Category Archives: geocaching

Jun25

Blog neglect, vacation stuff

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Since my whirlwind of activity is dying down, I can get down to brass tacks again with blogging. I went and got my mom on Saturday for a two day visit. We all went over to the father-in-law’s house to wish him a Happy 89th Birthday. From the get go, I felt pops was uncomfortable having my mom and me there. Brian and Sean were installing his new a/c (birthday gift) in his room and it was a messy job. Well Bri’s dad starts up about something ‘we need for the house’. I’d rather not say exactly what it is (send me a note if you want to know) and I said we didn’t really need it right now. Well he wouldn’t let it go and got mad at me and left the living room to sit in the family room. He’s living in a 4 bedroom split level. Mom and I were shook up and I took the car down to a local shopping center so pops would simmer down. We never did go back in the house again and never sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him. I sure was hoping it would make him happy to have a house full of people (well almost), but that didn’t happen. It was going on 6:30 and we had to go out to eat. Too bad pops wasn’t along, but he got so grumpy that it ruined our visit.

So….we were away from early Monday to late Thursday. Our trip didn’t quite go as planned. Monday and Tuesday we were in Virginia Beach and had a nice time.  We got on the road Wednesday to head to Williamsburg, but got in traffic as the tunnel there had a disabled vehicle. We got off at an exit, tried to go another way, but of course they weren’t letting anyone in. We heard it was a 5-9 mile backup, so we decided to go to Norfolk, VA for an hour and see if that changed. We tried to see the historic society, but that was closed and they were painting. We got to see the nice garden and only a few of the buildings there. We passed by the General Douglas MacArthur statue.

Here are a few Norfolk shots:

The city in the late 1880s

The backup never got better, and we had to go to Chincoteague later, so we headed to the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach. It’s a neat one!

Turtles sunning themselves in the entrance area-it was very warm here.

Wow, a Komodo Dragon. He was checking everyone out!

 I like this shot

Menacing sharks

Lion fish

Jelly fish-amazing!

A few more shots from Virginia Beach

The King Neptune statue was amazing and had a cache hidden under it-shhhhhh!

Sean and me under him!

Tuesday I got to met Rachael who I know from cross stitching and Facebook. She is from CA, but lived in Germany for a while, now is in VB as her hubby is working out of Norfolk. We went to the Contemporary Art Museum to see an Andy Warhol exhibit. We couldn’t take photos of the Warhol art, but I did think this glass chandelier was fascinating.

I wish I could meet all of you!

I’ll talk about the last few days of our trip tomorrow.

Jun5

Cache #5 found!

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So this was the third time we went looking for this cache, and some nice people or critters made a trail through the weeds, so it was easy as pie this time to spot. An animal had left a ‘gift’ right at GZ (ground zero) and I am so glad I didn’t touch it, but I came close to it! Can’t get away from animal poo. At my mom’s we walked into her house finding her trying to clean her fairly new vacuum as she rolled over some from the older dog-he’s getting old and can’t hold it anymore. We ended up taking the machine outside and using the hose on it-ugh!

So anyway…here I am with the cache. There wasn’t much in it, so I will bring back a few buttons and things for the next time I take a walk in the park.

Notice I am wearing my camouflage shirt too! And make-up (we were going to the grocery store later).

Thinking we were on a roll, we headed out to an ‘open area’ find. It was off an housing development (gorgeous homes) and I thought, oh how far could it be down there? Well the compass started at 600 and a lot of the trail had mulch, but it was really steep too! We walked along the White Clay Creek, so pretty. We read that a train use to go by near here from Newark, De to PA.

I sure wish I had my Canon  with me so I could have shown you more awesome nature shots.

Brian took some photos on his phone too!

We get to the middle of these woods and both my phone and GPS device decide to quit on us! Rats. I sent Bri down to a ‘beach’ area near the water as it seems that other cachers saw that beavers had chewed on wood in that area. It was just too wild to see anything with the naked eye and there weren’t any good hints to help us. I think the people who live in this area donated nice benches along the trail. Of course we saw other animal gifts, but no animals. Brian mentioned snakes and I crossed my fingers. As more people find this one, there will be more hints. It was a good hike. I think between the two areas, we walked at least 2-2.5 miles today! Woo hoo! Good exercise. We have to remember to use OFF! on us or I need to mix up a tick deterrent formula when I get some tea tree oil. You mix that with water and spray on your clothes. I should be more weary as I have had Lyme disease or still have it. I don’t know if you ever really get over it fully.  We rewarded ourselves with some steak, corn on the cob and baked beans for dinner. : )

May31

Scored two geocaches!

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I had to get Brian away from the sink for one day. He needed some other pipework, but he is having trouble with the plumbing part. I wanted to go to a park where Brian use to take Sean fishing many moons ago. It’s so pretty there! We walked around a pond, went down to a lower level and through the woods, past runners and a couple smooching. : )  The ‘key’ to finding these seems to be reading over past logs. When the clue said look for a ‘beech’, well I knew I’d have to go to the one identified by the marker about 10 feet or so off the trail. There were old tree limbs leaning against the tree-very unnatural! I moved them and lo and behold, I found cache #3!

I think I’m getting the hang of finding the larger caches, though the second one was in a sandwich sized box, so the micros have to be easier to find soon…I hope!  This one hardly had anything in it and the log book was soggy! I had won some geocaching buttons from eBay and left one. It was suppose to be a music CD share, but there were none in there. This ones been around for 10.5 yrs!

We were very close to another cache in a cemetery. We pulled in and didn’t I get out to a fairly new grave next to me-dirt piled high and just a paper name tagged at the end. Luckily, you aren’t allowed to put caches right in the graved area, so we walked to the back of the cemetery where the hint said to go. There was a pile of old gravemarkers in one area and vault covers in another. We were thinking the spouse passed and they got a larger marker-maybe, right? So the clue was it was under a tree and a white stone. I sent Bri in to look….and he looked. I decided to come in the weeds and right in between some old markers was the next cache! Yay!

I was glad to get out of there. I saw later there was a micro in there-some other time, but I don’t think in the same area where we were.

We walked at least 2 miles at a the park There’s another one in there and we’ll go another day-it’s only 3 miles away. I still need to find the one in my other walking park. So glad we went as I like ponds, etc. and this is a nice place to walk. BTW, I used both my phone’s GPS and the Magellan-still getting the hang of the later one.

We later went out to dinner with Sean to Friendly’s. A lady next to use gave use a $5 off coupon! We went to Kirkland’s, like a Pier One kind of store, and I got a pretty ‘collage’ picture for the bathroom ($10-marked down from $25) and some jeweled shower curtain holders for $5. I got a shower curtain yesterday. I have a striped plastic one and got a solid Wedgewood blue. The jewels are green like the sink. I figure my accent colors will be sea glass green, blue and white.

We stopped off at Whole Food Market that just opened in April. It was nice, though pricey. I prefer Trader Joe’s and Fresh Market more. There was a ‘micro’ cache right near the store, but though we were in the right spot, it was dusky and the security guy decided to park near there. I should have read the log better as a guy said exactly what it was and where. At least we know now. ; )

 

Apr30

Some more flowery ATCs and things

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If you catch my blog and voted for me for my contest piece, thank you! I haven’t checked, but I think I’m in 4-5th place out of 18. I showed this piece in about 4 different places and I got about 21 votes. I said to Sean 20 would be nice and since one was my own-I got 20!

Anyway, Brian and I took a walk in the park. We tried to find the cache there that we couldn’t find about 2-3 weeks ago and now there are 2 feet weeds and poison ivy coming up. We couldn’t find it. I then saw there was a good size one near our township building and in under 10 minutes, we found it!

Right under the azalea bush there-lol

We drove near here and just couldn’t find where three were-we didn’t get out of the car for two. I am getting a little nervous about ticks now, so I’ll have to really start pinning my hair up and wearing lighter colors of clothing. I did take all that outfit off when I got home and brushed my hair well.

Here are some art pieces I made recently

My Groovy ATC

That’s me and I’m pretty sure I was hula hooping.

This was to have a Vintage theme. I made a copy of an inside cover of an old book of mine that’s about 100 years old for the background there. The oval is from an old book. The  ‘creating charm’ is from a store bag that had old advertising stuff on it.

I originally made this for the trade. Can you see the Viewfinder slide and the 8 ball? Then I added a sticky flower stencil I added glitter too. Too cool.

Apr22

My first geocache find!

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One out of six ‘ain’t’ bad! I think a few I jumped the gun on before we knew all the ins and outs about the hobby. And why were we looking for a micro the first time around? And who knew there are evil ones that mimic pine cones and magnets on dumpers?

This was behind a Baptist Church about 15 miles from here. I was so happy to see the container! I stood away from the actual find site so you could see it’s kind of in the sticks of Nottingham, PA.

It had cute little things in it plus the log which I signed. I forgot to take something, but I put $1 in it I was so happy to locate one. This was spur of the moment after we had browsed around a flea market place in an old barn. We’ve been there a few times. Bri got a used chain saw (please don’t break it) so we can trim some old bushes that just aren’t doing anything this year.

Then since we were in God’s country, we went to a nearby park. We were right where the cache was when my phone died. We saw landscaping fabric ‘in the middle of the woods’ and didn’t pull at it to see what’s underneath. We know where it is and will go back with a hand shovel and gloves if we are out in that area again.

We did have a nice walk in this very rural area.

Brian is enjoying taking photos too. Gets his mind off of worrying about things.

We are pretty sure it was right near here-that brown patch on the left.

It was around 6 pm-I was wondering if the critters were coming out for dinner. Had on the wrong shoes too. The paths were stony.