you about them later.
Inside we got some produce-has anyone cooked with figs? I also got a floppy hat for the event next week. I wanted one and got one for $3. It’s kind of funky.
So we left and headed home, but something on the geocache page caught my eye-Brandywine Springs Amusment park. The navigator took us to a neighborhood again, but we found the park and were with 400 or so feet of the cache. We started to walk through the leaf covered, bumpy trail- it went down and down 150 feet or so. Then we started to see these nice markers.
There was once a lovely amusement park here!
All that are left in the area where we were looking were markers that an Eagle Scout had put there.
Some old time shots of the park:
A video about the park.
We did see the slab where the book author is kneeling down next to. It use to have a merry go round above it!
The cache was hidden half way up a hill in a fallen tree. Brian climbed up and didn’t see it at first. I was begging him to find it, it had to be there from the hint. The mosquitoes were a bitin’! It needed some maintenance, but I dropped a travel bug in it. I also wrote to the cache owner to make sure we had the right one and told him about the travel bug.
I came home and made pork tenderloins (from an Amish vendor) with mushrooms and fried rice with a side of cauliflower.
We sure had fun on our treasure hunts and finding #100!
As the time ticks down for when Brian will be busier, we are trying to squeeze some more hikes into our days that are left. I will hopefully be busier also as I get a few of my online stores up and running again in a few weeks.
Yesterday we went about 10 miles from here to an area off of Rt. 72 in Delaware called Paper Mill Park. It was basically a patch of woods in between nice housing developments. When we pulled up, we didn’t see anything except lush green. Bri backed up a bit and then I saw a walking path.
It was a narrow path and we saw a pond to our left with about 50 feet or so of trees and brush on both sides. The two caches we found were on the pond side….near trees.
We first had to walk under this ‘gnarly tree’. I felt like I was walking in the woods of the enchanted forest!
I had just gotten those seafoam color shorts the night before. I like them! (Caribbean Joe).
Nice pond we checked out after finding the two caches here.
There were a few of these large boxes-I think they were bat houses! They eat mosquitoes and we should get one as the skeeters are so bad all the time now.
We went to find another smaller cache called ‘the most tacky cache in Delaware’. Yay, curiosity got the best of me. The place was a ‘road’ that lead to fields all around and the grass was really long (tick land). I think the cache was nearer a somewhat quiet road, but when the cars went by, they zoomed by. We would of had to walk a bit through that grass. I think ‘tacky’ meant it was magnetic. I’d like to find it when the grass is cut!
We also found a cache near a park where people mostly ride horses. Bri is getting good-he saw a path off a gravel path and the cache was in there! But he looked in the wrong tree, it was actually under a stump that had a hole in it like a fairy house. I dropped a travel coin in there to pass along.
The plastic on this map was really scuffed up!
We are up to 96 finds now! Hope to get 4 over the weekend as we are going to a flea market on Sunday and there are some near this area.
We stopped at a new Cali-Mexican place for dinner and I could only eat half of it as I got full and I was more thirsty then hungry. We grabbed a few groceries and headed to the cache at the dairy we couldn’t find a few nights earlier. This time we saw a woodsy area we ignored the night before. We went in there and found it right away! The cache was very visible, but the log was on the ground in several pieces. We picked it up the best we could and replaced it in a better hiding area. The cache owner emailed me and said it had been ‘muggled’ five times this year. Kids have to be doing it.
We did get to take my mom out to dinner a few nights ago. We picked a classy Asian style restaurant and it was really delicious. Mom enjoyed her meal as did Sean and me.
She had a chicken, shrimp and scallops in a tangerine sauce. Sean and I had Imperial Shrimp. The menu was so fancy, I didn’t know what some of the items were on it!
And Zoey was right, my Persian Shield really came back nicely after it was overwintered in the basement.
I didn’t do much today, though I am about to make dinner. I had terrible indigestion from either the new restaurant’s food or some snack food I was eating. I am better, but I was tossing and turning a lot last night.
Last night Brian and I headed to Philadelphia for a tour featuring vampires, ghosts and sex. Believe me, I am not shocked by anything as I grew up with three brothers. Rain was threatening all afternoon, and on the way in it did rain about 10 minutes. We went in a little early to geocache. There were not a bunch of them in the vivacity of Independence Hall, but we saw there was one on Sansom Street where jeweler’s row was. Oh, I had printed out a coupon for a parking garage and we went into the incorrect one…bummer. Also saw where my cousin’s store was and will have to go there sometime. The family has owned a Danish furniture store for years-it’s called ‘Dane Decor’.
So we walk down to Sansom. Almost 30 years ago, we walked around there looking for my engagement ring. Because Princess Diana had a sapphire, I wanted an emerald with diamonds around it. We went to a few stores and settled on Sydney Rosen & Co. The salesman talked me out of the emerald as a main stone, so I got a .33 diamond with two emeralds on each side. Years later, I got my ring cleaned and sized again and not sure if all the emeralds had cracked, but some had to be replaced.
Back to yesterday-so we start looking for a nice size cache and the GPS is bouncing back and forth. We look down stairwells and in planters. We did this for 30 minutes. I thought it best to tell the policeman we were looking for something hidden since we are in the diamond district. So a man walks by me and says ‘8 ft. 6 ft…..’ I asked him if he knew we were looking for something and he said yes and if I wanted to know where it was. I said…well I think it’s in a planter. He said look for one just with dirt…and then pointed to a restaurant! I think I could of found it without him telling me about the restaurant part. Within a few minutes we found the empty planter (the hint was on the earth). It was almost buried with a tile over top of it. It had a lot of stuff in it too, which I found the ones around here usually don’t.
Here I am with the cache with Sydney Rosen behind me!
Next we went to the Bourse Building as we didn’t have time to locate a Cheese steak place I read about. We had 15 minutes to grab a slice of pizza (we had the kind with a top crust). A shop was still open and I went in and grabbed a few little things for Sean, Mom and me.
Then we headed on over to the Liberty Bell pavillion. We had both seen the Liberty Bell a few times, but not here. We had to get our belongings examined like at the Mrs. Obama event!
It was really humid and I had to pull my hair back-whew!
For Zoey-look at this gorgeous Sweet Potato vine!
We then headed for the tour across the street at the visitor center. We first looked around a gift shop there-wow stuff is expensive!
We had a young guy about Sean’s age and he didn’t want his photo taken. I guess maybe it’s because of what he is talking about. We stood at the visitor’s center for 10-15 minutes as he told us about the infidelities of our founding fathers. I knew about Jefferson and the slaves. Something about John Hancock that I didn’t buy.
Then the part, which must have been this guy’s favorite part was talked about down the ways. It was about hookers in Philly in the colonial days. I knew it was a tour that was ‘R’ rated, but why not show us maybe where a brothel was?
We went over to Washington Square. That was used as a mass burial yard. Very creepy. He said a guy he knows was digging in his basement nearby and bones fell out of the wall. Okay, maybe after over 200 years? Thanks to standing there all that time I got at least half a dozen mosquito bites.
That’s the unknown soldier…the guy said they pulled some guy out of the mass grave in a uniform.
He told us a lot of stuff, but didn’t show us many sights. This building (not sure if it’s the original) was a prison and where the first balloon sailed all the way over to Deptford, NJ (really not that far).
I really liked seeing the Old City Tavern up close. The ghost story is that a bride was getting ready for her wedding and her bridesmaid knocked into an oil lamp and set her on fire and she met her demise.
Here’s a local tv program and the head chef and a clairvoyant are talking about ghosts in the tavern.
Entrance way of the Old City Tavern-look at all the famous people chef Walter Staib has met.
The guide left us across the street from here at a grid pattern that was set up the way the original city streets were laid out. And that was it. He even had the nerve to ask for a tip. This wasn’t a cheap tour, even with the discount. I was a bit peeved as they took a registration fee on top of the Living Social deal. And the other tour took you in a circle. This one, we had to find our way back to 6th and Market.
More sights:
Souvenirs!
The Declaration House where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution
Independence Hall at night. We heard the clock chime three times.
This was unique. What’s in the remnants of I think the Beale house. There are three videos going and places to sit. This one looks like it’s above a fireplace. There are windowless window frames also.
I think we enjoyed walking around on our own more than going on the tour! I’d love to eat at the Old City Tavern sometime and visit a few more places and look for a few more caches. 40 miles isn’t that far away.
Today I was trying to get a hold of my mom for a few hours. Finally I called my brother, the one who lives around the corner to go check on her if he could. He said she was at his house. Well she was just there with us yesterday with Brian and me. He had to go get her in our hometown. She had been leaving the bank and was carefully going into the intersection when a woman in her 40s broadsided her! She started to spin and saw she was heading for another car and lady and turned the steering wheel hard and missed her by inches. She was seat belted in as far as I know and is fine. They had a hard time getting her out of the car at the door got stuck shut. And the car’s right axle is bent, so her 21 yr old car is totaled. I don’t know how the lady could not see a blue sedan. I am so thankful she is fine. She was choking up tonight as she really liked the car. Ahhh. Scary for an almost 82 year old.
Brian went for the interview today. It’s a food store and only part-time. The woman said they only hire p-t. So he will probably take it, though his hours will range from 12-30. I think he’ll have the ‘early bird special’ hours. It’s getting something on his resume in the food industry too. I think I will have to get more serious about a job too. I’ve been really miserable at night and need to get that under control. I plan to add items to both etsy and eBay for pocket money and I want to design some greeting cards. Things will hopefully get better sooner or later.
And I leave you with an interesting tree we found at the park in Delaware. This is the park you pay to get it…
We still want to go geocaching, but if all goes well with Brian’s job interview later, we will only do it a few times a month. Not to say that I can’t go and find some in towns by myself. But after coming up empty handed a few times in parks, we are thinking that we don’t want to slide down a hill or break anything in parks that aren’t well maintained. Yesterday wasn’t really fun like the search should be. We went to my hometown and for some reason I thought finding a few caches there would be a piece of cake. Boy were we wrong! Glen Providence Park was designated a park back in 1936.
When I was a kid, they use to set off fireworks there and we all sat on the hill and watched. So we walked down that hill which looked a lot smaller to me now (that seems to be the case when we grow up) and headed for this one cache. We had parked at the main entrance as we started looking for a multi-cache and here the coords listed were for the parking! Duh! Not an Einstein day for either of us. To get to ‘real’ coords, you had to figure them out in this puzzle, but it really wasn’t a puzzle, but a list of things about Denmark. Didn’t get that and didn’t have the time to figure it out.
So we trudged on down the firework hill (thinking in the back of our minds about climbing up it again) and saw this neat sight of Scroggie Pond. It was all green as if paint had been spilled on it and it lay on top of the water.
We only got within 130-150 feet of the two caches we were looking for and the GPS either stopped or jumped to a lower or higher number. We ventured up hill sides and came up empty handed. When and if we go to smallish park, we will now note if a trail is named and when the CO placed the cache. The one was placed in December. Although many people found the 1st one, they were looking in the colder months of the year.
The second cache was even harder. Seems after reading post logs, that we should have parked on the other side of the park where my school bus would let people off. Thinking back, I don’t know why they would get off there as they had big hills to climb…oh yeah, they were teenagers!
The trail was full of roots and rocks. I thought we could cross a stream, but my sneaker sunk into the muck. Later I have to hose my sneaks down.
After all this, I went and got my hair done. We were sweaty messes, especially Brian. I had just given him a haircut this morning and his entire head was soaked.
Even though we had to pay to get in the Lums Pond Park last week, it was worth it-named trails, clean…we had fun there.
I am definitely the queen of lamp skirts and can zone in on one in less than 5 minutes most of the time. We found two of those on the way home! Got all the caches for the hometown mall now.
Delaware Geocaching Trail has the larger caches I enjoy, so I will stick with what they have placed.
I got permission to place a cache up in Kennett Square near the borough building. I missed the email before the lady there went on vacation and now have to wait until the end of the month to place it.
We got to meet Maggie at my brother’s house. She’s 5 months old and learning not to jump on people though she licked the Off! off my leg. Ugh.
Wednesday-Grim Ghost Tour in Philly!
What an exciting day we had up in Montgomery County, PA yesterday! I got an email, said to pick up the tickets and come on up to see First Lady Michelle Obama. Brian literally held the camera over the heads of other people (zoom lens). We arrived late, got our purses searched and walked through a metal detector. We had to stand almost an hour to wait for Mrs. Obama. The school (Upper Dublin high school, about an hour from here) only had the one side of bleachers open. Thank goodness my mom had a fold up chair, but that little lady had to walk from a field.
Not too bad right? We only got a few clear ones. We took my almost 82 yr old mom along as none of us has ever seen a First Lady before…just their inaugural gowns in the American History museum. Sean has seen both Barack Obama at a Penn State rally and Bill Clinton.
The First Lady is a very thoughtful, intelligent speaker. People tend to forget that both she and her husband come from humble backgrounds. Barack was raised by a single mother and his grandparents (I was raised by my mom and grandmom). I know she probably repeats this speech a lot, but it was interesting to the 1,800 people there. We all had to go pick up the tickets to be able to go in.
The school band
The people on the bleachers
Send some good vibes as the hubby got a phone call yesterday while we were out for a job interview!
We are trying to take a little trip a week until the job gods send Brian something. It sure helps us to have something to think about. In ‘the old days’ you ‘most likely’ at least would get a phone call or letter in the mail if they were/weren’t interested in you. Nowadays, if you get an email you are lucky. When I got the store job, I went in and got an application and filled it out, ‘the old-fashioned way’.
Anyway, I thought it would be a great day to go to a pretty park for a picnic. We had been to Lum’s Pond Park many years ago for a company picnic where Brian worked when we first got married. We were trying to remember which area we were in back then and think it was near the entrance.
So we stopped for gas and shorties (hoagies/subs) and headed about 25 miles to the park. We had a few people around, but mostly had the place to ourselves. We sat near the pond and saw so many white herons:
I found this ‘yucky’ cache-it has been there 10 years (Something is eating the tree and it was all over the cache). The lid is broken where the pin goes in and there wasn’t anything good in it…I left some good stuff. We had found one other one (Brian spotted it first) called ‘Wham-o’ as it was near a field where you could use a Frisbee with your pooch.
Like my pigtails-need to keep my neck cool-lol. I thought I looked like ‘Hot Lips’ from M*A*S*H, my favorite show in the 1970s. I appreciated dry humor. : )
So after I got home I noticed that another part of the park had quite a few caches…live and learn. This park will be gorgeous in the fall…we will be back!
After we left here I wanted to do a few along the C&D canal…there’s a ton of them!
I did find 12! I don’t like ‘robot’ caching-they were behind a telephone pole every 500 feet. Helped me to get to 75!
First of 12!
So a guy passed us (it was hard to do on this narrow gravel road) and he looked disgruntled about something. I think he had been in and out of his van 54 times to get these. And he complained about it on geocaching.com. Because of him I wrote it was the 8th instead of the 7th. Why do these and complain?
So next we headed to Delaware City just to check it out a bit. It’s nice there if you can ignore the smoke stacks right before you hit the town. It was a little Victorian style water port at one time. Some of the homes are sweet. Need to go back to check them out closer.
We did see this:
And Fort Delaware…like to go over there sometime as I heard there is a cache there too!
Must take a ferry there
We ate at a place called ‘Crabby Dick’s’. Can’t beat $6.99 Shrimp Poboys and fries. It was one the first floor here. That’s our trusty white Mariner parked there.
And a few parting shots of yours truly and the hubs
And a glorious sunset
Taken from the car
Brian and I headed down to New Castle again today as I wanted to find the cache in the New Castle historic Court House in Delaware.
The guide led us up to few short flights of stairs and said ‘it’s in here someplace.’ I saw it in like 20 seconds. It stood out like a sore thumb. LOL
So after we grabbed a Cajun lunch (wow that was spicy and I couldn’t eat it all) we headed down to nearby Battery Park right on the Delaware River.
By the way, I took all these from my phone. I do that and wear down my battery. We need to remember the Canon more!
Mine was Cajun Chicken salad with honey mustard…all I could taste was that Cajun spice. To me a little goes a long way. I wish I had gotten the Catfish Poboy like Brian.
Battery Park
There was a little beach here
Neat looking driftwood
A hubby enjoying the view
And finding a Nano! It had been here 7 years…
Brian retrieved this and we sat down at this picnic table. I opened it and the log fell out! It was so windy and we thought it blew across an open field. A man was sitting near by and asked what we were looking for and we told him about geocaching. Didn’t he get up and start looking around. We almost gave up and started walking away. He waved us back and said it had just fallen in the space on top of the picnic table-wow-that was luck. I signed it and off we went. He said he would check it out. We noticed he sat for a long time on top of a picnic table when we had walked to near the other end of the park.
Saw a pretty Bed and Breakfast and their garden
And me near the water with a big barg of old cars behind me (so our log finding helper told us).
We went to a shopping center and looked around a QVC outlet store right before they closed. I got some crocheted Halloween ornaments for mom and me for $3.25 each. The box said they sold on air for $38.00. They had a lot of them-ghost, purple spider, etc.
We also stopped at Wendy’s and tried to find a few more caches to no avail. People were mentioning wasps for the one and we looked in two areas where they could build their nests-nope. The other cache was behind a liquor store. Near the cache area, there was a pile of sand, traffic cones, etc. We thought it was near a fence, but we didn’t see anything. Oh well, it was fine finding a nano.
*****
Today would have been Brian’s mom’s 90th birthday. She’s been gone almost 16 yrs now.
Collages & Creative Goodness 