This gallery contains 12 photos.
Last weekend was the 29th Annual Mushroom Festival a few miles away from here. We had wanted to go on Saturday night, but we got heavy rain and decided to try a restaurant around the corner from where we live. I lately haven’t been pleased eating out. I got lobster mac and cheese which was […]
A few days ago, Geocaching.com offered a ‘get outdoors and geocache’ souvenir if you found a cache on July 13th. It is added to your souvenir page almost like a stamp collection!
Brian was at work and I was trying to find an interesting cache to look for. I found one located near Wooddale Bridge in nearby Delaware. It was big enough to add a travel bug or swag to. I wrote down the directions which were 3 turns. So of course the GPS on the phone went out (I need to use my GPS device and upload caches to it!) so we went by my handwritten directions. Thank goodness. Brian was getting a little perturbed as he thought the bridge was closer. Opps…maybe 7 miles away. So we found it-no other cars were around, so we could take our time (mostly me) looking. It wasn’t hard to find at all! Yes!
Isn’t that a nice bridge? It was constructed in 2008.
See that big hornet’s nest on the upper left?
Look at all the raging water from all our rain.
The cache wasn’t too difficult to spot as it wasn’t hidden well. I hid it a bit better. You never know who is going to come along.
I hadn’t signed it or added the little Eagle with the travel bug attached to it.
Driving back we stopped the Mount Cuba Center and drove up their long drive. We saw this gorgeous mansion at the top. It belonged to the DuPont Copland family!
This is just used for administration and an educational facility now!
We decided to go up to Kennett to check out a new cheese steak place. The night before, the place was packed! When we got there, a bike race was going on and the middle of town was portioned off.
See the racers whiz by!
We walked down to the new market place and there was indeed a cheese steak place, a crepe place and seafood area and a wine seller. We decided not to get a sandwich as we had a burger the night before. We ended up in a Mediterranean place and ordered a cheese tray (very skimpy and no crackers) and salads that had lots of greens, but little of anything else for the price. I always wanted to try it, so now I know the dinners ‘and’ salads are pricey. Nice waiter though.
Some shots from around quaint Kennett Square, PA
This new movie (out today) was written and directed by Todd Robinson, a fellow classmate from Penncrest Class of 1977. Todd’s had a great, award winning career! Hopefully some of us from our class will go and see the movie together over the weekend.
Here’s an interview with Todd and two of the stars of the movie Ed Harris and David Duchovny.
Todd rode my bus to school. I remember he was also reading or writing on the way to school. Seems it paid off!
Also, another classmate, Wayne Scott Miller has a role in this movie. Wayne has done some stand in work too, a few years back it was for George Clooney!
Synopsis:
Demi is a journeyman Soviet Navy captain finishing up a career that failed to live up to the legacy of his legendary father, and Alex is his up-and-coming XO headed for great success. However, as Demi leaves his home to lead Alex and the crew of a Soviet sub given a shadowy mission, the presence of KGB agent Bruni and ominous portents turn this mission into a terrifying ordeal that will lead Demi to stand up and avert a catastrophe.
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.
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!
I asked Brian if we could go look for some caches on Sunday as I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this again after the way I felt on the 3rd. Looking back, a lot of that was the heat and the steepness of the hills and stairs (still out of shape in dealing with that stuff). I had gone on other hikes without all that uphill terrain and I fared much better. I also had put together a little plastic box, added a log, filled it with ‘swag’ (goodies) and had camouflaged it with tape that was ready to hide. I wanted to go to the park where I walk all the time but then something happened. We headed over to our town. It’s further away than Kennett Square with a town in the middle. We go to the first area and park near this sweet garden there. We had to walk a bit to the one we were looking for and then it’s a ‘let’s go….no just look once more…let’s go’ kind of thing.
Leave it to Brian to run his hand along the top of this abandoned announcement board and find this most unusual cache log!
We were feeling pretty good. The cache owner said people could email him for additional hints. I am so sure we can now find that elusive one down the road-hee hee!
Going back to the car I told Brian I wanted to check out this little memorial garden for a man named Fred. I thought Bri was taking more photos than he did as the landscaping and everything was just perfect. There was a stone in the middle of the ‘patio’ area and it said ‘I love you to the moon, I love you to the stars, I love you beyond, beyond’. There was also a moon and star whirligig. I found the perfect cache location! We are told on the website to put a cache where you want people to visit and this certainly was deserving of more people seeing it.
I said it could be a night search with all those solar lights there.
So when I got home, I saw that this man was a borough council member for our town. He passed away last year at only age 59. He has two little grandsons. They would love my cache!
I got approved right away and then people found it already today!
A group of us actually work within walking distance to this cache. Got the notification last night and considered making an early morning work trip to GZ but decided against it. Gave this cache a look with two other cachers at our morning break to no avail. At lunch I returned with ‘Y’ and we made the find very quickly. Not sure how we missed it in the morning. I actually eyed this spot before to place a cache, nicely done. SL, TFTC
Very cool.
The trains down from here have graffiti all over them
See how the grass is dying? It’s dry beyond dry.
People will see this too-right near the garden where my cache is.
We went on to find a few more and not find one. The one we couldn’t find was another one of those cammoed film canisters that we walked through a field to find. We each found a tick on us. There was a road right near the cache. Bri doesn’t have much driving stealth yet. Of course last night, I found yet another tick on me! I had changed and showered twice. I think the critter was in the pile of dirty clothes in the bathroom that I picked up and put in a basket.
Being a bit lazy today. Tomorrow night is the Bacon Brothers (Kevin Bacon) at Longwood Gardens!
One for the road…our little harvest…hand watering helped a bit!
Early, so early! Now it’s chilly again. I haven’t gone out to look at the following flowers as we finally got rain off and now since Saturday night.
Lovely white irises
Lily of the Valley
I am doing several challenges on Swap-bot.com.
This was my choice of design and it’s called ‘Spring Chicken’. I got a package of really cute chicks and bunnies and the lady in New Zealand likes these sort of ‘die-cuts’, so I thought of that when I was making this.
A decorated envelope for ‘May Day’ is going to Oregon.
Monday, my entourage and me went to my hometown. I was getting my hair done and then we went to the tail end of a book sale and out to PF Chang as we had a $15 off gift card. I grabbed a few books like a Metropolitan Museum of Art book on Van Gogh. This was nice as we had just seen his show in Philly. I got a few novels-Twilight for one as I’ve never read it. I have seen the movie, but I’m sure the book is better. I have enough books for many years of reading! : )
I took my mom home today and after we dropped off her packages, headed up to my hometown for lunch. It’s been a rainy, miserable day and is still raining and miserable. This is up near the courthouse (Media is the county seat of Delaware County).
This is Veteran’s Square (can you tell where I was parked from the one photo? You can see the courthouse too).
Our tree is up, but not fluffed or anything and the living room looks like a bomb hit. I will work on it the next few days as I don’t work until Saturday night. I only got 9 hours this week.
Today I went down to see my mom as I wanted to take her to dinner and shopping. We didn’t go to that many places in the mall though. I’m not seeing that many gifts that I wanted to buy, but I did get a few things. I happen to get a good coupon for the dinner- $15 toward $30 meals. We went at 4:45, so got the early bird special-we both got prime rib, mashed potatoes and a big salad. We got beverages and a piece of cake and I had to pay a little more, but I haven’t seen my mom go after a meal like she did this one (me too). It was a bit salty, but I got over it. : )
Before we went to the mall and the restaurant, I wanted to stop at the Rose Tree Tavern that use to be on the corner of a busy road where my bus went by all the time and on the National Register of Historic Places . They moved it back and renovated it. I was dying to see the inside as a tourist bureau, but they had it locked up at 3:30! I did take a few photos though.
From the back with my Ina
From the front-isn’t it lovely for a 272 yr old building? I know they didn’t have to redo the stonework.
From the side with the 1739 cornerstone
Be sure to click the highlighted link to see the various steps of renovation. Someday I’ll get to see inside!
I’m on a Facebook group called ‘you know you grew up in Media, PA…if’ and it really snowballed into a popular group. If you haven’t started one for your hometown, you should. One of the memories that was stirred from my subconscious was about the Helibron Mansion located on Rose Tree Road not far from Penncrest high school. Seems the school bus use to go by this place every day. What I remembered more was ‘the cat house’, up the road and had a cat visible in every window of the cottage like place. The summer air would not be sweetly perfumed from that place. So the mansion was the subject of a non-fiction winning book called ‘Night Stalks the Mansion’written by Constance Westbie and Harold Cameron and back in 1977. Cameron and his family lived in the house for 2 frightful years. I don’t know why they say they lived in ‘Wynne, Pa’ which isn’t even a town in this state!
It’s been investigated a number of times. A friend of my brothers did a photo documentary about the place and was inside it many times. Seems 3 ghosts haunted it, a mother, her daughter and a black man who was a slave and hung on the property for killing the daughter.
There were a few things brought up by the local paper that Margaret (the young girl) was on the 1870 census, 6 years after she was suppose to have been killed.., Anyway…spooky. Why was the house just abandoned with all it’s antiques and I also read a safe full of Christmas gifts from about 1942? The Camerons lived in the place in the 1960s, so around the time we were living 5 miles or so away. I’m glad it’s a short book as I’m reading it at bedtime and then turning off the light to pitch blackness. Yikes! There were plans for a movie, but they can’t seem to sign on actors.
On a more pleasant note, the original place was hazed in the late 1980s and rebuilt shortly afterwards and it’s beautiful. Heres’ an update and a dark photo of it. The present owners don’t have any ghostly inhabitants either. The book is available on Kindle.
Collages & Creative Goodness 