First State Challenge and Philly Chinatown

Cloudy and 60-64°F. The First State Challenge series of geocaches was released today and that was the perfect excuse to go out and do a few of those. Of course, since I was there, I also got a few older geocaches that I hadn't yet done. Other geocachers were out and about too because of the new series. We ran into MikeOtt at "FSC-2010 Newark I" and Puppydog at "Bison Tube Hangout". Puppydog joined us for the brief hike to "Bird's Eye View".

After that, we headed out on I-95 and got a few more geocaches in Marcus Hook and Philadelphia before arriving in Philly Chinatown. Street parking was not a problem this time but that may be because it isn't free on a weekday. It's still cheaper than parking in a parking garage. The main purpose of this little trip into Chinatown was to stock up on produce and seafood, but we also had dinner at Banana Leaf. I hadn't tried this Malaysian restaurant yet because it opened 3 years ago, during a 5-year period in which I didn't go to Philly Chinatown, so I was surprised that they already knew me. Turns out that some of the servers and cooks at Banana Leaf came from the nearby Penang restaurant. Anyway, this time, we had curry mee with young tau foo, curried chicken with rice, and curry mixed vegetables with rice. After dinner, they provided a complimentary dessert. My impression of this restaurant is it's an improvement over Penang, both in terms of service and food. I'll definitely have to go back and try more of their dishes to form a more complete opinion.

( The caches... )