Morton Fox's journal

Sunny and 70°F. Had no real plan for today, other than to find some geocaches in Philadelphia and then go to Philadelphia Chinatown. What ended up happening is we went to FDR Park in South Philly, then to Gentilhommiere, the house of Girard, and then to beautiful Bartram's Garden and a few other places in West Philly, then to Eastern State Penitentiary and a few other locations in North/Northwest Philly, before entering Chinatown. So it turned out to be a day of geocache-directed sightseeing around the city.

After doing some shopping in Chinatown, we went to Banana Leaf for an early dinner. We had nasi lemak, roti canai, wonton mee, and curry tofu with rice. I would definitely have the nasi lemak again because there are a lot of interesting flavors in that one dish.

( The caches... )

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... )

Sunny and 36°F. We thought it would be a good idea to go to Philadelphia Chinatown since it was Chinese New Year. Tried looking for some geocaches in the city on the way to Chinatown. The biggest stumbling block was not the geocaches themselves but finding parking. Streets in Philly were still a mess from the recent snowstorm and the street parking situation was pretty bad. There were still two geocaches I could do because those were near free parking lots. After giving up on street parking, we went to the PPA garage next to Independence Visitors Center to take advantage of the 4-hour free parking special. That was very convenient because there was a geocache, "Teaching the Travelers", right in the visitors center.

After leaving the visitors center, we walked a few blocks over to Jewelers' Row for the "Egyptian Jewels" cache. The GPS pointed to the wrong place. As we were poking at the snow pile, one of the jewelers came out of his store and told us where it was. Always great to get unexpected help. Then, without further ado, we went to the Chinatown area to shop for Asian groceries. (vegetables, sesame oil, soy milk, curry powder, and a few other items) Then we had a late lunch of curry mee with young tofu, java mee, and oyster omelette at Penang. We noticed another Malaysian restaurant nearby on Arch St., so we'll try that on our next visit to the area.

After leaving Chinatown, we went for another geocache on the way back to I-95. Fortunately, "Devil's spit", at the IKEA/Lowe's strip mall, wasn't obstructed in any way despite the 2 feet of snow piled up nearby.

( The caches... )

Rainy. 50-65°F. It's a far warmer day than yesterday. I prefer a cold dry day to a warm rainy day, but I'll make do. I was traveling to Newark, Delaware, to attend a geocaching event on Thursday. This time, I went down the Pennsylvania side via US-1 and I-95 instead of the NJ Turnpike. So I did a bunch of geocaches in Langhorne, Bensalem, and Northeast Philly along the way. I cherry-picked mostly geocaches that were close to the road or parking area so that I wouldn't have to walk in the rain too much. Even so, there was quite a variety of hiding styles. Only "Margaritaville Cache" required a walk of more than 500 feet. I did that one when the rain slowed to a drizzle and it was a nice walk around the lake.

Once I was reasonably done with Northeast Philly and tired of the rain, I hopped onto I-95 and made my way to Delaware. Checked in at Quality Inn. I remember this motel. It's the one I stayed overnight at 6 years ago whenever I went down to DC and Maryland. It's more motel-like than Sleep Inn because there is no internal corridor and all the rooms face outwards. It's now the cheapest motel along this road, according to Expedia.

After unpacking, I headed out again to do a Wawa run to get food for the evening. I saw a cache on the GPS map screen just across the intersection from the Wawa store and couldn't resist going for it. Went back to the motel and discovered to my dismay that the toilet wasn't flowing. So I got the plunger from the car and fixed it. What? Don't you all pack toilet plungers when you travel? :)

( The caches... )