Category Archives: photography

Jun28

Chadds Ford in 5 minutes

Posted on Friday, June 28, 2013 by Dianne

Sun setting over Chadds Ford, PA, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

On the way back from my mom’s house, I asked Brian to turn down Creek road to where the Chadds Ford Historical society is located so I could get my Instagram shots for the day. I was really pleased with these shots of the beautiful landscape and building.

The side of the Chadds Ford Historical Society

There’s something about the sun raising and setting that adds a special ambiance to a photo.

We did a little caching on the 23rd near the state line in DE. First we went to Mill Creek Meeting house. What a quaint place. The GPS pointed to a group of trees, but the hint was ‘metal on metal’ and we found the bison tube near an old chain link fence.

This is the side facing the road.

The Quakers are a very peace loving group. Brian is a peace loving person too!

We then went down a side road where this place use to be.

There were quaint old homes back here that had been renovated. I’ll have to go down this road some other time to take more photos.

We found a cache in a guard rail- but near the end of it-a pink pencil box and another cache in a guard rail in a magnetic key box. Brian took this photo and I used an Instagram filter.

We get to see such pretty sites on these little excursions!

We’ve had heavy rain late in the afternoon for days. A few days ago we saw this:

Awesome!

Sean went for an interview up in the city of Lancaster yesterday the 27th. We tagged along hoping the big farmer’s market would be open, but it wasn’t. So we looked for a geocache around the corner. It was opposite a convenience store. We started to look for it and the shop guy poked his head out of the door and said ‘you’re cold’…as we were near a phone pole. He said he could see it from up where he was standing and I backed up a bit-there it was under a smelly trash can (the kind with wheels) ugh.

Sean was in with the guy at the LanCo Conservancy for over an hour. It’s only part time work through September. It’s also 45 miles one way from our house. Some things to consider. But maybe the guy knows somebody. It seems it is who you know these days.

I went to see an Orthopedist doctor today. I guess the young lady I was seeing before was an assistant. Seems she got the issue with my back wrong. I have lower left ligament issues. The doctor thinks that my fall last year even shifted my pelvis a bit. And the physical therapy that caused me pain was all wrong for my issue! Now don’t you think they would have figured that out the first time I went there? I am to get an MRI, but in the process of seeing if the insurance will pay for it.

We lost an old apple tree yesterday. Down it went in the direction of the yard, not the bank. We don’t get the previous owner’s reason for planting trees on a bank. You can’t pick the apples without a long tool. They weren’t so great and the deer and wildlife were enjoying them today.

The tree was behind her.

I thought I’d get a break from doctors and have two things to do the week of the 8th, 45 minutes in opposite directions, Monday and Friday. When it rains it pours-literally.

Jun20

Figuring out the coordinates and getting the prize!

Posted on Thursday, June 20, 2013 by Dianne

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This gallery contains 15 photos.

Yesterday Brian and I were off to do our bimonthly food run. We have a few stores we like, but we decided to go to the one up in Gap, PA. They had some ‘buy one get one free’ items and I think they alone were worth the trip. But first, we did a little […]

Jun15

Exploring in MD and DE

Posted on Saturday, June 15, 2013 by Dianne

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We got up on the 9th and headed to a crowded Dunkin Donuts for a quick breakfast which was anything but that! Seems everyone wants their beach munchies at the same time. When we passed just a few hours later the place was void of vehicles.

We headed to one of my favorite spots on earth-the inlet of Ocean City, MD. There is so much water around you! There’s the jetty, the view of the boardwalk and amusements and Assateague from across the bay.

We were here a few hours and ventured to around O.C. for a few more geocaches and back to North Park again.

I found a clever birdfeeder cache at OC city hall (looking for photo)

and one in a neat ‘tropical’ garden Dewey Beach, DE too.

We found a cache in the Isle of Wight park across the bridge from Ocean City

We stopped for salad and pizza and then headed to the Old Navy store-can’t go there without buying something. We got on the road and I asked Sean if we could stop in Milford, DE to see a cache that is suppose to be a haunted house. He said why not!

When we drove up, I thought it looked like a movie set! Eek.

That little window must be for decoration only!

So we go around to the back and GZ seems to be an herb garden. I am looking under this silvery herb which I think was Santolina and Sean is starting to get attacked by mosquitoes. I say to him, ‘Can’t you lift one piece of this herb to save my back?’ He comes over like he is ‘guided’ and lifts the section where the cache is! Now that is spooky! I read that paranormal investigators were in this house all night and asked the ‘occupant’ what games did they like to play? (they try and keep to the period of the people who resided there) and they picked up ‘slipper’ as a reply. The investigators researched ‘slipper’ and it was indeed a childhood game of the Civil War era! They learned how to play the game and the electro magnetic fields (I think this is what they are called) were more active when they were doing so!

When we left, we were approaching a red light and I said, ‘Sean, you are going to go through a red light!!’ and he didn’t stop! Hope it was because he was just tired or should have taken off his sunglasses. There was a car to the left of the intersection too.

Anyway, we got home in good time and reflecting on the trip, we were glad we headed south.

Jun13

Spur of the minute over night trip to the beach

Posted on Thursday, June 13, 2013 by Dianne

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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.

May1

Two lips-I mean tulips!

Posted on Wednesday, May 1, 2013 by Dianne

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Just a little play on words there. Ha ha!

Happy May Day!

My son Sean and I headed over to Longwood Gardens a few days ago so we could see most of the tulips in their full spring glory. I can pretty much say I felt like I was in Holland as the waves of colors and the varieties of tulips were amazing!

Hi Sean!

There were other pretty flowers like poppies

Pansies and such

Tower of Jewels

Canterbury Bells and Begonias

And many more gorgeous things and plants!

Apr29

Caching, history and tulips

Posted on Monday, April 29, 2013 by Dianne

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I realized it’s been a while since I did a blog post. I’m going to keep this blog as long as possible as it’s a good record for me. I now upload my camera photos right to Flickr and Instagram, so it will be semi-updated there on the sidebar. They won’t have details like my blog, but you can kind of see what I am up to.

So what have I been up to? LOL Well. for one thing, we are climbing up to 300 geocache finds. This is pretty good for someone like me with my issues, but when we go out looking, I tend to forget I hurt sometimes.

Last Friday we went down to historic New Castle, Delaware to look for a few caches. First I wanted to stop near Wilmington to see ‘the biggest cache’ some people have ever seen, this of course is according to the logs for it. Well we found the location and the van-yes, it was the back of a van, like one used for a/c or heating which was near the business where it was parked. We were confused to where the key was to open the cache, feeling around under the bottom of the vehicle for a ‘MKH’-you all know what that is. All we did was knock off rust down there. I finally went into the business and they told me where to look and within a a few minutes we had it! So then we unlocked the back of the van instead of the side-it said to unlock where a certain number was located-duh. I guess we were too excited to see it after all the hype.

Here’s what we found:

This was facing the back. I guess that’s a seat for photo ops! The lights even went on!

Right under this was a big notebook for the log book! There was a travel bug hotel (I was hoping for a bug, but it was empty) and lots of swag.

It was way cool!!!!

We then headed to New Castle and were stumped with a few caches on where to park for them. We had to resort to just picking and choosing off the phone. We did find one near a piling after a bit of a search. The piling was in water and we didn’t feel like falling in. So we took a photo. The cache owner said you have to sign the log, but we can’t be running down to New Castle hoping that the water receded. Finding it was hard enough!

See what I mean? It was mucky all around this area too. You’d need some of those thigh high boots, ‘just in case’.

We snagged a few others and headed to the farmer’s market. We were looking for something to bring home for dinner and found a half of rotisserie chicken and two sides, so bought 3. We had enough chicken for a sandwich the next day! Wow!

Pretty mural near the walkway of the Delaware River

Battery Park coastline near the walk.

The next day was Saturday. We were sitting around and I remembered that a big craft warehouse place in Lancaster County was closing. The discount was up to 60% off and we decided to take a drive there-it would take about an hour. Of course I was again itchy to grab a few caches. We stopped at one called ‘Ghost Train’. It was on an old wooden train bridge. Brian made the find! So proud he saw that one as I was going away from the structure.

We didn’t get to the sale until 4:30 and the place closed at 6:00. I did power shopping. I picked up mostly some Christmas decor and a few Christmas gifts. I got a few things I want to embellish too.

We were going to a smorgasbord, but about 5 lines had 30 people each waiting to get in. And they all will get in and touch all the serving spoons, you get my drift. We ended up retrieving a few caches, one at a tiny cemetery and the other in the parking lot of the restaurant. We had to leave and come back as a full tour bus was right near where we needed to look! They would have wondered why those people were messing with the lamp skirt. Ha ha!

There is a smaller restaurant under the smorgasbord and we ate there. The cheesesteak was a mess! They cut all the way through the bun and piled all this marinara sauce on it. I had to cut it up to eat it as I couldn’t pick it up.

There is a 40k square foot gift shop-it goes on and on! I found an owl wind chime and some Burt’s Bee facial cleanser I needed.

I asked Brian to stop one more time for a cache as I have always wanted to see it. It was an old grist mill in the heart of Amish country. It was getting dark, so I turned on the handy phone light app and although it was 20 feet off, we did find the ammo can.

We had a pretty fun day and found 10 caches in two days!

I think Longwood Gardens will be my next blog post. Sean and I went on Sunday. I have never seen such a variety of tulips in such an array of colors. Here’s a sneak peak!

Apr13

Exploring some, researching and fun!

Posted on Saturday, April 13, 2013 by Dianne

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Since Sean didn’t go to Los Angeles, he wanted to see some place different, so he booked a room at the Revel Casino down in Atlantic City and said we could join him. Now it’s nice to see something different, but in April, you are going to miss a lot of the outdoor experience. It figures we did have summer like weather for a few days ‘before’ we went down to the beach, but unfortunately the temps went down 30 degrees and it was also windy and foggy besides chilly. The two places Sean wanted to see were closed on Thursday! Lucky for him and Brian, I wrote down some geocaches I thought would be interesting to find, two being at the places that were closed. They both agreed it would be something to do before heading to Atlantic City. We were in Stone Harbor, NJ and our first stop was at the Wetlands Institute. Sean is doing a research paper about NJ wetlands!

We did get to go in the next day and checked out their indoor exhibits. Sean went up in that look out yesterday as both Brian and I were weary of the circular stairs. We want to visit again when it’s nicer out.

There is a inside joke about every time I am close to the beach, it’s windy! See my hair! This is me with the 1st geocache find in hand. The other hand is holding my custom made stamper with my geocacher name on it. Stamp and go (and I do sign the date too-so it saves a little time, but looks nice with the red ink).

Our next stop was to the Stone Harbor Bird Sanctuary. It’s been here for 66 years and we have never seen it!

I knew the geocache here would be fast and it was. Another place that will be worth a trip back to see when it is green and lush…and full of birds! We had a few Chickadees giving us the business though.

One more look near the beach and it was 3 for 3! The little film canister blew away on me and Brian had to get it with a stick! We went behind a fence to see the beach and ocean and there was about a 10 foot or more drop due to Hurricane Sandy last October 2012.

Foggy and gray!

Sean on Friday at the 88th St. beach where there was a geocache hide(we didn’t find that one as the sand was really piled up)

So we asked the man at the Stone Harbor Museum (where we found another very nicely kept cache-4 for 4) where to eat and he mentioned Fred’s Tavern. We went and had the best burgers! I haven’t raved about food in a while, but these were on brioche rolls, so extra delicious.

We looked for one more cache near an ice cream parlor. It was a nano-Sean and me looked everywhere. Brian stayed in the car and generally if you tell him to find a nano, he can. After I logged it as a DNF (4 for 5), the CO emailed me and told me exactly where it was. The next day we went back and this time Brian found it.

Photo credits mostly go to Brian!

Next post Atlantic City!

Mar27

Daytrippin’ on Brian’s bd

Posted on Wednesday, March 27, 2013 by Dianne

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Sunday was my hubby Brian’s birthday and we decided to go somewhere a few hours away. We headed just above the Reading area to one of Pennsylvania’s ‘nature wonders’ Crystal Cave, Roadside America and the West Reading area.

I happen to turn on my phone (it’s not working anymore….died today) and saw where a geocache was just hidden about 45 minutes earlier. We turned around and headed back to yet another ancient cemetery cache. Sean got out of the car with me and we headed to the far end of the white washed wall. Sean actually had to climb over the wall and there it was, it was nicely camouflaged with fake ivy! So neat to be the ‘first to find’ for the second time.

The GPS took us down a winding road, but we saw lots of scenery too.

After a quick lunch, we got to the Crystal Cave area. There were balls of snow along the roads which we haven’t really seen down this way all winter.

I had to climb a rather steep hill to the entrance of the cave. I’ve been having problems with hills and since using the bike, I can see a little improvement, but I still had to stop a few times. After the tour, I was surprised at actually how steep the hill was!

The cave was found by mistake in the 1871. Two farmers were blasting for limestone (valuable for enriching the soil) and found the cave!

The cave itself was pretty neat. Brian took some great photos. It’s thousands and thousands of years old!

The ‘ball room’….there were actually a few weddings in here-one they had 100 people squeezed in here! That’s the altar to the left.

See Abe Lincoln?

When all the lights go out at the end of the day, 100s of bats fly out of the cave to fly through the night! Eek!

At one point, the guide turned out the lights and it was black as pitch. I felt and retrieved Sean’s hand. : )

They got a few inches of snow here the next day. We actually got more. It’s all gone now.

Next post-Roadside America!

Mar25

Orchids were the only thing ushering in Spring around here

Posted on Monday, March 25, 2013 by Dianne

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On the 23rd, Brian and I met my mom and brother over at Longwood Gardens. I bite the bullet and renewed my yearly pass. I say this as I was wondering if I could do the walking there after the past few months. Actually this is bazaar thinking on my part. I ‘need’ to go there for my gardening, flowers and photo fixes. My brother just bought a pass too! He will be bringing my mom out here now. That’s pretty neat.

Brian went along too. As we were walking in, a lady ‘waved’ a ticket in front of his face and said ‘do you want a ‘free’ ticket? Before I could say anything, he said ‘no’! He said he figured I will get a free pass for him via my membership, but still, you have to pay attention to what someone is offering. 😉

It was a nice display and mom said she liked it better than the flower show.

(Brian took a lot of photos too, I can’t remember which he did and I did, so we both will take credit for these).

This was so pretty to walk in to see from the blustery, but sunshiny day:

Yellow is one of my favorite flower colors.

I mean ‘wow’!

I’m a big fan of true blue flowers too! Who doesn’t love these Blue Poppies?

I think these are African Daisies or mums?

Did I mention I like Chartreuse too? Maybe this is a bit more lime color.

Warm colors are nice too.

I like this one for the demo effect-look at the gardeners’ hands. LOL

And what they were making:

Oh I could show you 80 more photos or more! I will be uploading them to Flickr. You will see them in my sidebar there.

A nice man took this on Brian, my mom and me.

Mom has been a bit worn out from her long walk and standing a lot, so I hope brother will push her around in a wheel chair sometimes. Can’t wait for them to see the rest of the gardens!

In the next few days, I’ll share with you our daytrip to Crystal Cave and Roadside America!