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 weeks ago, Brian and I drove down to Rising Sun, Maryland to do a little geocaching. Caching has been not happening that much this winter as we have had a classic ‘Alaskan’ winter. My pal was saying it is milder this year in Alaska than it is on the mainland. They can’t even have their iditarod races this year for lack of snow and cold. Wow!
So we hit a few caches and they involved mostly humongous oak trees. This one was near a school and cemetery. Brian looked like a peanut under it! The cache was pretty easy to find.
Just think of the history this tree has survived through. All the winters, storms, etc. and it’s still standing!
I’m sure the oak was planted around the same time this meeting house was constructed.
A few other oak trees along route one were not as lucky. One was near a little cafe, aptly named ‘The Spready Oak’. There was suppose to be a cache tucked in the remains of it, but we couldn’t find it. We went in the cafe, and sure enough the waitress knew all about the cache (she said it like a cache case) and it was gone as she use to put stuff in it. The cache owner knows about it and plans to add a new one.
We found a cute diary in the middle of no where. There were some goats and ponies too. The cache was kind of out in the open, but it probably under bushy leaves in nicer weather.
That pony nibbled my fingers!
It was lunchtime, but we didn’t want ice cream for the meal. Maybe we’ll come back another time if we remember the place.
Our last stop was this cemetery that would have been perfect for a Stephen King movie. It was up on a hill. The little church is so tiny (locked up tight and under surveillance). Out of picture range is a modern day housing development.
Well we looked for that cache high and low, and could not find it! I was kind of glad to get moving as the sun was hanging low by the time we gave up. My phone GPS was going too and we missed a cache in a memorial right down the hill! Brian can take about 5-6 caches and call it a day.
We headed to Oxford and got some produce and ordered pizza from one of the last Pizza Huts around.
A few days later, the three of us were off on a Monday (MLK day) and drove up to the Pottstown, PA area to the Philadelphia Outlets as we had never been to these. There were a few stores I adored- Crabtree and Evelyn and Vera Bradley! I got some long sleeved t-shirts at Talbots too.
We then headed to Skippack, but this wasn’t the best time of year to go there. We looked for about 3 caches and found two.
This past weekend (1/25 to 1/26) I had my mom here to treat her to a show. We sent down to Wilmington and the Dupont Theater to see ‘Ballroom with a Twist’ featuring ‘Dancing with the Stars’ dancers Cheryl Burke, Derek Hough, Tony Dovolani and Peta Murgatroyd. We also were pleasantly surprised by the talent of ‘American Idol’ finalists Von Smith and Gina Glocksen. Also the Cirque De Soleil acrobats and ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ performers. The many troupe dancers performed the most.
We had to climb up to the balcony (oops) but we had a very good point of view of the stage. I don’t remember seeing performers faces so clearly either. The costumes were sparkly and the dancing almost effortless, though certainly not easy.
My mom had a little trouble hearing the question and answer session, but all in all I think she enjoyed the show. I really thought the acrobats were amazing! They used ‘silks’ and twisted and turned on them-I don’t know how they do it!
When we were waiting for Brian to pick us up, we ended up chatting with some ladies who had driven up from Virgina to see the show. I went out to take a few shots and came in and saw the one young lady posing with Von and Gina! I took this quick shot and mine was better than her friend’s shot. I put it on Instragram and she did finally see it.
Next post will probably be a visit to the Longwood Garden orchid show! (Whenever that will be!)
This gallery contains 25 photos.
My son Sean started his new job on the 21st of this month and his birthday fell on the 24th. We always go out to dinner and headed to the Big Fish Grille when he and his dad got home from work. Third time there as we do like the food! Sean had 1/2 a […]
This gallery contains 14 photos.
Back on July 20th we were looking for a day trip to go on and I saw that Elk Creek State Park had a lot of water around it and was less than 40 miles away. We had never been there before and only knew the lay-out from the internet. There is the Turkey Point […]
Sean doesn’t have too many Sundays off working retail. All last week he was saying he wanted to go to the beach and Brian just couldn’t get off (he’s retail also). So Saturday we are looking on the internet and couldn’t find a cheap enough place until Sean called a hotel he’s been to before. They had a room, so the two of us got our act together and were on the road by 1:45, just a little over an hour later. We stopped to cash in a bag of coins and got $67 for them (paid for gas and our dinner). If we had known a grocery store was across the street from the hotel and that we had a microwave, we could have utilized them.
My stipulation was that we could stop if needed and we did a few times for a bathroom break and to geocache! We stopped at a few beach towns in Delaware as we decided to skip Rt. 1 for Rt. 113. First we went to a park in Millsboro. DE near a canal.
The geocache was in crevices of that big tree. There’s Sean in the red shirt.
That’s the Indian River Canal. We really like seeing new areas like this.
The next little town was Selbyville, DE. The cache was at the museum that use to be the train station. Sean posed with the 70s(?) Plymouth police cruiser out front.
Despite stopping a few times, we got to Ocean City, MD in just over 3 hours.
The Carousel is a nice, beachfront hotel with an ice skating rink inside. The whole town was hopping with mostly high school seniors and a girl’s lacrosse tournament! We saw them everywhere!
We ate at a place across the street from the hotel called ‘The Green Turtle’. We had to wait a while. Once seated, a group of young ladies came in for dinner. Sean recognized a few from his Penn State days, but it was a bridal party dinner and he didn’t want to say hi. It really is a small world!
I saw that a geocache was called ‘OC Sunset’ and we decided to get there before the actual event happen. It was a park we have never been and there again, many lacrosse matches were going on.
I got some pretty awesome shots. We worked our way down the pier at North Park-it was 0.16 of a mile to where the cache was stuck under the only bench there. Sean found it!
The pier we walked down to the cache.
And there it goes!
We went for ice cream and a smoothie and a little shopping afterwards. I called it a night and Sean was just getting started. He likes a club there called Seacrets and he was headed in that direction. I was about to fall asleep when my ‘neighbors’ came back and decided to jump on the beds like monkeys (male teens) at 1:30 am. One time the picture moved over head and I jumped a foot. Sean was back by then and at 2:15 I called the front desk and security came up and knocked on their door. Shame on them for acting that way in a family hotel! There are motels just for groups like theirs.
I’m stopping here and will talk about Day 2 soon. We saw a few more nice places and grabbed a total of 10 geocaches! Sean is liking caching much more now. He sees it’s the adventure and the cache/log is just the prize at the end.
We’re waiting on the ‘monster’ storm Sandy to arrive. Today I picked up a few things outside that I thought would get tossed around in the wind and rain we are expecting within hours. We put tarp down in hopes that the water would run away from the foundation and not go in the basement. We have lots to drink, enough ice for a few days and flashlights and candles. It seems she will take her good ol’ time coming inland and staying a bit. Right now it’s rainy and a bit breezy.
So I am worried about our beaches and coastlines…we have seen on tv and FB the flooded out streets of Wildwood, NJ and the waters covering Route 1 between the Delaware beach resorts of Dewey and Bethany. It’s going to be a mess and it’s probably going to be a while before things will be like they were when people are going on vacation in the summertime. I am glad I’m not on vacation now (if we were in NJ/DE/MD) as I’d be scared about where I am and what’s going on at home.
Brian’s a bit under the weather and I hope that Sean and him can tackle any labor this may make them go through. I won’t be able to do much leaning over as my hip has been bad this weekend. I did have one good night, not sure what I did, I took one glucasomine chondroitin that night.
Wish us well and again…we are on standby. We will be filling up pitchers of water and the tub tomorrow morning. We need the tub water for the toidy. Not fun.
I think this is Atlantic City, NJ about 1975
Cape May, NJ
Ocean City, MD
Rehoboth Beach, DE
Fenwick Island, DE
Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center-National Harbor, MD
Inside the hotel, an interesting wall hanging
A park near the Capitol with a very overgrown bush. Looks like it has multi-beards.
Outside the Library of Congress
A park on the way back to Union Station
Butterfly weed
Very tame squirrel! There were two of them right outside an office building, so they probably got fed all the time.
The three of us went down to National Harbor, MD on Saturday the 1st for Abbey Road on the River, the musical tribute to the Beatles. We went last year and stayed at the Gaylord and had a fun time. I changed the room this year to the atrium area so we wouldn’t have as far to walk. That helped, as did bringing foods for a few meals, but that’s about it. It was very humid and just standing in the sun for a few minutes was miserable. We purchased ‘general admission’ tickets and not ‘preferred seating’. Even though it was suppose to be half price for two days, it was still $70 and we had a hard time just standing and finding a place to stand. Last year they had seats open and we usually got to sit down, almost at every venue. Many times this year, there were empty seats for the P.A. and people standing elbow to elbow everywhere even up and down the walkways for G.A.. To me that isn’t too safe and not very organized. Saturday night we sat in a little area for hotel guests near the pool with tables-we could barely see the singers, but we could hear them fine. That isn’t right.
We took a few shots of the bands-I have to ID them by looking at the schedule later, but I think we saw maybe 4-5 bands and last year twice that many.
See all the empty seats for the preferred seats? Behind this fence it was jammed.
That evening we did have a nice dinner at McCormick and Schmicks Seafood right on the waterfront. Sean and I had their McCormick Seafood trio of salmon with grilled shrimp and stuffed shrimp with green beans (under cooked-ugh) and cheesy kind of potatoes.
Brian had Mahi Mahi with a corn bisque. We also got a huge, delectable piece of carrot cake to share.
We took a little walk to find a cache. It was about 1/4 mile away and we had to cross over 4 roads, two which had a lot of traffic on them. It was near an interesting rock formation:
This is my early 1970s look.
The hint for the cache made it a little too easy to find. I ‘always’ look at the hint since I have gone to the trouble to go and look for the cache in the first place. It was down from this area behind a rock. Not in good shape. I forgot to bring my bag with my geocaching stuff, so I had no travel bug or swag to drop (really didn’t want to take it to the restaurant). The pen was between another rock which I didn’t see right away, so I used a crayon from the swag-lol.
So we walked on back up through the town to listen to more music and I started to have a coughing attack. It happened when we drove into the place a few hours earlier. I think my sinuses decided to act up. I was okay after I got into the hotel’s air to revive. I am spoiled by a/c. So we ventured out to ‘good ol’ general admission and right smack in the middle were 4 hotel chairs-with papers on them. I had seen them earlier with papers on them. I watched those chairs for 10-15 minutes and then decided to go sit down. You don’t save hotel chairs in this area. I was the only brave person to do so and another 10-15 minutes went by and sure enough a woman came back and said they were their chairs because they put papers on them. I said you don’t save chairs in this area and I needed to sit for a few minutes. She had a chair next to Brian and her hubby was very nice and said to stay. I said we will leave in a few songs anyway which we did. (We did see her later at another concert and she decided to sit in the 1st or 2nd row-now that’s not a good idea in a closed room with big booming speakers).
Look at the nice view they were stealing from other people. If they wanted preferred seats, they should have paid for them.
On the pier
It felt like about 94-that fan with the mist was worth every penny I paid. I seemed to be the only person with one-crazy!
So after the above fiasco (this was at the night show) Sean took a water taxi over to Alexandria like he did last year. Brian and I walked along the river and still heard the band and saw them from the back. And then…
the lightning show began….
in all my years I have never seen lightning like that-truly spectacular and scary at the same time! We decided to go in as the rain began and they cancelled the show! Inside everyone was going upstairs, so we did also. They did the firework show anyway which was pretty awesome.
‘Fire and Rain’
Not a fun way really to watch fireworks
We sat and waited for an indoor concert and listened to a few songs, but we had Sean on our mind as the rain was coming down in buckets and the power had gone out in the bar he was in. He asked the bartender how often that happens and he said about once a year! The roads in those old towns tend to flood out and Sean had to wait a bit to come back on the water taxi. We could have driven over to get him, but thank goodness that worked out well.
DC tomorrow!
After we went to the aquarium (on the 20th), we headed to the island of Chincoteague. We had gone last year and loved the hotel (alas it was booked solid this year) and the beach in the park. We stayed in America’s Best which had the door that opened right up to the outside. This isn’t good in Chincoteague as it is known for it’s mosquitoes. The room was a bit tight also. We went right to the beach at around 6 pm.
You drive a few miles through the park, a national preserve where the wild horses and other wildlife live. We saw lots of herons and a few turtles too.
Got to love that a gorgeous beach is at the other end. Of course when you are driving to the island, there are stretches and stretches of marsh and wet land.
I think Sean got a few shots of the ponies, but it takes him a while to upload his pictures….I’ll share if it’s good.
Look at this sunset-that’s their library
Here’s Misty!
The next morning we got on the road to Ocean City, MD and ended up in a little town called Pocamoke City, MD. We went into the museum there and it was like $10 each, so we passed on that. Little did I know there was a big cache right in the lobby! I use my phone a lot for caching and saw this several miles later.
We also went to Snow Hill, MD. We actually back tracked! Sean knew I wanted to see the buildings and look for a cache there.
We ate lunch here-very nice.
Snow Hill it one of the only intact Victorian towns left (I think that is what the brochure said).
We went to this little museum to find a nano cache. It was kind of funny seeing three adults looking in crevices and tapping bolts to see if they were fake. We had no luck. A nice side story is that the cache owner (part of a family of 8 who geocaches) answered my email to where it may be. She told me exactly where it was (I had logged it as a didn’t find already) and she said to message her anytime if I am stuck on a cache. Cool.
After we got to Ocean City, I did a virtual cache (photo), a small cache (near the old life saving station) and a web cam one-that last one was too hard to do as it was really bright and you were suppose to save the shot of you to show the person who did the challenge. We walked several blocks in the heat and I think we at least tried to do it! : )
We then headed to Rehoboth and grabbed a hotdog at Nathan’s and tried to do a web cam challenge there-not easy again. We weren’t there long as it’s a pain with the 30 minute parking meters you have to run back to again and again.
That was about the extent of our trip and now it’s time to weed the gardens and get that bathroom finished.
We are going to see the Bacon Brothers (Kevin) on July 10th at Longwood Gardens. We also want to see the night light display there, but we have until September. I’d rather wait a few weeks as the crowds there have been crazy. I made Sean drive past there a few night ago and they were parking in the grass near the parking lot as overflow.
Tomorrow-cache collecting-up to 20!
We stopped off in Ocean City, Md on the 21st on the way home from Virginia. It was in the 90s-hot time to be traveling. I was doing some geocaching. Here was a ‘virtual cache’ of me with the island of Assasteague behind me at the inlet area.
Collages & Creative Goodness 