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 is good at taking me places where I show an interest in. I did a google search once on ‘shopping in Lancaster’ and Stoudtburg Village came up. He had off last Saturday and he said we could take a drive up. It was over an hour drive and we saw lovely farms and scenery.
The village itself wasn’t very busy and it was quite warm that day. The shop owners buy the building and live above the stores! I like that idea! So we started to walk around and went by a lady who was about to prop open her door. I advised her against it and then we started to talk. She let us see her ‘courtyard’ or garden which was really pretty with the purple and lime green. She wasn’t going to open until the 19th and let us to see her store. She had awesome antiques and I loved the boater hats like my great grandfather William use to wear (as seen in photos).
This was outside ‘Plum Pludding’ if you ever want to visit.
We looked in a few stores, one being a candy store and I got my mom her favorite ‘Black Jack’ gum and some Violet candies I liked.
We went to the antique mall area there and the lady said she was going close in 5 minutes. There were a few other people in the mall and I think I would have kept it open a little longer so we could enjoy looking around.
I mentioned a multi cache that was located in the village. We found the first one pretty easily. The hint lead us to a sitting area and there were people sitting on their balcony. The lady said she knew what we were poking around for and we looking in the right area. I saw a sprinkler head and it was a big sprinkler for such a small area. Sean pulled on it, but it didn’t budge. Then we looked more and were about to melt when I went over to the sprinkler and turned the top and the coordinates to inside. We just couldn’t find the third one on foot. We even drove around. I do believe we found the north coordinates. We looked a long time for this cache. So I have the numbers written down to look for it in cooler weather. The town is suppose to be an antique mecca, and I’d love to go look around there again.
This was the antique mall with nice murals….
Sean wanted to see a preserve near by and we saw the sign, but not much of the preserve, except for the residential area. We did go by the craft warehouse place that recently closed where I enjoyed shopping a few months ago.
We ended up at the Park City Mall in Lancaster and I got a Salads work and Sean a burger. By then I wasn’t feeling that great from the heat and while Sean shopped a bit, I sat down.
So we could record finding a cache, we stopped at a McDonald’s as the cache there was very popular. The cache was a bird house in a holly bush!
We also stopped for this:
I could only eat half!
We found our hotel in Brooklyn fairly easily, but the parking was limited behind the place. The receptionist said to park anywhere on the streets around it, so after a few times circling, we found a tight spot. Unfortunately there was a broken bottle we had to kick away from the rear of the car.
The room was really tiny with the double beds and bathroom within a foot or so of the one bed.
From the front desk’s recommendation, we walked over to 5th Ave. for dinner. It was a bit of a walk and I was getting fatigued and very warm. We were looking for a ‘diner’ place and did find it. We had the Nathan’s hot dog around 5 or so, but by 8:30, we all had breakfast food! Can’t beat that and the price of dinner was good. We looked in store windows after we ate and saw some interesting things.
She was in the Gremlin movie-lol
We saw high rises galore 
all around, here and there.
Personally, I need to be able to get out the door quickly, and when needed see green grass.
We wondered where Woody Allen and other famous Brooklyn natives lived too.
The next day we set out for the Brooklyn Museum. Sean read where there was a display or maybe separate building for the Dodgers. We got there and it wasn’t open until 11. We were on a time crush as Brian had to get to work in the late afternoon.
There were ‘jumping’ water fountains out front. Cool.
We started to look for a cache, but in the wrong park. We were looking in the park for the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Speaking of which, I’d love to go in there sometime too!
We then got in the correct park, called Prospect Park. It was looked like a tree hide, but we just couldn’t put our finger on it. (Sean and I were looking and he drove a bit that day).
We then started for home. Get this, Sean bought two NY lottery tickets and wanted to cash in his $3 winnings. We stopped in Staten Island and he got it and we got a cache in a little park there too! That was a little walking in weeds and loaded with skeeters, but Brian and I got it in about 10 minutes or so.
We stopped for a late lunch and it was raining quite a bit on the way home. Brian was about 1.5 hours late for work, but he stayed later too.
It was a pretty neat trip and we are glad to see other parts of New York.
This gallery contains 19 photos.
We had another weekend come up when the guys were both off on a Saturday. We decided to just go somewhere, but where? I was looking at the geocaching map and Ocean City, NJ was going to destination for the next morning. Then I started moving up the coast and landed on Coney Island in […]
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.
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.
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.
Skipped some stones to get this cache in Banning Park, DE, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.
Brian and I did a little mapped out caching on the 6th (yesterday). I hadn’t been feeling well earlier in the week and had to miss work again. I think I have a food allergy to sweet potatoes. I’m keeping a food dinner diary and I asked Brian if he remembered when my tummy was bothering me another time and I looked it up and we had eaten sweet potato chili. I really liked that chili too! I’ll make it another time to see for sure. Tuesday I even ate Greek food from Wilmington’s festival and that didn’t bother me and it’s very rich.
Speaking of Wilmington, Sean and I drove down to the church to retrieve the take-out. Each sampler is only $15 and I got two meals out of mine. We stopped at a park to find a cache first. We didn’t know where to park, so Sean went to a school lot for about 10 minutes. It didn’t take long to zone into the area and I saw this:
The cache was in the pole behind the sign and difficult to retrieve!
I really liked Cool Springs. We figured out you were only allowed to park on side streets on the other side of the park. When I found the cache, I told Sean to go sit in the car in case someone came along. No one did.
With the first mentioned caching, Brian and I went to Banning Park near Newport, De. There were a number of caches there and I always like finding a new park.
The bridge was the second cache we looked for. The first was in a curved hedge. Now I don’t know about other cachers, but if there is anything I dislike more about caching is sticking my head is bushes. They hold dirt and stuff like a barrier. We looked quite a bit and were right where the cache was suppose to be, but we didn’t see it. Strike one!
So we went over to the bridge. Again we were in the right spot, but a FB caching pal said in her log that she didn’t get too wet or dirty, so I knew what I had to do. Brian didn’t volunteer to walk in the stream. And lo and behold, there was the cache under the bridge! Yes!
We went on to find another bridge one that was kind of out in the open and not hidden well. We then looked a bit for one near a pond. It was along a fence, but also near train tracks so the GPS went wonky a few times. I finally walked away and then approached more slowly and it stopped at correct spot and I saw a cammoed sack which was the cache!
We went on to a pavilion hide. When we first arrived, some school was having their picnic or field day and there were at least 200 kids in bright red t-shirts wondering around and in the area of the pavilion. They were all gone by 3 pm, but alas, I think they had to find the cache there or it was in the bush we stuck our heads in several times. People have to remember that birds will make nests in shrubs too. I told the cache owners it may be gone. I’ll be curious to see if anyone finds it after us.
We went on to find a few caches along Rt. 4 on our way to dinner and the grocery store. One was a gunner in a memorial park. Brian found that one.
I had my ‘cheat’ dinner last night which was a ‘baby’ cheesesteak on an Italian roll. It was so skimpy, I am sure a real baby could eat it and still be hungry. Maybe it wasn’t much of a cheat. I’ve been trying to stick to whole grain bread.
There was a cache near the restaurant at a restaurant. We walked over knowing it was one of the light fixtures on the side. Pretty sure the shades were down in the restaurant, but didn’t a waiter come out and in poor English want to know what we were doing! I showed him the app, he didn’t get it and wouldn’t leave until we did. At least we tried to find it.
We are having lots of rain today. Brian didn’t have to work, but he had to clean up water in the basement. I decided to tidy up the pantry closet as stuff was just hedged in there and falling out. It took a little while, but I got rid of old food and almost empty cereal boxes.
Sean has off Sunday, so thinking about doing a day trip. I know he isn’t into driving a lot, but Brian doesn’t have off. I hope we can see something different not too far away!
Well, that isn’t going to happen with one day left in May. I am rather slow this year with getting my gardens cleaned up because of my arthritis issues. Plus the weather has gone from cold to hot and back again and windy thrown in! I only have two gardens that look fairly good. I’m really proud of the Asian themed one I have under the Japanese maple that came from my mom’s house as a wee sprout. I think all of her kids have one or more of them in their yard as do a few friends.
I love Sweet William or Dianthus and only a few plants came back from last year. I added about 18 new ones in white, burgundy and pink. The bushy one in the front is the only good one from another growing season. I added a few hostas (Brian did the digging for me) and the wild begonias come up by themselves. I also added a few orange impatiens and red begonias. The wild ones are pink. It the pots are Stargazer lilies and a Passion plant.
Next is the red mulch which is really cinnamon color.
I did some planting around the pond where I have the ‘Mod Squad’ of frogs. I always call one Elvis (as in Elvis as left the building, meaning they usually jump in when we approach). The little one I call ‘Squeaky’ as he sounds like a dog toy when he jumps in with a quick squeak and a splash. The other one, well let’s just call him Froggy-lol.
Anyway, I like to plant salvia around there for the hummingbirds. I added a chocolate Cosmo next to the burgundy Coral Bell plant. I’d like a few more ground covers. My Japanese iris gave me one flower.
What is looking good this year are geraniums. I just re-potted mine last night (I always re-pot them and always keep them in pots). I have some bare spots around the house, think I’ll get a few more geraniums.
I used a filter on Instagram and it made my steps look really dirty. But I have to admit, the steps and wall there need a good power washing. That’s the last thing I do.
It got really warm today, about 90. I decided to plant some things in shady areas under my front bushes. I did impatiens and begonias. I then went around and started my fairy and gnome patch and got some little ‘globe’ flowers and snap dragons in before I got tuckered out.
My yellow rose bush is gorgeous! I didn’t prune it back and I am glad I didn’t!
So I had to go to the dentist (filling repair) and doctor to see about my recent blood work. My glucose is was 115 and the doctor felt that it was ‘pre-diabetes’ since I have two siblings with it. I’ve been told that was kind of in the normal range. I really didn’t like my triglycerides being 50 points above what they should be. I’ve been making more vegetable based dinners. Last night we had Black Bean and Sweet Potato chili which I liked better than the kind I’ve been making with meat my entire life! I have some work to do, and I slip up as we have the tempting food in the house and I try to eat fruit or drink water first before I give in.
So I guess it’s better to take my time with gardening anyway. I just want to avoid the mosquitoes and other bugs.
Sean and I went up to Lancaster on Memorial Day as Brian was working. We only did a little shopping, but we also did geocaching! We found 6 out of 8! We saw a couple of covered bridges too.
We were all set to apply for our passports, even got our photos taken at CVS (they look like mug shots as you can’t smile). We then were looking for our birth certificates and Brian has misplaced his! He had to order a copy. We were hoping to go to Canada and Niagara Falls this year….sometime!
This has been a whirlwind week, but so glad to share the news that Sean graduated from West Chester University on May 20th. There were quite a few students, but really nice for his dad and me to here his name called. He is finishing up his internship this summer and will get the actual degree in the fall.
I hope he gets his dream GIS position soon as he now has mastered the study of it!
I started my blog when he was a senior in high school and now he’s a master’s grad.
Collages & Creative Goodness 