Category Archives: geocaching

Feb15

Back in the geo-saddle again

Posted on Friday, February 15, 2013 by Dianne

Today I felt good enough that I asked Brian if we could go to a number of ‘researched’ geocaches along a busy section in nearby Delaware (okay, I used the satellite feature on geocaching.com, but I don’t do that all the time-it’s such a busy area, it was wise of me to do this). He agreed and off we went right before 1! He cashed his check and we went to the first few caches. We also brought the Canon and I didn’t take any of the following shots, they were all by Brian!

This particular shopping area is what I call ‘cement city’. A nice bonus though is two ‘lakes’ with walking paths. Behind me is Red Robin. The fountains are lit up at night, very pretty.

We found a few pill bottles along the way. One cache was a pill bottle attached to a piece of wood floating in an open post.

One we looked for on Monday we did find in a matter of minutes. It was placed my a new geocaching buddy at the British Pub. We still need to get back there to eat again.

I liked one that was on the back of a blue light reflector. I think I had an audience when I retrieved it as a guy was sitting in his truck a bit away watching.

Hello Kitty! I replaced the other very full log!

It’s one in a water bottle for a marble trade. Clever log attachment!

We had a great salad at SaladWorks-the tuna nicoise and did a little shopping. When the sun was setting, I suggested we look for one called ‘Red Wing Pond’. It was the perfect time of the day to take a walk on another trail in the above mentioned shopping area! We looked and looked, but we think it was missing. But do enjoy the photos Brian took.

‘Cloud Wings’

Had all my gear…no cache to add to. To my left was the pond.

I felt really good today. My aches were not that bad and I don’t know what I did! I am not drinking soda of any kind for Lent for 3 days now or a tummy medicine may have calmed down more that my stomach. I have no idea. I have a feeling tomorrow may be different but crossing fingers.

Want to go to the movies? You take a few escalators to get to the 16 different theaters.

Fairly new homes have a nice place to walk and plenty of shopping in cement city.

We are expecting one of our little ‘snow events’ overnight that will probably melt away by the afternoon.

I forgot to update my readers to let you know my brother’s dog Baxter made it! He was given more medication and he’s much better getting up and going outside. : )

Feb1

Goodbye January!

Posted on Friday, February 1, 2013 by Dianne

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Glad to see such a blah month zip by. We had so many days of gloom and fog as you saw in my previous posts. We did try and take little drives, etc. to help with cabin fever. And of course we helped Sean deal with his accident and the breakup of his girlfriend. Sean’s car is still in the shop and won’t be ready for another week. He is driving a nice rental which helps us a great deal.

I like February a little better because it’s a short month and Valentine’s Day breaks it up in the middle. I already got a couple of gifts from the hubby…a pretty storage box and ‘Downton Abbey Chronicles book’! I happen to be fascinated with that time period because my grandmom Ruth was a teen in the 1918s-1920s.

I’m still suffering with aches and pains when I overexert or stand too long. I have an appointment with one rheumatologist in March, but I was trying to get an appt with another. They haven’t returned my call yet. My right knee bothers me the most as does the original hurt from a year ago on the left hip side.

I’ve been trying to clean out the picture files on my laptop. I just did the geocaching adventures one and there were over 400 photos over the last 9 months! This was one Brian took at the Brandywine Battlefield (incidently the day my back ‘really’ complained) and I added a verse for a Kenny Loggins song to it.

We may be going with Sean to Los Angeles in a few months. One reason I want to get to a doctor. I’d love to have something to ease the aches so I could sit all that time on the plane and walk around and sight see!

When Brian is off, he is nice enough to drive me down to my mom’s house for a visit. We usually take her shopping and the last few times have been Home Goods. She had a gift card and used it. Sean had given me a cute tea cup and strainer, so I got some ‘Tiesta’ tea and had some when we got home. It was delicious! There is nothing that compares to loose tea. I went on the website and ordered a few more small bags of it!

We also took mom to a little Chinese restaurant where she enjoy shrimp in a mustard coconut sauce which sounds weird, but is good. I had beef and broccoli and Brian had something similar to me but with chicken and shrimp too.

We looked for a cache with mom in the car. Of course it was dark, and I thought we were going to a parking lot by the cache description. I figured it was probably a sign as we saw no parking lot in the area. Mom thought we are crazy, yet we drove through a neighborhood she had never been to before. That’s one of the fun parts about caching-going to new places! We made a note of the cache to check again sometime, dropped her off and tried another and it would have been looking around a wooded area-nope. I am up to 221 caches now!

Jan24

Churches in my travels

Posted on Thursday, January 24, 2013 by Dianne

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Today before Brian and I hit the Dutch-way Grocery store, we looked for a few caches. It was in the 20s, but felt colder. Luckily, we found them in 5 minutes or less. The first place was off a parking lot of this lovely church in Cochranville, Pa. Some man was sitting in a delivery van almost parallel to the cache-wonder if he was a cacher too? When we got out, he left! Anyway, I narrowed my search to a tree trunk and there was the cache.

So we had a little time to kill, so we went down another country road and looked for a cache we tried to find at night a few months back. But then we were in the right area, but you just can’t find a fence ‘nano’ in the dark. Again, Brian spotted it with his eagle eyes.

Across the street was this lovely church in Parkesburg, PA. Love the bell!

I have a small set of other churches on Flickr.

So we went food shopping and were happy to get some good ‘buy 1 get 1 free’ items. I had run out of canned or frozen veggies. Last night I looked and all I could find were a few sweet potatoes which we had with our dinner.

I’ve been doing a little cross stitching at night. I finally finished a Christmas ornament and started one for another holiday coming up soon!

I have gotten a little rusty. I do have a nice floor lamp I bought to shine on the project (thanks Habitat for Humanity). Next I want to get to my paper crafts again!

We may be getting some snow tomorrow, up to 2 inches! Wow! ; )

Update-Sean’s car has been at a local restoration place for a few days now. The appraiser said it can be repaired and gave us a check. He didn’t count the steering issue. Sean got a loaner car in the meantime. So we are hoping the restoration place doesn’t want more than what’s on the check.

Jan19

Winter sunshine

Posted on Saturday, January 19, 2013 by Dianne

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This Friday and again today, I headed down to the neighboring town’s yearly huge book sale. They advertise that there is over 70K books and I do believe them! Being the book lover I am, I can’t pass up a sale. There was even a geocache in the parking lot to look for. Too bad it was so cold yesterday. I had looked at it via the satellite shot a month or so ago and didn’t I sit down ‘across’ from where it really was at the end of a bridge. The problem is I couldn’t reach right for it. I actually wondered up and down the bridge for about 15 minutes. I went back on the website and emailed a guy who had found it after 3 tries. He sent me back a detailed explanation. Today I had Brian. I swore it was the ‘right’ on my side, but it was on the other side! Then I couldn’t find my pen, so had to use a pencil in the SUV.

We didn’t go hog wild book wise. In fact Sean didn’t buy anything.

We decided to go to the New Castle (Delaware) Farmer’s market, but took a detour so Sean could see the old area of the town. Brian and I had been there a few times. I got out and took a few photos, this being my favorite:

See the trio of tree and fence tops?

We then headed to the farmer’s market. I was having major hurt issues with my knee down to the back of my calf. Think I did something Friday night getting out to retrieve a cache. (That’s an entirely different story!)

At the market, we found young Amish people selling donuts. They were much more in cost than the ‘DD’, but they are larger and fluffier. Best I ever had! Have to be careful eating those!

We also went to ‘The Hut’ and when we pulled in the parking lot, we saw Sean’s old Taurus that he traded in 1.5 yrs ago! Someone who works there owned it. I think Sean was super surprised. He took good care of that car (his 1st car) and when he saw it, he said ‘that car took me back and forth to Penn State many times’. Where he traded it in for his newer Taurus is about a 1/4 mile away. But the chances of us seeing it again, just wow.

We went to get gas, found another guardrail cache at the station next to it (drove in circles a bit, guess the attendant wondered what we were doing) and then hit the Goodwill where I found a few bird tchotchkes, one of which is a Marjolein Bastin for Hallmark.

I mainly bought crafting books at the sale earlier, ribbon embroidery and drawing for my mom and a few historic fictions along with crafts for me.

It was nice to have Sean along. He was a little depressed at first, some job issues going on in the family and I guess he feels that his time in the sun isn’t coming along fast enough in the job field. The economy is still not great and I think Sean will have to move away from here when he is done with his schooling.

Jan12

Day tripping again to Lancaster Co.

Posted on Saturday, January 12, 2013 by Dianne

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I’m not going to let the wintertime stop me(us) from taking daytrips up to the Lancaster area. There are many unclaimed geocaches in the rolling hills of this county! Plus I am loving the little market about 16 miles or so away. Brian is usually off on Fridays now. He got a flu shot Thursday and decided to get the oil changed the next day. He would be in for a rude awakening! We usually go to the same place and I located a coupon for a repair shop offering the deal for much cheaper. Well the man came out and told Brian he had 1 quart of oil left in the SUV that usually holds 6. The previous place put in the incorrect filter…it’s been slowly leaking for almost 8 months. Brian hasn’t checked it lately. I don’t understand why the previous place would risk hurting our vehicle.

Anyway, we headed out a little too late…2:45 pm. It then started to rain, when I thought it was going to be an evening rain. We need to get moving sooner! We were going to Intercourse, the town where part of the movie Witness was filmed. I had wanted to find about 4-5 geocaches. We ended up walking a little in the rain for the first one. It was a big ammo box right next to a fabric store! I dropped off the little gingerbread man tb and took a couple to pass on. This guy was watching us:

The cache was to the left of him a few feet away under another bush.

I was tickled to see that a few stores over was The Old Candle Barn. Sean and I had been in this area back in March of last year. They have the cutest things. I got a little wrought iron fairy holding a bird, a nest and a little ceramic bird. Oh I could have done retail damage!

Cute display!

If you recall last year I took a photo of the bunny made out of the pearl buttons and made my own. It’s hanging in the family room.

By 4:15, it didn’t look like many places were still open for business! On a Friday? We went to one cache that was easy to locate quickly. We then headed down the road to Leacock Presbyterian church about 4:45 pm. We had to park across the street. I got smart and put a hat on, but Brian was getting drenched. We were ‘this close’, but we didn’t want to go inside the stone wall. I will bring my camera next time when we get the geocache.

We headed to the farmer’s market for their buffet dinner. There aren’t many places you get dinner for $13.99 (and all you can eat)! We enjoyed prime rib, ham, sides and dessert. I mainly tasted a lot of things like the pineapple bread, butter beans, etc. All starchy!

Afterwards, we went in the grocery store and got some great deals. We had a terrible drive home. Today it was warmer and sunnier. I have to watch the weather better. I did do a few things around the house and in the basement, but I do have to downsize. I did find some things for Valentine’s Day!

I’m really having issues with using the bigger vehicle-it’s hard for me to climb in and out of it. I have been terribly achy today, especially my knee. I can hardly go up and down the basement steps.

Jan5

Christmas Revisited!

Posted on Saturday, January 5, 2013 by Dianne

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I happen to see that it was my pal’s 25th wedding anniversary on Facebook (I gave her a thumb’s up) and clicked through to her sister’s wall. Her sister was up from the south visiting and went to the National Christmas Center and a photo she showed piqued my interested in going to a place we have passed dozens of time going to the Lancaster, PA area. It’s right in Paradise, about 20 miles from here. We had until this Sunday to go as they would have weird hours until this Christmas.

Ma, you going bye byes again?

Brian was off (unfortunately, his hours have been cut at the store), so I had even mapped out a few geocaches in the area-most were those ‘lifting the skirt’ kind, but we just couldn’t find one in a tree on a short road. We stopped at a thrift store where I had consigned things in 2011. They were having a sale, but we didn’t linger. I got an adorable gingerbread man wreath for $2.50.

The center was a lot bigger than we thought. We read that the owner started out with 3 displays and grew to 10 or so.

This guy greeted us, though he looks a bit frumpy.

This is perfectly decorated.

We took over 100 photos!

The Norwegians use to wrap their trees with cotton batting to make it look like snow!

The Woolworth store display! This is the photo Olivia’s sister showed on her page.

This was the German Santa, the ultimate ‘toy maker’ The room had a number of wax Santas-they looked so real! I didn’t care for the children or the elves-creepy!

This was part of Tudor Towne, an animated story with different animals/creatures telling the story about how they almost didn’t have Christmas. We took Sean to his display, but in Delaware when he was a little boy!

There was a display about the time Jesus was born, down to cobblestones…most of it was very dark, but this was very beautifully done

Here’s Virginia, the little girl who wrote a letter about the existence of Santa (I think her face looks old). Be glad you can’t see the father’s face. But it was interesting to see how the turn of the last century looked (when my grandmom Ruth was born) and they had a loop on the monitor of the real Virginia reading her letter and reply from the newspaper editor.

The workshop where Santa greets the children was special too. Not sure if the owner of the center does that job, but he sure looks like him as we saw him go to the phone and talk to someone about a music box for the center. He turned them down.

Creepy elves

Brian loved the trains. We heard they will be redoing this, it looked pretty nice to us!

I will be unloading all the photos to Flickr sooner or later, so I will add the link here when I do.

Makes me want to not take down the tree, but it’s been up a month now, so I’m thinking dust factory.

I hope you enjoyed these.

Found 4 out of 5 geocaches! Ate at Pizza Hut-it’s been a long time and it was just as greasy good as I remember it. ; ) Got some 60% off goodies at The Christmas Tree Shoppe (store) and because I signed up for email, I got $10 off my total .

We also stopped at a Dutch market. The prices of their meat and lunch meat cant’ be beat!

Good day!

In closing-the neatest ‘cache’ of the day!

Oh I wish I was an Oscar Meyer weiner-lol! Those Lancaster caches had over 200 logs!

Dec29

Oh the places we’ve seen!

Posted on Saturday, December 29, 2012 by Dianne

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Yay, I kind of borrowed that title from my new pal Jodie as this is like the name of her Facebook album defining the same thing-geocache adventures! The thing is, Jodie and her hubby have found over 2k each! I’m not sure if I’ll ever even get close to that or my other pal Carole’s almost 600 with all my arthritis issues that crept up this year. I can surely pace myself and it’s great exercise and many caches involve enjoying the beauty of nature.

So what have we seen? Many Quaker Meeting houses/old cemeteries, my goodness at least a dozen or more different ones with their ancient grave stones and faded out names.

Hosanna in Lincoln University, PA

Chadds Ford, PA

Red Clay Creek Church, DE Found #100 here

St. David’s Church, PA

Let me make it clear that you aren’t allowed to hide caches around graves. They are usually in a fence, old tree stump or similar. The one above was a ‘virtual’ one where we found the grave of General Anthony Wayne and took a photo.

So if these places weren’t interesting enough, we found places like Historic New Castle, DE and

Brandywine Springs Picnic park (what was left of this place)

Great views!

Where my cache is hidden in my hometown

Wilmington, DE

Blue Ball Barn in Delaware

Did I mention Cannon finds?

Part II-Nature caches soon

Dec26

Goal reached-200 geocaches found!

Posted on Wednesday, December 26, 2012 by Dianne

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Saturday night (Dec. 22nd), the three of us went to our church. It’s been a while for all three with the guys’ work schedule. Afterwards, we enjoyed some cheese steaks (Brian and me) and Sean got a white pizza. I looked on the phone and there were a few caches I could find to make it to 200 total. Now it is dark and rather chilly and the guys both agreed as they know I enjoy caching so much. Sean hasn’t been on many finds, but he has the app on his phone too! The first place we looked was in a housing development with large homes. It was in a wooded area behind a playground. I sent Brian in with the phone, he had no luck and I then came in. It was just too dark to find. : (

So I remembered a lamp post one in a nearby parking lot that we had to avoid in the summer as wasps had taken over it and were all over the area. This time Brian looked and couldn’t find it. I got out and it was ‘under’ the base, very wet and almost too difficult to sign. I didn’t have my geo bag with me, or I would have replaced the log (I did the log replacement on 12-12-12 for a bison tube one. I had printed out an assortment of them). This was #199. We were in Delaware caching.

Ok…where is #200? There was yet another lamp post one not too far away. Brian missed the turn, we went and looked around the Christmas stuff at Kmart-hardly any sales, so we came back to the cache area and drove around the different parking lots until we pin pointed the exact one. So I found a cute little cache box and took a pewter keychain that says ‘I love Dalmations’ which my brother happens to have! I left some coins and here I am posing under the lamp post!

Dec3

Tablescaping for Christmas-a post for Zoey

Posted on Monday, December 3, 2012 by Dianne

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Last night I was invited to the Ladies’ tea at the church where I work. I was expecting tea sandwiches but we got delicious gourmet finger foods. And get this, there were about 35 tables which were all decorated differently-so lovely for the holidays! One had Christmas cacti and crackers. Another had cranberries in pretty glass containers while another had angel wings on the back of the chairs and the ladies wore halos (kind of glad I didn’t sit at that one-lol) I picked these as my favorites.

I’ve never had duck confit before. It tasted like sausage.

Everything was tasty and rich.

This is where I sat-with the pastor’s wife and right next to the stage. I felt honored!

Deane decorated the table. I like the touch of holly between the trees. We all loved the glass mugs and they were from Walmart!

On the stage, next to one of the trees that looked like this:

We saw a skit about a man who was at the inn when Jesus was born, complaining about his room.

Then the chorus sang three songs.

Finally a young woman was a speaker who also teaches Bible study. She was saying that Christmas should really be a sad holiday as we know what happens to Jesus. And she mentioned how commercialized it is. But of course it’s a celebration of who was born to save us. : )

So I had a lovely time.

When I came home. Bri can’t seem to use my camera phone-it’s the same one that took the lovely photos above.

By the way, I had to go and do ‘maintenance’ on my garden cache. It was wet and rusty from jingle bells someone had added. I had to replace the container, log book and everything inside. I also hide it in a different spot, under a patch of catnip! The bush it was under had lost all it’s leaves.

Then we went along a busy road and found 6 caches! One was hanging in a tree-a flashlight! You unscrewed it and a happy face popped out and the log was in the back of the top. Clever! Brian finds the nanos for me (tiny ones). We finally found the one down the road here (1/2 mile away) as we figured out it was in the guardrail. It was getting dark and Brian took the flashlight and retrieved the container!

The entry before me is dated June 3rd!

I had a full late afternoon and evening!

Nov30

Hello there Christmas!

Posted on Friday, November 30, 2012 by Dianne

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It sure is funny what you find on outings! I went with Brian when he deposited his check and we found a cute little store up in Kennett. They had healing kinds of things, and a mixture of art, jewelry and even a lending library of wellness books. I told Brian to go back up sometime and pick me out something. We then went looking for a new geocaches. The hardest part with these were finding places to park. The one we didn’t really try to find had cars zooming by-I just didn’t feel like having people watch me poke around, so we went to one I tried to find in June and I could see it under this big electrical box from the car!

I needed something at the Dollar General, but before we went in there, I hit the Habitat for Humanity resale store. The first thing I see is a sign that all Christmas items were 50% off! That included trees. So one really stood out-prelit with at least 400 lights and it had tinsel woven on the green branches. It was under $40 and I know this had to be over a $200 tree. We got the box and it looked new. I will have to load it up with ornaments to cut back on the brightness. Right now I have both autumn stuff and the tree up. I’ve never had a tree up in November before! It took only a few minutes to get up too.

I have to mess with the branches a bit. I was trying out some holly up near the top there.

I’m really excited to decorate it. I have a lot of work to do to get it tidied up in the living room. I also received a big gift order and that box is in there too.

Finally some Christmas spirit! Not feeling great as my hip and back had dampened my enthusiasm. I did go to the physical therapist and she thinks my issue is the ‘gel’ between my back ligaments that is all shifted to one side. I have to do a form of a push up several times a day, 10 times a session. That is killing my arms. I think it is helping a bit. My insurance won’t pay for the PT (it sure doesn’t pay for much, and has a rule about pre-existing conditions, which is crazy for people over 50).

I went back to the church on Wednesday and the kids were mostly good. I’ve worked here 2 months now! We had my middle brother and our mom here on his birthday that night and I made yummy vegetable lasagna for dinner.

The next day, Brian and I took Mr. Cosmo kitty to the vet for a check-up. He is a good weight for his age and is pretty healthy. But, she did take a peek at his teeth and said that a few looked like they needed to be extracted at $20-200 a tooth! He’s had a tartar issue all his life. I can’t see subjecting an old cat to anesthesia either. Signs he is having issues is eating really slow or chattering when he eats-he does neither, but I will watch him. I am still working on paying off my own dental bill. Geesh.

Sunday evening I was invited to a ladies’ tea at the church. Sounds nice!