Morton Fox's journal

Saturday was the day of World Wide Flash Mob XII, where there are geocaching events all around the world at the same time. (Actually, I noticed that some WWFM events were at times other than 1pm EDT, but I just picked one.) This time, I chose the flash mob event at Penbrook Park in Harrisburg, reasoning that I'd have time to get some geocaches along the way there. I was actually a bit early so I helped with the setup. Then it began. The theme for this one was "Bring Your Hat", so I had my fox hat on. After that, I went geocaching around Eastern Harrisburg, Swatara, and Penbrook. Most of those geocaches were fairly straightforward, although there were a few with a bit of a twist and some creative ones.

Sunday began with a bit of catch-and-release at Goddard Park in West Grove. The cache page had a short poem to help you figure out how it was placed, but I didn't figure out the clues until I actually saw it out in the pond. I doubt it'll last long though. The plastic container is not watertight enough and had already taken in some water. Still, it was fun. After that, I hit a bunch of geocaches around Lancaster before heading to my actual destinations in Northern York County. Newberry and Lewisberry had a fair number of urban cache hides because of the built-up area near I-83, but I took a few short walks into the woods too. There was still time after that so I nipped over into Cumberland County to get a bunch of caches in New Cumberland. This town claims to maintain a small-town atmosphere despite being close to capitol city Harrisburg. I'm not so sure about that but it's a bit less busy than the part of Harrisburg I visited the day before.

That night, I headed back south to York to try the newest Primanti Bros location. This is a Pittsburgh-based restaurant chain that makes sandwiches where coleslaw and fries are stuffed into the sandwich. I first heard of them when Anthrocon moved to Pittsburgh and ever since I tried one, I'd been waiting for this chain to expand out my way. So I tried a Colossal Fish Sandwich, and yes, it really is just like the sandwiches at their Pittsburgh locations! At around 77 miles from home, York Primanti Bros is not quite in my area but I travel out that far for geocaching anyway so I definitely can return a bunch of times per year.

( The caches... )

After last Saturday's trip to Cambridge, I'd almost finished that section of Eastern Shore Maryland, except for Caroline County to the north. So this Saturday, I returned to the area. There actually weren't too many geocaches left around there, at least the ones that don't have strings of logs pointing out problems with the cache. You see, the problem with Eastern Shore geocaches is maintenance. Seems like a good many of those were placed and then never checked again. Nevertheless, I found what I could. There were some geocaches around Tuckahoe State Park and Recreation Area but the real meat of the day was Federalsburg. Those were all findable, even if some of the log sheets were wet. "Marina Walk" was the hardest one (Many DNFs in the logs and I was the first visitor in about 8 months) but I was lucky to see it without too much kneeling on the rocks. On the way to dinner, I decided to stop and try to find some caches I had trouble with previously. "Welcome to Seaford" was impossible to see because of the way it was placed. I reached up in a random direction and somehow knocked it over, probably about a 1 in 100 chance!

Sunday's trip was to the Millville area in Deep South Jersey. I seemed to have a lucky streak that whole day. For nearly every cache, when I started searching, I was already right where I needed to be to see it. That happened even at "Dam Micro". I was momentarily distracted because I saw the police pull someone over on the nearby road and stepped to one side of the rock field, and that's where the cache was! So I decided to try my luck on the Elvis Trail to see if I could find all 10 caches without help. And I did finish the series without too much trouble, even though some were tricky. These caches were all not far from a dirt road through the pine woods in Peaslee WMA, so one could drive to each cache, taking care to avoid the soft mud. After it got dark, I decided to hit the night cache in Belleplain State Park. "The Road to Hell is Paved..." was a bit confusing at first because it was unclear where I needed to start following the fire tacks. (Given coordinates were actually for the parking area, which I couldn't use because I didn't have a campground pass.) Also, some of the fire tacks, including one of the directional markers, were missing but I tackled the problems slowly and in the end, it was an enjoyable night trek to an easy geocache.

( The caches... )

On Saturday morning, I headed out to Vineland for the "SOASJ I" event at Golden Palace Diner. "SOASJ" stands for "Souvenirs of August South Jersey", so it's meant for those who still needed an event cache for the Socializer Souvenir in the 7 Souvenirs of August. Of course, I'd already gotten it two weeks prior, so I just went for fun and for breakfast. After that, I continued onwards to Cape May for the "CMBPS" series of caches along the Cape May Bike Path. I also got the caches along the west side of Cape May, which I didn't have time for on my last trip out there during the winter.

I didn't have a proper plan for Sunday, which normally would be a problem but in Northeast Philadelphia, it just meant I started at one spot and just went from cache to cache until the end of the day. Among the interesting locations of the day were ruins at "Defunct Factory" and a sign in an abandoned lot, where the business had actually moved a bit down the road. "Small Hide in a Small Park" was challenging because I could only get half the info I needed, but I figured out where the final part could be and found it anyway by exhaustive search.

( The caches... )

This weekend, I went across South Jersey for the August Rush series of geocaches. Like some of the other series I did recently, this one too was placed for the 31 days of geocaching, so there are 31 August Rush caches. These are not all in the same area though; there are a few clusters in Egg Harbor City, Woodbine/Belleplain, and Northfield. So I decided to also go for other caches in the same area to make the trips out there worthwhile and to make this series last a few days.

Saturday began with a few geocaches in Williamstown. After a stop for a water ice, I went into August Rush territory in Hammonton and Egg Harbor City. There are some rather devious geocaches in this area. "Sleepy time" was surprisingly difficult even though I thought I knew how it was hidden. "Lie Big" was the most tricky of all but I was lucky. I went around picking up random objects in the wooded area and one of those happened to be it. After that, I entered Mays Landing and finished the day with a walk on the Atlantic City Bike Trail.

On Sunday, I started in Millville. The problem in the downtown area there is caches seem to go missing after a while. It was very obvious where "The Stuff DREAMZ are made of" was supposed to be, so I left one of the micro containers I had on hand as a replacement. (A fellow cacher gave me a whole bag of tiny tubes at a recent event.) After that, I hit Peaslee WMA. There is a set of geocaches along Route 49 that's a mix of puzzles and traditional caches. The worst part of it was crossing busy Route 49 (weekend getaway traffic - long lines of cars going at full speed) since half the caches are on the other side, but there were intervals with no traffic every couple of minutes. After that, I went to Woodbine, Marmora, Somers Point, Linwood, Northfield, and finished in Mays Landing. (close to where I stopped for dinner on Saturday) There are still a few August Rush caches left to find but I think I'll wait until the area repopulates with caches.

( The caches... )

It snowed on Friday evening. So what do I do on Saturday? Why, go out geocaching on the snow, of course. This time, I went to Vineland since there were some geocaches in the area that I didn't have time for when I did the Peaslee WMA Part 2 powertrail. The toughest two geocaches of the day were "Arbor Lake" and "The 1897 Bridge" because storm damage, possibly from Hurricane Sandy, had brought down trees and brush over the trail and there hasn't been any maintenance. I had no problems finding those caches themselves but actually getting there took some work. Rainbow Lake is an interesting spot because the lake cascades over a semi-circle dam. I don't think I've seen one like that before; it's usually either a straight line or rectangular. At the end of the afternoon, I hit a bunch of geocaches in Parvin State Park. I only had time for one trail with four geocaches plus one more, but it's the best I could do without taking a long walk to the other side of the park.

On Sunday, I felt like a Hardee's breakfast, so I planned a geocaching trip to mid-state Kent County. There was a new set of animal geocaches by Trison78, including a rabbit, an elephant, and a crocodile. Those were the highlights of the day.

( The caches... )

On Saturday, I headed down to Uno Chicago Grill in Dover to attend the FSC-2012 Celebration Event. This geocaching event marks the end of the First State Challenge and everyone who completed it got a certificate and pathtag. It's a lunch event and I had a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup. It was good but I have mixed feelings about it because it doesn't seem like a dish that is complex enough to justify paying a sit-down restaurant price for. After that, we all went out to do the two geocaches that were placed nearby for the event. Then I went off on my own to Eastern Shore Maryland, ending my geocache tour in Queenstown, just before the Bay Bridge. I thought "Try Again" was interesting not so much because of the trick but because of the way I figured out the trick. I started thinking about where the cache hider thought I wouldn't look and that was where it was hidden.

One thing I heard about on Saturday was a new geocache trail in Peaslee Wildlife Management Area near Vineland. So I planned to do it on Sunday when I knew hunting was prohibited. When I got to the trailhead, I was surprised to see Joe 'n Sue and Jenny D Pooh. It's a meetup that happened completely by chance. Since they too were just starting to go down the trail, I followed them and we did all 50 geocaches on the Peaslee WMA Trail as a group! It was a lot of fun. Although some of the cache hides were quite challenging, nothing was impossible with four people searching and we finished this trail in just under 3 hours. After that, we traveled around Cumberland County still as a group and did a bunch more geocaches until dusk. Then I did a few more geocaches on my own in the evening. "Hush's Container Exchange Part 2" was an interesting concept. It's a large Rubbermaid tub that Hushovd placed in his front yard for exchanging geocache containers. It is "part 2" because he moved a few years ago and had to archive the first version of this cache.

( 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, 32-36°F. Nearly all the snow had disappeared by the time I woke up this morning, at least for areas like my yard with Southern exposure. I had a busy morning, so I only got out in the early afternoon. My goal today was page 68 of the NJ DeLorme Challenge and the first geocache of the day, just outside Bridgeton, qualified. Then I did a few geocaches in Bridgeton and a few more deeper in page 68, near but not in the Bevan WMA.

More pickup truck perils: I was following a pickup truck on Route 77 just outside of Bridgeton. The truck was carrying a variety of wooden furniture. Suddenly, a chair tipped over, fell off the truck, and shattered to pieces on the road. Because of the direction it fell out, I was in no danger but if there had been oncoming traffic at the time, things would've gotten ugly.

For dinner, I headed back into Delaware to Cici's Pizza to use a coupon I'd been saving for a while. I hadn't been to the Newark Cici's in a while, so I was surprised when I turned on the Nuvi 295W and saw that Comcast had installed a new wi-fi hotspot right next to Cici's! (Now, if Comcast would install another hotspot next to Old Country Buffet then coverage would be complete, as far as I'm concerned. :) ) The new manager at Cici's is rather chatty and talks to customers a lot. He told me that the onion pizza will put hair on your chest!

( The caches... )