This gallery contains 31 photos.
This past weekend Sean and I traveled to northern New Jersey to attend a mega geocaching event. We had gone last year and I really love seeing historic buildings and nature all rolled into one! I suggested one route and we took the one he goes to work using. He wanted to show me where […]
Before we headed to Ocean City, the three of us went about 70 miles to Ringing Rock County Park in Bucks County. A hammer was found and loaded in the car! Sean had just gotten his new car and wanted to take it for a test drive. It was one of those places that you have heard about and needed to see in real life. Plus it was an earth cache! We got there a little late, but the parking was close to the big field of rocks. Apparently their content of aluminum and iron makes them have a bell like sound when struck! Brian and I stated on the perimeter while Sean climbed a bit more into the main area. Brian didn’t have flexible shoes on and I just can’t climb that well. I got to hit a few rocks though. The field of boulders is in 7-8 acres of the 128 acre park. Apparently there is a waterfall too. We all agreed to go, not knowing it was 70 miles. I guess we travel enough to think that isn’t too far.
This is what we saw after a short hike!
I was hamming it up for the camera knowing I needed to post a photo for geocaching.com
Sean getting into the field
Brian had a rough time in his work boots.
No one is sure why these rocks are here, but it’s been forever!
We later went to Pizzeria Uno and grabbed a few caches. Just a fun different thing to see.
Shame on the park for having one, stinky porta potty! We couldn’t get within a few feet of it.
Sean had a meet up group on Sunday, the 9th, so I tagged along. He didn’t spend the entire time at Seacrets! We went out to dinner after the afternoon meet up and had a yummy dinner at Peaky’s, a restaurant on the 8th floor of Fenwick Inn a few miles down the road. I love meal coupons (thanks to entertainment.com) and had $15 toward my dinner. I had prime rib and lobster tail and Sean had two lobster tails! We hadn’t eaten for a while (brought BLT to stop and eat) and we dove into our meals. I also thank Trip Advisor for their reviews. The prime rib was perfect! The lobster was good, but a little dry. Sean said both of his were fine.
Here are a few nice shots of mainly our view from the top floor.
View from our table. The ocean changed as the sun set from that medium blue to steely gray.
Bay view
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We headed to the boardwalk to see a laser show, but couldn’t find parking. We didn’t want to park in the inlet, which proved an unwise choice as that’s where the sphere on the beach with the laser show was!
We enjoyed watching this fellow make bubbles.
And some other scenes from the boards
The next day we did some geocaching. Actually we stopped in a few spots and got 5 Sunday and 5 Monday. We had stopped in Milton, DE for lunch and a few caches. First we found the Doghead Brewery and a cache was near there. Sean was interested in that. Then we located the historic society where another cache was.
Tree house at the Dogfish Brewery
Where we ate our Sunday lunch.
Milton Historical Society
Bethany Nature Center. We didn’t go in this one either.
Goodbye seashore. Our visit was brief, but we know we’ll be back to explore other new places nearby.
The second week in July, Sean and I climbed in his ‘old’ hot car (the a/c had gone on it last month) to visit the Cape May, NJ area on a day trip. I did a little research so we could snap up a few earth caches. With these, you usually have to answer a few questions or take a photo of where you are. We headed down to Sunset Beach, the beach furthest south. It’s part of Cape May, but a beach where you can collect ‘Cape May Diamonds’. a clear quartz that can be cut to look like diamonds. The tiny ones on the top are the ‘diamonds’.
We indeed found some. We wrote our names in the sand too, but there, and not up the beach where the coords were on the cache page-oops. The sand was actually better to write in where we were. We did eventually go up in the area and find a physical cache.
Sean standing near the sign. Behind him is the wreck of the S.S. Atlantus.
After a storm, this cement ship got stuck there for good!
Looking up the beach where the real sand earth cache should have been written.
An old bath house
You can’t go any further than this in NJ
Outside the nice gift shop. They have Cape May diamonds that look like real diamonds here.
Look how much of the shipwreck is in this photo!
Look out/fire patrol tower near Sunset beach. Also a cache here at the Vet’s memorial.
Pretty Queen’s Anne Lace
We sat on Sunset beach a while, though it was warm and I was in a skirt. I really didn’t plan on sitting on the beach at all!
We headed up to the beach near the town of Cape May, but didn’t go shopping there. We then hit Wildwood and Sean wanted to get a Wildwood t-shirt for his collection. Someday I’ll be making him a t-shirt bed cover!
We were getting hungry for dinner and found a place on Yelp! in Ocean City. We sat at a picnic table and Sean treated me to a lobster dinner. As it wasn’t fancy, it was cheaper, but most of the meat was in the tail anyway.
Ocean City, NJ scenes Love the mansion!
Sean signing the Vet’s memorial cache and the memorial itself.
We looked for a lot of caches that day! We didn’t know it would be our last little trip in his 2005 Taurus. He was waiting to see how he fared in his new job before he looked at another vehicle. A few days ago, we all went car shopping. We stopped at one place and got ignored. We started to drive past another place and I pointed out a model he was interested in. Well, after test driving about 6 or more Hyundai makes, he picked a 2013 Elantra in bronze, the last test drive he did! He liked the added features of blue tooth and heated seats. It had low mileage too. So happy for him. We took a day trip yesterday to a cool park in Bucks County. That will be my next post!
Right after we came back from Boonsboro, MD, we went back to Ocean City, MD the next weekend! Brian couldn’t go this time, so it was just mom and son. We stayed at a place we stayed in last year. It was nice, but we had ants in the sink in the morning on the third floor! Nothing sweet was left out or poured in it as far as I remember.
We got our act together and brought lunch. We decided to grab some caches on the way. I believe the first place we stopped was Dover. The town is mostly a pretty college town. We saw this pretty sight:
This is Silver Lake. It has the perfect name!
Then we stopped at Slaughter Beach to eat lunch. They had a nice pavilion there and some people were enjoying the beach. The septic tanks were getting pumped out too. But we did get a cache!
The hotel is very close to the beach, so we went down for a bit and Sean got his feet wet. I changed my top to a thin t-shirt, but I was freezing! For Sean paying for the room, I looked through Trip Advisor and found a top rated restaurant in West Ocean City. It was about 20 minutes from our hotel and very crowded. We had to sit outside on the roof and it was chilly, but we had nice dinners! Sunset Grille lived up to its recommendations. I think I had Maui maui and Sean had a seafood pasta. We had brie, fruit and crackers for an appetizer. I just checked the menu and I think what we had were specials.
What a neat view of the inlet area at Ocean City
The next day we checked out and got breakfast at Dumsters and looked for some caches. We decided to look around the Assateague and Berlin, MD area.
This is very rare to see a wild pony this close. I am thinking he was getting nibbles from tourists!
We stopped at the visitor center that was new to us. We had been to one years ago. Very nice here!
Loved this mural!
We found a few caches in the area. There was one on the door of an old outhouse, the kind with the half moon!
We stopped at a little western theme park place for a cache. Saw this pretty horse.
We headed home and right now forget what we had for lunch or dinner, perhaps pizza! LOL
We did stop at the cemetery on the way home and grabbed a cache.
I remember we did stop in Smyrna, DE for a multi cache and were pleasantly surprised how cute the town is. The first part of the cache was at the opera house there!
So we always have a few days filled to the brim. We just did that for a day trip on the 6th of July, but we went to the Cape May to Ocean City, NJ area. That will be another day.
I am still attempting to update my blog. I have the laptop open now to upload a few photos, so there is no better time then the present! This event happened the 3rd weekend in May.
So you may know that one of my hobbies is geocaching. People hide caches that are all shapes and sizes and get them published on http://www.geocaching.com. We then take our phones or GPSr devices and try to find them. Brian and I have a joint account and have close to 950 finds in a little over 3 years. Sean has gotten more into caching in the last year and has about 650 finds. There are things you do other than just find caches. You get to go to events and meet other people with a passion for geocaching like you! The mega event of the year is Geo Woodstock and it was held in Boonsboro, Maryland this year, so we went! It’s about 2.5 hours and we got to see a bit of West Virginia too. In fact, we went right to Harper’s Ferry, WV so we could look around and grab the West Virginia souvenir. It’s pretty neat to get state souvenirs. We have about 12 out of 50, but hope to add at least Ohio by the end of the year.
The first cache we located in Harper’s Ferry had this scenery to enjoy! I thought of the John Denver song ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’. This must have been what he saw too!
Signing the log.
We drove around this town on the hill a bit and found a pizza joint to have dinner in.
We then went to the meet and greet in Boonsboro. We saw a few local cachers who we knew, then we saw Joshua Johnston from Minnesota who is a energetic, fun video blogger who takes us to caches that he finds! He took a selfie (click to see) of the two of us.
. But that is Joshua in the middle. A married dad of three with a cool. Vlog.
Sean and I are in this video…about at 33 seconds near the big satellite dish!
We stayed at a nice hotel thanks to Sean. On our way back to the event, we looked for a cache near the hotel.
We ran into more pals and went looking for a few lab caches. They we listened to a local cacher from Rehoboth Beach talk about how to do puzzle caches. We were waiting to hear West Virginia Tim who does fun gadget caches in his retirement. He is pretty funny and presents himself like Jeff Foxworthy.
We ate a light lunch which happened to be catered by the guy who owns the Brandywine Picnic Park. He is also a cacher!
We went back to West Virginia to look for a few of WVTim’s gadget caches. We found one at a rest stop and at a Chick-Fil-a one. The one at the rest stop had a whole bunch of people trying to open it. A guy who had opened it came along and helped us. We then went driving around and stopped at Antietam Battlefield. We were about to grab a cache in the visitor center and they had just closed.
We headed home and stopped first at an Olive Garden and had a little trouble with our meal. I complained and got a discount on my meal.
Here are a few more photos.
We posed with the geocaching mascot Signal the first night we were there.
Sean and me posing near the direction signs.
Wendy’s geocaching car! Everyone was signing it!
Antietam cannons
All in all, we had a fun time seeing a new state, gorgeous scenery, a few strange people, but mostly friendly folks with the same interest. I would recommend caching to anyone! It’s a fun family activity too.
This gallery contains 17 photos.
Sometimes there are cool places to visit that are in your own backyard. The way the winter has been going, when we got a break in the weather, and on the weekend, we would take a drive someplace. A few weeks back, Sean and I went to Phoenixville, PA. This is on the other side […]
Since we are a family of ‘grown-ups’, we decided to save up for a trip at Christmastime. I thought it may require much hustling and bustling at that time of year, but we would find out it wasn’t bad to travel the week before Christmas at all. I started to look through online Christmas packages for the southern states and Charleston, SC popped up. I narrowed it down to The French Quarter Inn and bought the package for the middle of the week of December 15th. This was back in August. I had no idea if my knee would cooperate by then. We had been saving up all year and had to only pay with cash or credit card for a few things. We were very pleased about this. It also helped that I read ‘Rhett Butler’s People’ that mostly centered in Charleston. I was anxious to try a sampling of some southern charm.
We got our Christmas decorations up early. Sean helped with the bay window and outside decor. I did the mantel and trees. Choosing clothes to take was difficult, but we ended up taking layers. I wore my long sweater most of the time we were there and my coat up in Williamsburg. We were going to let the cat stay in the kitchen and found the old baby gate. We put it up a few nights before we left and our almost 15 year old cat climbed over it. We had to leave him in the fairly heated basement with lots of covers and pillows.
We left about 6:45-7 am on the 15th and made pretty good time enough to stop a few times. The welcome center for North Carolina had a geocache, so we grabbed that for our NC state souvenir. We would also get SC the next day. The guys love getting those books and brochures anyway.
The first night we stopped in Raleigh, NC. Sean paid for two hotel nights for us. We went out to grab a bite where I had a coupon and decided to head over to the mall across the street as my cellphone wasn’t working properly. The mall was really nice! Turns out I did have a issue as I had recently changed my plan on the phone. We did a little Christmas shopping too. We then drove around the city which was fairly quiet. We looked at the state capital building and tree and even snooped for a few geocaches.
First Presbyterian Church of Raleigh
The streets were practically empty. We did enjoy some nicely decorated homes on the way over from the mall.
We couldn’t find the caches in the dark.
The next morning we headed to Charleston. We had been on the road the day before over 7 hours and were anxious to get to our destination. It was another long day in the car, but we did stop at a place that I hadn’t been to for 37 years-South of the Border!
It sure had expanded as I remember us sitting in the middle of a big parking lot back in 1977. Many of the expansions made over the years were closed down. There were a few caches here and we did look for them. Three of us couldn’t find the one one over the highway walk way. We did find Sean’s #400 there!
Next post-Charleston!!
I was looking through my feed on Facebook Friday night and saw where a few geocaching pals were up in Roselle, NJ at a pre-bash function for a mega event. A mega event is something every cacher wants to attend. If over 500 people sign up for an event, it turns into a mega event! It was a Metro-gathering, meaning people from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and even Delaware and Maryland could attend. I was thinking about it all evening and when Sean got up in the morning, he asked if I wanted to go and I said sure! It’s not around the corner, over 125 miles one way, mostly up the turnpike. I started to text a pal who was on her way there. When she got there she said to come on up as it wasn’t overwhelming crowded. I know a few seasoned cachers said in the log for the cache event that it was their first mega event! We wished we had planned this better as we left past 11:30. We stopped at a McDonald’s near Sean’s work to use the bathroom and decided to grab a wrap. Then Sean wanted me to help him find a cache that eluded him on previous looks. I saw it was in a tree and looked for something hanging down. We found it after a few minutes.
We got to the park about 2:45. We got a ‘tricky tray’ ticket for a prize and then we had to pick a prize. They really outdid themselves! I picked a big ammo box and Sean a cammoed backpack. We didn’t win as far as we knew. We’re thinking a lot of people had left and maybe they had to chose other winners. We decided to do some caches instead of waiting to see if we really did win anything.
We were all bundled up. Love my faux fleece coat. I wasn’t cold at all. I think it was about 40 degrees. I swear my shadow on the world’s biggest trackable coin looks just like my grandmom Ruth. (Miss her and think about her!) She is always with me. Anyway, you can see the tracking number and surely you can say you discovered the coin on my blog!
We were very close to Manhattan-about 1/2 an hour.
I can’t mention a place as Sean is ready to go! He is so glad to have his weekends off. It would be awesome for him to meet a lady cacher his age. Maybe someday! I know a few people who met through caching!
So we also ‘found’ the mega cache. They were hoping to break a record by having the most log entries in one day. Hope they did it. Need to add the photo.
They was a statue of the Liberty where you could pose too.
We went around and did some new geocaches in Warinanco park where the event was held. Getting there so late, we lost sunlight quickly. We didn’t get to really see the lake. We met up with some guys at a ‘lookout’ or a place to stand and admire the lake. They found the cache first. We found about 6 altogether.
Sean lightened this up. The hint was something like don’t overlook a pile of sticks. We got to ground zero and I started moving logs and branches and Sean saw this! They had drilled a hole in it for the cache! Very clever.
I bought a blue sweat shirt with the logo on it from the event plus a sticker for my car. Sean bought a bison tube and this little mini ammo box for me. It’s so cute!
We only saw a few people that we knew indirectly. I said, wow you look cold! The one lady, who I had talked to at a few events walked right past me, but another lady chatted with us a bit. The guy with them has a big event every year and didn’t say anything either. Wow, that was rude. It’s not often you see people you can point out in a crowd so far away from home.
We also got a few lab caches which are caches associated with the event that get taken down. I love learning about different places and we would like to see Roselle again some other time. Brian and I are up to over 700 finds. Not bad for ‘sometimes’ cachers. Sean is approaching 400.
I will plan our itinerary for our trip in a few months so we can see places and grab some caches in the states we need. I can’t wait to see a southern style Christmas!
Collages & Creative Goodness 