South Jersey FPT VII - Mantua, Ceres Park, Washington Lake, Glassboro

Sunny, 60-65°F. This is another day in my quest to finish all the geocaches around Mantua. This time, I picked Ceres Park. There were 4 geocaches, including one long 4-stage multicache, that I hadn't done in that park and I figured it would take up to 4 hours of hiking. Well, I did it in 3 hours. There was a lot of guesswork as to which trails to take and in some stretches I bushwhacked across relatively brush-free wooded areas to get to the correct trail. The only tricky part was crossing the stream using a bridge made of a few logs and one plank. However, I didn't see any other way to get from one section of the park to the other section.

After leaving Ceres Park, I did a few other geocaches in the area, including two new ones in Washington Lake Park. The last one, "Fastball, Curveball, Screwball", turned out to be quite a challenge, although not for the reason intended by the cache owner. I couldn't open the cache because the two parts had rusted together. I brought it back to the car to try to open it with tools, only to discover that one pair of pliers wasn't enough. (I think I should keep at least two pairs of pliers in the car from now on.) So I looked around the ballfield for something that would help me open the cache. I noticed that the gap between the corner fenceposts looked just the right size. I wedged one end of the cache in there, twisted the other end with the pliers, and that did the trick!

Dinner was at Long John Silver's in Mantua. I had the two-fish combo. I'm running out of coupons in this month's set already, so I'll have to go somewhere else next South Jersey trip.

( The caches... )