Category Archives: geocaching

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!

Sep29

My 35th Reunion is tonight!

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We all say…time flies correct? Feels like those 35 years were in a zip file-compacted over time. But as I said before, Facebook has brought me back in touch with so many of my former classmates. It’s now neat to hear about not only their children, but their grandchildren. My pal Harriet lives in Lancaster County and she did the blood test when Brian and I got married (1984). Harriet’s a new grandmother-little Addie was born a few days ago and let me tell you, the messages were so cute from her on FB. Her son even said at one point that his wife hadn’t seen the doctor yet. : )

We have a very dedicated ‘Reunion guy’ in Scott D. I have helped him a few times remembering who people were, etc. I heard at last count 80 people have signed up to go and at first there were only 20! I decided to go with a pal Heather as Brian kind of just sits there, though he knows a number of my classmates. I went to his 35th a few years ago and as the years go by, more and more people go stag. I think at Brian’s reunion only a few other wives who attended.

I will probably share photos later.

Brian and I did a little late in the day geocaching yesterday-trying to stay limber. We headed to Rockford Park and it was a little tricky to find at first, though I have been there with Sean for the Wilmington Flower Market. My GPS never works correctly between our house and DE. I write down the directions now. Bri drove right past the turn at first and then the GPS kicked in and lead us to the park. One of those few times I had to find a restroom and we had to ask. Thank goodness it there was one near the Tower of Tower Hill. This is the private school Dr. Oz attended.

We found the trail marker and again the GPS was stuck. I began walking down the trail while Brian was off the trail and the numbers started to go down.  We found one of those nice DGT boxes!

New sneaks and top. : )  This was what was left of some building. Will get my arm checked out on Monday too. Seems when I dust (shaking out the static brush) it aggravates it. It’s not too bad right now as is my back.

Then we headed down to Brandywine Park…there seems to be a few Brandywine Parks in this area, but this one had a little zoo! It was too late to find the cache in the zoo, so we headed to one near the railroad area bridge.

We had to drive over a white arched bridge that had cobblestones on each end. There was a rose garden, waterfalls, a walking trails, fountains and of course the zoo. We need to go back!

So the cache hint was said it was to be under the ‘state tree of Delaware’. I saw a few large trees and holly ‘bushes’. Well can you guess which is considered the tree-the holly! The cache was suppose to be under a rock-so I’m thinking it’s a fake rock-didn’t see it. I came home and saw where someone had taken a photo of it. I can’t see the photos a lot of the times on the phone.

So we only found 1 cache and we were gone 4 hours-go figure. We stopped for pizza and salad. which took time.

We did get to meet Sean’s girlfriend Mary. She’s pretty, chatty and nice. He wanted to take her to Newark, DE to meet another lady pal and Mary drove out to our house for the first time.

Sep25

Smileys with Sean

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It’s been a while since Sean an I went out to dinner. We had planned to go sneaker shopping first, but I mentioned The Olive Garden and he said yes. His night class had been cancelled as he thinks his professor’s wife was delivering their baby! : )

So we almost had the restaurant to ourselves and got the ‘endless’ pasta bowl special. He ordered two and brought most of the second serving home. I couldn’t finish the first one.

I mentioned there were a few geocaches right in the vicinity and he said, let’s go for it. With mapping being his planned occupation, I thought he’d be more interested, but he has a full plate right now. So we headed around the back of a Shop Rite. The cache was called ‘Taking Care of Business’ which is the store’s motto. His iPhone has an excellent GPS and it zoned in on a guard rail. I knew it was probably in the end where it curved and I saw it right away-it took him a bit longer.

Then we went to one that was off a turn on to a planned  entrance/road which abruptly ended and cement barriers were in place. I guess a planned shopping center never went in. We didn’t need it, I’ll take the farmland. So he is walking around and then finally he stops and says his GPS says ‘it’s here’. I look down and kick a stone or piece of asphalt out of the way, and there is the cammoed pill bottle. Ha ha! He is learning.

We hit Kohl’s for some awesome sales. I ‘saved’ more than I spent-really! Deep discounts on tops and summer stuff. I got some black FILA sneakers with an aqua trim. I have to toss the shape up ones. Also got brown leather shoes with top straps-I think Naturalizers. I suffer with my feet without proper footwear. These both are comfy. Sean got a few pairs of  sneakers for the same reason.

I feel good about tomorrow-it will be an earlier day than I am use to, but glad to have a job after 9 long months. I’ll let you know how it goes. And I may add photos to this post.

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

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?

Aug29

Cache #4

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I finally got permission to place my cache up in historic Kennett Square, PA.! I am pretty sure it’s the first cache in downtown Kennett which is pretty neat in my opinion. It’s been ready to be hidden for about 3 weeks and the assistant borough lady got back to me yesterday. I was not allowed to place it behind the building as there is a strange declining walkway to the basement. Not for handicapped people. Perhaps the previous owner used it for his plumbing supplies.
I had a little trouble with the coordinates as the cache is so near a building. I had to come home and tweak it on Google by plugging in my cords and changing a few of the numbers I had scribbled out which turned out closer than what I ended up with.
This is a good tie-in with the upcoming Mushroom Festival festival on the 8th and 9th too. That’s if geocachers like to go to mushroom festivals. : ) Speaking of geocachers, a local group is having a picnic at the end of next month and we may attend to get to know more people who enjoy this hobby.
Brian was gone all day to his training session. He didn’t take a break for 5 hours-yikes! He says there is a lot to know, but he’ll get use to it. And it’s so close to home too.

PS-I took this photo about 6 years ago and the building and landscaping are much nicer now.

Aug26

Turn of the century amusement park ‘almost’ revisited

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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!