Category Archives: Me stuff

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?

Sep4

First some Potomac/DC greenery

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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.

Sep3

Potomac and DC area exploring-pt 1

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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!

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.

Aug24

Gnarly stuff

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As the time ticks down for when Brian will be busier, we are trying to squeeze some more hikes into our days that are left. I will hopefully be busier also as I get a few of my online stores up and running again in a few weeks.

Yesterday we went about 10 miles from here to an area off of Rt. 72 in Delaware called Paper Mill Park. It was basically a patch of woods in between nice housing developments. When we pulled up, we didn’t see anything except lush green. Bri backed up a bit and then I saw a walking path.

It was a narrow path and we saw a pond to our left with about 50 feet or so of trees and brush on both sides. The two caches we found were on the pond side….near trees.

We first had to walk under this ‘gnarly tree’. I felt like I was walking in the woods of the enchanted forest!

I had just gotten those seafoam color shorts the night before. I like them! (Caribbean Joe).

Nice pond we checked out after finding the two caches here.

There were a few of these large boxes-I think they were bat houses! They eat mosquitoes and we should get one as the skeeters are so bad all the time now.

We went to find another smaller cache called ‘the most tacky cache in Delaware’. Yay, curiosity got the best of me. The place was a ‘road’ that lead to fields all around and the grass was really long (tick land). I think the cache was nearer a somewhat quiet road, but when the cars went by, they zoomed by.  We would of had to walk a bit through that grass. I think ‘tacky’ meant it was magnetic. I’d like to find it when the grass is cut!

We also found a cache near a park where people mostly ride horses. Bri is getting good-he saw a path off a gravel path and the cache was in there! But he looked in the wrong tree, it was actually under a stump that had a hole in it like a fairy house. I dropped a travel coin in there to pass along.

The plastic on this map was really scuffed up!

We are up to 96 finds now! Hope to get 4 over the weekend as we are going to a flea market on Sunday and there are some near this area.

We stopped at a new Cali-Mexican place for dinner and I could only eat half of it as I got full and I was more thirsty then  hungry.  We grabbed a few groceries and headed to the cache at the dairy we couldn’t find a few nights earlier.  This time we saw a woodsy area we ignored the night before. We went in there and found it right away! The cache was very visible, but the log was on the ground in several pieces. We picked it up the best we could and replaced it in a better hiding area. The cache owner emailed me and said it had been ‘muggled’ five times this year. Kids have to be doing it.

We did get to take my mom out to dinner a few nights ago. We picked a classy Asian style restaurant and it was really delicious. Mom enjoyed her meal as did Sean and me.

She had a chicken, shrimp and scallops in a tangerine sauce. Sean and I had Imperial Shrimp. The menu was so fancy, I didn’t know what some of the items were on it!

And Zoey was right, my Persian Shield really came back nicely after it was overwintered in the basement.

I didn’t do much today, though I am about to make dinner. I had terrible indigestion from either the new restaurant’s food or some snack food I was eating. I am better, but I was tossing and turning a lot last night.

Aug16

No we weren’t casing out the place, we swear!

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Last night Brian and I headed to Philadelphia for a tour featuring vampires, ghosts and sex. Believe me, I am not shocked by anything as I grew up with three brothers.  Rain was threatening all afternoon, and on the way in it did rain about 10 minutes. We went in a little early to geocache. There were not a bunch of them in the vivacity of Independence Hall, but we saw there was one on Sansom Street where jeweler’s row was. Oh, I had printed out a coupon for a parking garage and we went into the incorrect one…bummer. Also saw where my cousin’s store was and will have to go there sometime. The family has owned a Danish furniture store for years-it’s called ‘Dane Decor’.

So we walk down to Sansom. Almost 30 years ago, we walked around there looking for my engagement ring.  Because Princess Diana had a sapphire, I wanted an emerald with diamonds around it. We went to a few stores and settled on Sydney Rosen & Co. The salesman talked me out of the emerald as a main stone, so I got a .33 diamond with two emeralds on each side. Years later, I got my ring cleaned and sized again and not sure if all the emeralds had cracked, but some had to be replaced.

Back to yesterday-so we start looking for a nice size cache and the GPS is bouncing back and forth. We look down stairwells and in planters. We did this for 30 minutes. I thought it best to tell the policeman we were looking for something hidden since we are in the diamond district. So a man walks by me and says ‘8 ft. 6 ft…..’ I  asked him if he knew we were looking for something and he said yes and if I wanted to know where it was. I said…well I think it’s in a planter. He said look for one just with dirt…and then pointed to a restaurant! I think I could of found it without him telling me about the restaurant part. Within a few minutes we found the empty planter (the hint was on the earth).  It was almost buried with a tile over top of it. It had a lot of stuff in it too, which I found the ones around here usually don’t.

Here I am with the cache with Sydney Rosen behind me!

Next we went to the Bourse Building as we didn’t have time to locate a Cheese steak place I read about. We had 15 minutes to grab a slice of pizza (we had the kind with a top crust). A shop was still open and I went in and grabbed a few little things for Sean, Mom and me.

Then we headed on over to the Liberty Bell pavillion. We had both seen the Liberty Bell a few times, but not here. We had to get our belongings examined like at the Mrs. Obama event!

It was really humid and I had to pull my hair back-whew!

For Zoey-look at this gorgeous Sweet Potato vine!

We then headed for the tour across the street at the visitor center. We first looked around a gift shop there-wow stuff is expensive!

We had a young guy about Sean’s age and he didn’t want his photo taken. I guess maybe it’s because of what he is talking about. We stood at the visitor’s center for 10-15 minutes as he told us about the infidelities of our founding fathers. I knew about Jefferson and the slaves.  Something about John Hancock that I didn’t buy.

Then the part, which must have been this guy’s favorite part was talked about down the ways. It was about hookers in Philly in the colonial days. I knew it was a tour that was ‘R’ rated, but why not show us maybe where a brothel was?

We went over to Washington Square. That was used as a mass burial yard. Very creepy. He said a guy he knows was digging in his basement nearby and bones fell out of the wall.  Okay, maybe after over 200 years? Thanks to standing there all that time I got at least half a dozen mosquito bites.

That’s the unknown soldier…the guy said they pulled some guy out of the mass grave in a uniform.

He told us a lot of stuff, but didn’t show us many sights. This building (not sure if it’s the original) was a prison and where the first balloon sailed all the way over to Deptford, NJ  (really not that far).

I really liked seeing the Old City Tavern up close. The ghost story is that a bride was getting ready for her wedding and her bridesmaid knocked into an oil lamp and set her on fire and she met her demise.

Here’s a local tv program and the head chef and a clairvoyant are talking about ghosts in the tavern.

Entrance way of the Old City Tavern-look at all the famous people chef Walter Staib has met.

The guide left us across the street from here at a grid pattern that was set up the way the original city streets were laid out. And that was it. He even had the nerve to ask for a tip. This wasn’t a cheap tour, even with the discount. I was a bit peeved as they took a registration fee on top of the Living  Social deal. And the other tour took you in a circle. This one, we had to find our way back to 6th and Market.

More sights:

Souvenirs!

The Declaration House where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution

Independence Hall at night. We heard the clock chime three times.

This was unique. What’s in the remnants of I think the Beale house. There are three videos going and places to sit. This one looks like it’s above a fireplace. There are windowless window frames also.

I think we enjoyed walking around on our own more than going on the tour! I’d love to eat at the Old City Tavern sometime and visit a few more places and look for a few more caches. 40 miles isn’t that far away.

Aug14

May be hanging up the bushwacking stick

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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!

Aug12

Witness Movie setting in scenic Lancaster County

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Brian and I went out early this afternoon to do some caching in Lancaster county. We stopped at the little town of Atglen, PA as there were a few on the way to the one I was truly wanting to find.  So we stop at this World II Memorial. It was on this narrow strip of land with a flag pole at one end and the memorial and benches and trees. We almost gave up until I saw the hint that said ‘at eye level’. You are so going to crack up. Brian saw a bird’s nest in one of the little trees and I told him it could be a fake one with a cache inside. He gingerly parted the branches only to see a little beak pop up from the nest-yes it was the real deal! Ha! Finally we were standing  next to an outlet box and I touched this thing that looked like a metal cover (light switch cover size) and it moved! I pulled on it and it was indeed the cache! Surprise! The first one it’s kind for us.

We went down the road a bit and found one in a parking lot. Bri lifted this lamp skirt twice-I got out and lifted it and saw a animal skin camouflaged container-bingo! He didn’t look hard enough.

Then the frustration began. I printed out the directions to the movie cache for ‘Witness’ and we didn’t get the signal for it until we stopped in a town and waited for it to load. Both the phone and GPS were wonky. The cache was down this road next to these ‘ladies’ cooling themselves off:

We saw lots and lots of the rolling hills of corn and other crops for miles and miles

See the hot air balloon in the middle. Took this out of the car window.

So we found the cache in a guard rail across from the cows. Brian had climbed over the guardrail and all of the sudden he started going ‘ouch!’, ‘that hurts!’  I thought he stepped on a wasp nest, when in fact it was the plant stinging nettle. A lady and her hubby came along  to fish on the little bridge and she I.D.ed the plant. She asked what we were looking for and we told her. Think she was mildly interested. We asked the guy about the Witness farm and it was down the road going the other way. I remembered to look on the GPS as the cache owner mentioned the address and after a little driving, we found it. A man was  plowing along the corn and Brian said he wanted me to see the farm (being the big Harrison Ford fan). I took this out of the windshield:

Can you picture Danny Glover walking down here when they figured out where John Book (Ford) was hiding out? I read that Sylvester Stallone was offered this role and he turned it down, regretting it.

The Amish guy actually waved to us as we left.

This was actually as we turned in the road to the house.

We then went to a nearby town where Brian worked for a few years and got club sandwiches for either a late lunch or early dinner (4 o’clock).

We went down the road and snagged a large (but wet cache) in someone’s yard and tried to find a well hidden one in a park-nada.

We saw where the Robert Fulton House (who invented the Steamboat) was about 6 miles away, so we went there. It was closed (we peeked in the windows) and walked around their garden. Thank goodness there was a bathroom in the middle of no where! That came in handy.

Where is that blasted cache?

I really wanted to go back to Strasburg, so we did and got some ice cream. One minute is was sunny and 10 minutes later the heaven’s opened up.

Girls in the ice cream shop

We had to wait a bit. A cache was down the road, but after looking around just a bit, I couldn’t find it. I’ll have to go back because I was the only one who couldn’t find it.

Sky over a Dutch market where we stopped for some things

We drove home in pouring rain, yet when we got home it wasn’t really doing anything.

Wednesday is our trip to Philadelphia for the ghost tour. We want to go in early to avoid work traffic and maybe cache a bit! Historic caching. : )

Aug10

Seeing The First Lady of the USA!

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What an exciting day we had up in Montgomery County, PA yesterday! I got an email, said to pick up the tickets and come on up to see First Lady Michelle Obama. Brian literally held the camera over the heads of other people (zoom lens). We arrived late, got our purses searched and walked through a metal detector. We had to stand almost an hour to wait for Mrs. Obama. The school (Upper Dublin high school, about an hour from here) only had the one side of bleachers open. Thank goodness my mom had a fold up chair, but that little lady had to walk from a field.

Not too bad right? We only got a few clear ones. We took my almost 82 yr old mom along as none of us has ever seen a First Lady before…just their inaugural gowns in the American History museum. Sean has seen both Barack Obama at a Penn State rally and Bill Clinton.

The First Lady is a very thoughtful, intelligent speaker. People tend to forget that both she and her husband come from humble backgrounds. Barack was raised by a single mother and his grandparents (I was raised by my mom and grandmom). I know she probably repeats this speech a lot, but it was interesting to the 1,800 people there.  We all had to go pick up the tickets to be able to go in.

The school band

The people on the bleachers

Send some good vibes as the hubby got a phone call yesterday while we were out for a job interview!