Category Archives: local interest

Jan5

Christmas Revisited!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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This is perfectly decorated.

We took over 100 photos!

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

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

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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!

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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

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NatlCmasCenter 082Here’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.

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

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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!

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

Jan3

Longwood Christmas 2012

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I was a bit apprehensive about going to display this year with my arthritis issues being so bothersome. I had missed the autumn display because of it. What I think is saving me more than anything, and go figure is the cream version of ‘Icy Hot’! I’m going to smell really good (got to figure out what perfume will mask it), but if I am getting this relief-hallelujah!

We headed over around 4:15 as you want to go and see the light displays the most. It was a frigid 29! That’s cold for these parts. I was bundled up, but I was still cold!

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My mom had given me a new coat, had to return it and chose this one with the giraffe print. My pal Sherry made my hat (that I bought from her).

003 Up the first walk way to the conservatory. Boy was I freezing!

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The sun was setting nicely. Not sure what those streaks in the sky are.

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As we entered the conservatory. They’ve had other Moravian stars for years.

Then we saw this all white tree! I was going to do that, but we used the ‘tinsel’ tree which called out for red (to me).

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The star of the show to me was the table! Wow, it was probably modeled after one Mr. Dupont had back in the 1920s,

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I really loved the library/music room also!

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This was a living wreath-it’s a common houseplant.

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We went to the little cafe and had their mushroom soup (not as good as it usually is, kind of on the thin side).  We went to see the train display which was a bit of a walk. Sean took photos there.

Then we went to the DuPont house. Imagine having a green house in the middle of your house!

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I was so happy to do all this walking after the month I had. : )

Dec29

Oh the places we’ve seen!

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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.

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Hosanna in Lincoln University, PA

ArchiesC5 Chadds Ford, PA

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Red Clay Creek Church, DE Found #100 here

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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

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

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Great views!

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Where my cache is hidden in my hometown

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Wilmington, DE

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Blue Ball Barn in Delaware

Did I mention Cannon finds?

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Part II-Nature caches soon

Dec26

Goal reached-200 geocaches found!

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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!

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Dec11

Please vote for me!

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I’m in a Christmas tree contest for about another week over at the Country Living magazine Pinterest board. If you like it, please simply click like. The prize is an Amazon Kindle. Please read what I wrote about the tree, etc. under the photo there.

This was the first day in over two weeks that I got in the car and went some place besides a doctor’s office. I did fairly well except for getting in and out of the vehicle. I went to a nice nursery place between my hometown and here and as my late grandmom said ‘the prices were dear’ like $64 for a paper decoration. I got some neat photos there.

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Did a Longwood Gardens ‘drive by’. I’ll get there in late Dec./early Jan.

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We looked around Pier One and I selected a few things for my displays. They have very cute things there if you are looking for little gifts for people. I will ‘sniff’ them out after Christmas too!

And I made these retrospect ‘covers’ for Facebook. I still need 5 to get to 200 geocaches.

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Nov9

Daylight savings is getting in the way

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I was looking forward to grabbing a few caches late this afternoon as it has been a long time since we’ve gone searching. I’m still feeling pain in my left hip and lower back. I thought a little walking may do me some good. Well by the time we rolled out of the driveway, it way after 4 with a little daylight left. Rats! First I had to wait on Brian as he was leaving work, grabbing a few groceries and hitting the bank. When he got home, his dad called complaining about his car not running. This has been going on for a week. He got a new battery, but it was dead today. The vehicle is almost 24 yrs old now too.  He talked to him a bit and went to hang up the phone and it fell behind the computer desk. He tried to retrieve it, but couldn’t. He’d get back to that.

So we headed near a campground cache. It was suppose to be a fast grab and dash, cache and dash or whatever. We parked across the street near the train track and headed over. The GPS found it right away near an evergreen-had it in no time. But we happen to catch the engine coming in and since they had to cross a street-they pulled the whistle. We were right there and it almost blasted our socks off! Two guys got out of the engine, climbed into a car and took off.

The cache was neat! It was a pet food container with the swag beginning in either bowl. There was a separate log.

The next cache was near an abandoned building and the Brandywine creek area. We scared a few deer, but I believe we were about 200 feet too far away and it was getting dark, so we gave it up.

So we will not go out cache hunting so late this time of year. It’s just scary. I’d love to find a night cache where people use reflectors, etc.. I have yet to find one listed.

Tomorrow is a book sale-we got excellent buys and had almost the entire place to ourselves last year. Wonder if that will change? I got Christmas gifts then too. And I know there are a few caches in that area too!

Oct26

Chadds Ford Great Pumpkin Carve event

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Since we’ve lived near Chadds Ford and enjoy it’s beautiful countryside, we decided it was about time we went to see the annual pumpkin carve as sponsored by the Chadds Ford Historic Society. I mean, 26 yrs is a long time not to see this artistry event. What piqued my interest was knowing an artist pal was going to carving a pumpkin. She’s been doing it a few years as has Bam Margera’s mom (the guy who does stunts, etc on his own show). It’s been an event since 1970 and it’s almost right across from the Brandywine River Museum and the banks of this river too.

This was down our road a bit. We left close to five as that’s when it started. I know after the rain we are expecting in a few days, we won’t be seeing the leaves anymore.

We got there early, we enjoyed walking around several times, but it did get more crowded.

Follow the pumpkins to the event

They had until 7 pm to carve before judging began. I asked if they got to chose their pumpkins and the artist said they got what was there waiting for them.

Jennifer lives near Lancaster. A great artist and photographer. She won ‘Best Halloween Theme’ this year and last  year.

Clever designs!

Ran into three classmates from high school also! Two from my class and one from my younger brother’s class. The three of them were meeting up here.

It got really crowded too. I drove by tonight (Friday) and got stuck in a traffic back up.

This was outside the carving area where a band was playing. They had picnic tables, picnic type food, t-shirts to buy and raffle items. Brian put a ticket in for Eagles football tickets as he and Sean have never been to a game. I sure hope they win!

I’ll be putting all these up on Flickr.  And thanks to Brian for taking most of them.

I went down today and took my mom to a  shopping center. We enjoy The Dollar Tree and a little thrift shop next to it. She then took me for some Chinese that I was able to share with Sean as I only ate half of it.

We are waiting on Hurricane Sandy to come up the coast and she will probably dump a lot of rain from Sunday to Monday. As I type this, she may be tracking in a somewhat different direction, but it doesn’t look good. I will be making some egg salad, etc to have something to eat. We will fill up something with water outside as our toilets won’t flush if the power is out. Keep us in your thoughts.

Oct23

New Hope evening

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After we walked around the woods and found the Doylestown cache, we headed over to quaint Peddler’s Village. It was a bit late and many of the stores were closing. I noticed that the scrapbook store I really liked is gone. They had really nice things. : ( There were some cute scarecrows… See the […]

Oct20

Archie’s Corner

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Since we weren’t in a rush yesterday, Brian and I did a few geocaches in the area of the chiropractor. The first one was near an entrance ramp to Rt. 1. The clues said ‘how cute’ the container was…saw nothing but what I think were crab apples and overgrown weeds, a bottle and a broken up electronics piece. I asked the cache owner about it and he said to make sure we look ‘low enough’. I’m thinking we need to look better under one of the electric boxes. We found a few others too. One near a park that is next to the hospital where I had my gallbladder out 25 yrs ago. I started to think about how much I missed my little 9 month old boy and my eyes got wet. I was in there a whole week!

We went down to my hometown and took mom to the grocery store and to say she needed everything is an understatement! Glad to help her. Brian had helped three people at the store last week, nice guy!

I ‘finally’ got to see what ‘Archie’s Corner’ was all about. It’s down a side road off of Rt. 1. It’s the sight of a former school built way back in 1838.

Cemetery notes and/or description:
Per the 1937 WPA Survey w/map, this cemetery was surveyed under the name of Ebenezer Independent M.E. Church & Graveyard (Colored). There were 79 known graves at that time, the majority of them illegible or marked with a plant, stone, field stone, cement block, wooden marker, cement cross, rosebush, or concrete block.

This is rather sad looking. Around the corner from us is black cemetery over a century old. I believe it was an Eagle Scout or troop project to fix our neighboring cemetery up and it looks really nice. I wanted to put a geocache there, but the road is a bit dangerous and a lady at the preserve office said they like to keep it private.

So back to Archie’s Corner-it’s named for the first ordained preacher, Lydia Archie.

The little school house is about as big as a 12′ in diameter bedroom.

The hint was it was in a corner. We actually looked at GZ, but as you can see it was getting dark. We looked one more time and Brian saw it wedged in the corner near the stone wall. He had a heck of a time getting it open too.

Not much in the box, but since it’s about 10 minutes from here, I can surely go back and add stuff. I took the little duck in the above photo. I would like to drop a travel bug in there too.

Instagram is so popular, I made one of the quarter moon last night. I swear there are owls in that one tree.