Category Archives: PA.

Nov11

Cleaning or geocaching?

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Yesterday was a nice day for being outside, but not raking leaves! I can’t do that anyway as my hip is so bad, so I took Brian away from his yard work.  When I go out in the car, it’s hard for me to get in and out all the time and I really hurt by the end of the day. There was a book sale at a nearby school to raise money for the Kindergarten. Oh how I’d love to work there in that centuries old building, but I bet it’s a bit on the chilly side. Just like last year, there weren’t too many people there. I was able to pick up a few books for the school where I work for a few dollars.  They seem to read the same ones all the time, so I found a few cute ones about sharing and Jamie Lee Curtis’s book ‘Tell me again about the night I was born’.  I found a few novels for me and the lady working there helped me find a few for my mom via mom on my phone’s speaker.

I decided to see if the William Penn tree near the parking lot there was a waymark and filled out the form on the website. People need to find the London Grove Friends Meetinghouse and take a photo of themselves in front of the 9 story, 330 yr old white oak!

So then we drove around the immediate area for a few caches. The scenery was so gorgeous-rolling hills, horses, cattle, trees….I’m so glad there is still land like this close by. Where I live, housing developments have popped up all around us.

The first cache was on Tapeworm Road-what a name-it was indeed a wiggly road! It wasn’t too hard to find-Brian used his geosenses and saw a pile of wood near one end of  the fence-bingo! After this find, my phone went wonky. There was one down the same road that we missed! We found one near another horse field but inside a tree. Then there was a covered bridge one. The navigation took us in a big circle when we only needed to go to the end of Tapeworm Road and make a left. Hate to waste gas like that.

We get to the covered bridge and it’s closed-a truck obviously ran into one side as there is crumbled cement and a support beam there. We could tell there had been some flooding in that area as dirt was pushed around near the stream with heavy equipment. We mainly looked inside the bridge and didn’t see anything. I PAF (phoned a friend-actually wrote an email) and he said we should have been underneath. Opps-it was a muck factory under there. Maybe some other time.

I  mentioned about a nearby ‘gastro-pub’ (refers to a bar and restaurant that serves high-end beer and food) where we went last year called ‘The Whip’, so we went. I got sausage and red pepper quiche and salad. I’m not a big fan of sausage, but this was heavy on the nutmeg and very moist. Brian got a chicken salad wrap. There was a cache around back in a guard rail that took minutes to snag.

Brian near where the cache was with The Whip behind him.

The last cache was in a cemetery way out in the boonies. It was fairly easy to find, so we walked around the cemetery. I wondered what the stones were at the end of the newer part of the cemetery and they were for babies. : (

Near the church were stones for a Collins family and the names were facing the church instead of out. That was a bit strange.

Here’s a  satellite look at the church and cemetery… I was checking out that feature on Geocaching.com last night. It will show you where the cache is! See the smile face!

We even went to church after all this. Today I’m tired, but I have a lot to do. I couldn’t find some of my pants and they were still up in the attic. So now I am sorting through clothes again. I also put away most of my Halloween decorations except for my owls.

Sean’s girlfriend and daughter are coming out for Thanksgiving. I am hoping to get something for my hip pain by then so I can pull that off. It will be nice to meet her 6.5 yr old.

I have some testing this week, so please send me some good vibes.

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!

Nov6

Check one off the bucket list

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Just a photo…words will follow later as I have a very busy day ahead.

On Monday, I asked Brian if we could go out to Montgomery County Community College to see former President Bill Clinton. It was always my wish to see a President someday. I missed a chance many years ago to see my favorite President, Jimmy Carter when he had a lecture at the college where I attended. This was about 15 yrs.  I really admire what he did after he left office from writing books to helping to build homes for people through Habitat for Humanity.

He may have been too nice to be President. He’s a very intelligent man with what they call an encyclopedia type memory. Ask him something, he can tell you about it.

So we got stuck in traffic very close to the college. The doors had opened at 2:30 and we got there about an hour later. When we were in traffic, we heard sirens and a mini motorcade went on our left-police and a few SUVs from Maryland. I bet that was Prez Bill!

So many people wanted to come to the event, they moved it from the gym to outside. We were a little cold, but okay. We heard from about 4 local politicians first, heard a 14 yr old girl sing the national anthem beautifully and then Bill came out! We were in the back. People were holding up signs and cellphones. It was really an honor for me. When he was President, I got a Christmas card from him and Hillary and the Gores for 8 years. That was a treat! I should take photos of them sometime.

So it was a good 15-20 minute talk and he had the crowd in the palm of his hand!

My viewpoint at one place in the crowd.

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.

Oct18

How Kennett Square made it on the map

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This is a National Broadcast Radio story about Kennett Square, PA.

In the late 1800s, two Quaker farmers from Kennett Square, flower growers, went to Europe, where people were already farming mushrooms, and they brought back some spores. They started growing them. A few Quakers or their descendents are still in the business today.

There’s a penetrating smell in the air, not exactly a rotting smell, more like fermenting. Tractors are rushing around like bees in a hive, turning and mixing giant steaming piles. -The priest from our church once said ‘that’s the smell of money’.

Chris Alonzo says it used to be really helpful having so many mushroom growers so close together; it made them all more efficient. But we’re so big now, he says, we’re trucking in hay for compost from a hundred miles away. There’s not nearly enough housing that our workers can afford. Maybe, he says, this mushroom capital of the world has gotten too big.

Dan Charles, NPR News.

Oct13

Geocaching trio

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Today Sean, our adult son, (he is a grad student studying GIS-mapping) joined us for a little geocaching outing back to Southern Chester County. I got an email notice that a Halloween themed cache was out there and fairly new, so we decided to see it. (First we stopped at Saladworks for lunch). We got there and it was a very small cemetery and where the remnants of small church had been. Sean had his phone and I had mine….the GPS was a little jumpy but I saw both a big tree and a trio of bushes-hmmmm….so I peeked under the bushes and there was something all covered up-kind of weird as it was in a cemetery! Brian got under and pulled it out and uncovered it-yikes!

 

The ‘little guy’ sat up when the lid was opened! The most clever cache we have seen! Thanks!

Of course I needed to look for a few more caches. The area is getting swamped with housing developments, but this was a pretty area near the Little Elk Creek, that flows into Maryland.

So we encounter this bridge…again the GPS is jumping between both sides of the bridge. We get within a few feet and it goes up. So I look at the hint and it says ‘near the plaque’. Then it’s a piece of cake.

We all posed here-lol

I like that the ‘guy’ above me said  ‘construction, found by accident’

We then ventured to an Old Meeting house from about 1862. The place was in bad shape, and we tried as we might, even inside, we didn’t spot the cache. I think it was missing. We took more photos and the two inside the meeting house came out a bit out of focus-from the phone camera and the Canon. Spooky!

All the windows are shuttered and the foundation must not be good as there are huge cracks and the windows aren’t straight.

See how blurry this one and the one of Sean and me are?

We then went toward the town of Oxford and I remembered there was one near a florist shop. We stopped and I found it quickly as I had seen photos of where it was, though I think it was changed.

We drove down past where I thought my pal from high school lived and we saw his house! There were a lot of cars in the drive, but I know they have a few. When we got home, Brian read where John’s mom had passed away today. : (   It’s like we were drawn to that area as something was going on. Deepest sympathies pal.

We went and I got the yummy pretzels from the Amish place, but the place in general was going to close in 15 minutes. We also went in the new Walmart and got a few things we needed (and Sean gets a discount). There was a Chinese buffet and we got take-out and brought it home.

So it was a nice day. I am a bit achy from changing out my summer clothes to winter clothes. I am still working on that. Plus I brought in plants. I am not sure if I am going to save the coleus, maybe I’ll take cuttings. I also got a flu shot a few days ago, and that may be a side effect. I went down to take my mom and she had a runny nose and got one anyway. She woke up yesterday feeling crummy and she has a full fledged cold. : (

I may do yard clean up tomorrow!

Got email about a Best Buy needing a person to demonstrate the Keurig coffee maker for 4 weekends before Christmas…thinking about it. But that’s 8 hours on my feet and my back is still bad. I have to go back to the chiropractor to find out about my x-rays and what treatment I may need.

Oct10

Adjusting to changes

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It was the third Wednesday in a row I got up at 7 am-boo hoo right? It’s really hard for Ms Hoot here!

The first day was the magazine job and of course now it’s the preschool ‘assistant’ job. I am not the main teacher, but I seem to be the floater-go where they need me. I’ve been in with a lovely lady named Charlene who leads the 3 yr olds. I said my son was turning 26 and she said she had a 42 yr old son! Wow! I thought she was younger than me! She also has a granddaughter. She was concerned about getting a flu shot and I said it’s not a bad idea. I will probably get one along with my mom. The children are cuties, some boisterous boys of course. : )  You can tell their little minds are going faster than they can move their lips! Today one of the assistants came in and showed them sign language for a number of farm animals. They were all fascinated! They paid attention for almost 15 minutes. The  rainy weather has held them in a lot this week, so I could tell by just seeing them the one day a week I do that they have pent up energy. I suggested rugs for them to sit on for story time and they have plastic dots of different colors to use instead. That worked a bit. I think I would have put the circles down first and then let them just sit down on one instead of pick one. That caused a little commotion. I’m surely learning about children all over again!

I did a little Halloween home decorating for a few days on Monday and Tuesday. I’m not finished, but I have an ‘owl theme’ going on here. I didn’t realize I had so many! I need to take more photos, but I tried some without a flash. I am still having hip/back issues and need to see what’s up with the x-rays.

Brian took me out for a Jake’s burger tonight and asked if I wanted to find a geocache or two. I never turn that down-lol. I looked at the phone app and there’s a cute farm series around this area and there was an orchard we hadn’t hit, so we went. First we bought apples and a ‘ghost’ pumpkin. I mentioned the geocache to the lady and she knew where it was and I said not to tell me. I wanted to mention this to her as it was closing time. The cache was in a tree from the 1860s under a bunch of ivy!

We found the dairy we visited a week or so ago and got some toasted coconut ice cream and butter-all on the honor system. It was after dark and the door was open. I am sure they have a camera on the place-I wrote down what I bought, put the money in the cash box and got my change. The ice cream is delicious too!

Hope to see my mom tomorrow!

Oct7

Caching 3 days in a row

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I’m counting my solo trip to Tweed’s Tavern in the trio.  Brian had off on Friday, so we headed south to the Oxford, PA area. Brian use to work out of an office there, but we didn’t go near the town, but another town, Lincoln University which has a college and upper Oxford, more in […]