Storm Damage and Nice Ice

[mortonfox]

A violent storm (winds gusting to 50mph) blew through the area yesterday afternoon, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Lots of downed branches on the road and some downed powerlines. Around here, a lamp post fell over and a tree broke off at the trunk. I didn't venture out too far yesterday evening because of the weather and the 15-mile traffic delay on the Parkway, but I at least got out to the Chinese supermarket to stock up on Asian pears and fried noodles.

This evening, I planned on hitting the A N-ICE Place to Stop geocache in Belleville. I thought traffic would be better until I heard about the 16-mile traffic delay on the Parkway. It's worse when the weather is good; go figure. So I used Routes 17, 3, and 21 to go to Belleville. Traffic wasn't much better going that way, but it was moving, at least. Unfortunately, someone had an accident on Route 3, right at the bridge, so I had to wait in traffic for a bit anyway. Before I went to the cache site, I had a good idea of what it was, going by the cache name. And I was correct. It's a Rita's Water Ice. I had some coupons so I got a mango gelato. Also found the geocache, of course. :)

After that, I visited two benchmarks not far away. Benchmark KV6834 is on the grounds of an abandoned hospital in Belleville. (The recovery note says the hospital is abandoned, but I saw a light on in the back of the building, so I'm not 100% sure. The grounds are maintained.) The second benchmark, KV0112, is under a railroad bridge in Newark. What's annoying about navigating this area is, although there are signs telling you how to get to Route 21, to actually get onto Route 21 Northbound from Mill St, you have to take Route 21 Southbound all the way into downtown Newark to make a U-turn around a city block. Also, Route 21 and its onramps are very bumpy.

Comments

[jairus-greywolf.livejournal.com]

...under a railroad bridge in Newark.

Some of those benchmark locations must be pretty dicey. Guess it adds spice to the hunt though.

[mortonfox.livejournal.com]

My bad. I should've been a bit clearer about that. The railroad bridge was a bridge over a city street. I used the sidewalk to approach the benchmark.