Morton Fox's journal

Sunny, 70°F. Today, I went to Martic and Conestoga Townships in Lancaster County to finish the geocaches along the last stretch of the Enola Low-Grade Trail. First, I parked just before cache #46 and did caches #46 to #60. I'd already finished caches #28-45 on a previous weekend, so I parked near cache #25 and did #25 to #1, and #26. #27 is on the other side of a closed rail bridge, so I moved the car again and did one last 1-mile round trip hike to get that one. I think I covered about 10 miles on foot. It wasn't much of a problem except my feet started to hurt near the end of 20+ miles of walking on the uneven gravel path in two days. So thank goodness it's done and over!

The most interesting thing I saw on the rail trail was a praying mantis, which I almost stepped on by accident because it was right in the middle of the path. It's in the nature of the praying mantis to be still. It didn't budge an inch as I circled it and took a couple of photos. The oddity of the night was a Burger King that used to be a funeral parlor. I picked that this one, on Lititz Pike in Lancaster, to make a stop at because it was the last day to use a coupon for free chicken tenders. I was wondering about its unusual design until I read the comments on its Google Local entry. Would be funny to drive a hearse under that covered area in front and ask for takeout. :)

( The caches... )

Cloudy, 60°F. It was another day with no specific plan except to try to not go out too far because of gas prices. I started with some geocaches in WMAs in Salem County. Got an FTF on "Tagged! - End of My Trail", which was a surprise because it was already the afternoon by the time I got to that one. The "Tagged!" series appears to be one where the FTFer is encourage to place another one to add to the series. I do have an idea of where to place a new cache in Salem County but I'll wait a little while and see.

After that, I went to Stow Creek Park in Shiloh for two geocaches and continued geocaching towards the east and northeast to Deerfield, where I saw the Viking. Unfortunately, the angle of the sun made it impossible to photograph him from the front, so the back of the Viking will have to do.

The journey continued through Olivet and Pittsgrove. Finished the day with a group of geocaches near Willow Grove Lake and the Maurice River in Newfield. The water level in the river was rather high but only the last cache of the day was affected. Because the area was flooded, the cache was on a little tree island and I waded into a small water channel to retrieve it. I didn't mind getting wet socks/shoes at the last cache site of the day because I simply changed to sandals when I got back to the car. No shoes necessary for shopping and dinner. (Well, Burger King isn't dogmatic about that whole shoes issue anyway.)

( The caches... )

Sunny, 75-80°F. More "NFL Series" geocaches came out today so I hopped over to Salem County, NJ, to do those. Started late but I was still able to do a number of those. I also added a few caches in Woodstown to the mix for variety and also because I'm probably not going back that way for a while. The most physically challenging cache of the day was "The Dollar Cache", but that's only because I approached the cache site from the wrong side of the stream and had to wade across.

"Broncos" and "Chiefs" are located at NJ Turnpike rest areas, one northbound and one southbound. Fortunately, I found employee entrances for both service areas so I didn't have to get on the Turnpike and pay a toll. I think most service areas on toll roads have back entrances like those. It only takes a bit of driving around to find the way in.

Where to go for dinner was a pretty easy question to answer today. While walking to one of the caches, I found a Burger King coupon on the ground. So I had a Whopper combo.

( The caches... )

Had the day off for President's Day. Sunny. 34-42°F during the day. Down below 25°F in the evening. By now, I'm used to 40-degree temperatures during the day so it was a nice day to be outside. I'd planned on going to Lehigh Valley but I got distracted by Western NJ along the way and by sunset, I had covered a good portion of Hunterdon County and bagged a bunch of geocaches. So I'll save Lehigh Valley for another weekend. Most of those geocaches were easy but two of them were up on hills. I was surprised that I didn't have a problem with the hilly terrain considering that yesterday, the right side of my hip started getting sore after the 15th cache. I think it just needed a little rest.

Dinner was at Burger King in Hackettstown. I saw that on the way home and decided to use a coupon from the coupon booklet. Since I was using I-80 to get home, I stopped at Micro Center in Paterson along the way to shop for a memory upgrade for my notebook computer. I figured it was a good time to buy because I'd noticed an uptick in DRAM prices. That store is dangerous to the wallet because of the sheer variety of computer upgrades and accessories they stock, but I just got the two SO-DIMMs and left. Installed those when I got home and yes, there's now a ton of free memory.

Geocachers shouldn't be reading this journal if they don't want spoilers so I'll just describe this one straight. The cache container for "Welcome to Ringwood!" is an electrical box attached to a lamp post. There are no wires inside, of course. It's only there to hold the log sheet. However, what made me uncomfortable with this hide is the cache finder has to use a screwdriver to unscrew two screws in order to remove the cover to get the log sheet out. If we start doing this, how long before someone opens a live electrical box and gets a shock? Worse yet, unless you look like a municipal maintenance worker, you'd look rather suspicious dismantling something that appears to be part of the lamp post. I don't know if Groundspeak already has policy about this kind of cache hide but I emailed the cache approver to let him/her know my concerns.

( The caches... )

Cloudy with a slight drizzle. 34-37°F. It snowed the night before so I was wondering if I would have any difficulty finding geocaches in Westchester but the snow cover turned out to be only an inch thick at most and even that was melting away as the day went on. Today's set was a mixed bag: a few walks in the woods and some urban cache hides. I made reasonable progress although I hit some bad traffic in New Rochelle and so I did the last two after dusk.

Came back to Park Ridge to do some errands and use a Burger King coupon for dinner. I was wondering why Burger King was the only busy restaurant in town while all the other eateries were quiet when I realized that I was likely not the only person taking advantage of the discounts. In this economy, BK is about as fancy a restaurant as people would go to.

( The caches... )

This evening, I went to Tackamack Park in Orangeburg for the Tackamac geocache. It's on the same Long Path as "Follow the Turquoise Trail", which I visited yesterday, except that it's in the opposite direction from the parking area. The Tackamac geocache is an insane 7 stages so naturally, I put it off for quite a while. However, on rereading the cache page and online logs, I discovered that the first three stages are optional. The 4th stage is where the Long Path intersects a road and it took only a moment of map reading to figure out where that is.

So I parked at Stage 4 and went up the Long Path from there. I think the entire walk for stages 5, 6, and 7 was less than a mile round trip and the terrain was very easy. It's a walk through pine woods.

After that, I didn't feel like going to Palisades Center for the second evening in a row, so I came back to Park Ridge for dinner and shopping. At CVS, I noticed that store brand mouthwash was on sale and I had a $4-off-$20 coupon so I bagged 8 1-liter bottles, which should last a few months. I'm only an occasional player of the CVS coupon game.

Sunny and 46°F. There were actually two geocaching events in the Philadelphia area I could've attended today but I just couldn't be bothered. So instead, I went to Westchester and the Bronx.

The reason why I hadn't been going geocaching in the Bronx is I assumed it would be congested and parking would be tough. The irony is Westchester, especially around Ardsley and Scarsdale, was the one with the traffic delays this afternoon. I also didn't have nearly as much trouble parking in the Bronx as I thought I would have. At no time did parking availability add more than 750 feet to my walk. I also practiced parallel parking twice on Bronx streets. (You can tell I don't have to do much of that in northern New Jersey or anywhere else, for that matter.) The first time, I did that perfectly. The second time, one wheel was on the curb. It was a very low curb so I didn't know it happened until I got out of the car to take a look.

Anyway, I got 4 geocaches in lower Westchester (Ardsley, Scarsdale, New Rochelle) and 9 geocaches in northern Bronx. (Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvil, and Van Cortlandt Park) I figured Palisades Center would be crowded on a Saturday evening, so for dinner, I had BK Big Fish sandwiches at Burger King in Park Ridge. (They'd been sending out coupons specific to that restaurant through the regional coupon mailer.)

( The caches... )

Got a package from Garmin this afternoon. It has only been 8 days since I sent out the malfunctioning GPS, so that's a pretty quick turnaround. It's not the same GPS though. It has a different serial number so it's got to be a refurbished unit from their repair facility. I'll use it this weekend and see how it goes.

Aside from cash and prizes, Shoppers' Hotline also offers special coupons to participating members. I have to admit though that I hadn't been checking their coupon section. The reason for that is the first time I took a look at their coupons, which was over a year ago, I saw only coupons for high-end retailers, which are of no use to me. Last night, I took a look and saw that they had added Burger King coupons. Great! I printed out a coupon for BK Big Fish and used it this evening. S.H.'s deal seems to be 4 coupons a month, my choice, so if I plan ahead, those will be useful for meals whenever I'm out a bit late running errands.

Wrote a Top Posters script for the 10 Million Photos Flickr group. It produces reports like this one. Most of the code I needed was already in the older 10 Million Photos stats script, so all I had to do was reuse a few functions and add some report-generating code. Initial reviews from the 10 Million Photos regulars are encouraging.

Commerce Bank shareholders approved the TD Bank acquisition with 97% in favor, so if nothing goes seriously wrong, I'll get cash and TD stock in early April. Not so much though, as I'd already cut my CBH holdings way back when in anticipation of the credit crisis. In addition, I got cash out of the TAQA-Primewest deal last month, so the only merger I'm still waiting on is Metal Management - Sims Group. (both scrap metal recyclers)