Elmer, Vineland, Buena, local snowcaching

Saturday was a toolcaching day. I checked the list of geocaches in the Elmer/Vineland area and noticed that at least a few caches required some non-standard tools. So I put together what I needed ahead of time and brought the tool bucket with me. "Poor Papa's Parched" and "I Own a Puzzle" were similar. Both of them were tubes / pipes that you fill with water to float the cache to the top. I brought a big bucket and a small bucket. I used the big bucket to fetch water from the river and the small bucket for scooping. A funnel helped too, although it wasn't strictly necessary. I also used duct tape to close the drain hole at the bottom of the pipe before filling it. "No Idle Zone" wasn't really a tool cache, but I saw from the previous cache log that the cache was frozen in place. There, I used a hammer and chisel to wedge it out from the ice enough to open the lid.

The rest of the day was pretty much a lot of hiking around pine barren areas to try to get more geocaches before those come under NJ State Parks Geocaching Policy review. The impression I'm getting now though is they may not require all existing caches to be archived in April, but who really knows? There was a bit of light snow during the day, but a fast-moving storm in the evening dumped 3 inches of snow in about half an hour, so that made the trip home somewhat slower.

Sunday was very cold: 8°F in the morning, warming up to about 13°F in the afternoon. Because of that and very strong winds throughout the day, I decided not to travel out too far and just go for some nearby geocaches. Most of those caches were quick. The only walk of significant length was a 1-mile round trip on the snowy trails in Middle Run for a mortar tube cache. Yes, it was cold but I didn't notice it as much once I got moving. There was also a brief stop at the University of Delaware campus.

( The caches... )