mortonfox: (hump)
Sunny, 34-41°F. The main goal for today was to get 5 more NJ DeLorme pages to complete South Jersey. I started with some geocaches in Tabernacle and Wharton State Forest for page 56. This huge forest preserve is the place I originally knew as the NJ pine barrens. I remembered some of the sand roads I visited on previous trips but for the most part, I kept to the main road for reasons of time. After that, I headed north to Byrne State Forest for page 57. Rather conveniently, there was a pair of park-and-grab caches on an old forest road. Then, I headed towards the shore to Barnegat for page 58. Didn't stay too long though. Next, I went south to Manahawkin for page 59. I only needed one cache but I was intrigued by another cache site that looked on my GPS like it was at the end of a dead-end road in a nearby wildlife area. So I did that too. "In Memory" is at an unusual location to find an auto accident fatality memorial. (middle of the Manahawkin WMA)

After that, I headed southwest to Tuckerton for page 65. By then, I just wanted to finish it off so I did a cache at the edge of Bass River State Forest. I still had a bit of time before dusk, so I went to "Sherman's Sanctuary". Mystic Island looks rather weird on the map. It's a residential area but there are canals between every row of houses so it's like a little Venice. I was planning to go to Long John Silver's in Berlin for dinner so I decided to do more of the "Westward Ho" series of caches along US-30. That was a good run and I got 20 of those from Egg Harbor City to Waterford Works in about 3 hours. The last one of the night, "Westward Ho on a White Horse #53" was the most fun one. The cache was very high up in a tree but I was able to park my car directly under the cache, so I climbed up on my car to retrieve the cache. Oh, what would passers-by think of my antics? Fortunately, it was dark and no one saw me. :)

That last cache was only a few miles from Berlin, so without further ado, I went to the Taco Bell / Long John Silver's co-branded restaurant. Unfortunately, they closed the lobby early tonight. Not a serious problem because I used the drive-thru and then ate the fish and more in my car, but I would've been more comfortable at one of their tables.

The caches... )
mortonfox: (gps)
Sunny, 32-37°F. Today, I decided to kick it up a notch and try to get a bunch of NJ DeLorme pages in a day. So I started geocaching in Millville, went through Menantico, Peaslee, and Belleplain to Woodbine, across to Ocean View, and up to Absecon. I got pages 68, 69, 70, 71, and 72 that way. Then, since I was in Absecon, a stone's throw away from US-30, and since it was still several hours to dinnertime, I thought I'd tackle the Westward Ho series of geocaches starting from there. Those are mostly doable at night and rather conveniently, the route would take me towards Berlin, where a chicken & fish variety platter was waiting at Long John Silver's. I noticed that this series of caches cuts across NJ DeLorme page 64, so I got an extra page. Only 7 pages left to complete the challenge!

The caches... )

Bridgeton

Dec. 18th, 2010 01:46 am
mortonfox: (face tree)
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... )
mortonfox: (hump)
Sunny and 90°F. Rather light itinerary today because my only real goal for the day was to seek the final cache of the Delaware DeLorme Challenge. You see, the reward for finding the 14 caches required for the challenge is another cache. :) So I did that first thing today.

Then I went to CompUSA in Dover to catch the weekly deals because this time, they sent me the store ad a few days in advance. Only got one item of the three that I took a look at. Having internet terminals all over the store is a double-edged sword for CompUSA. On one hand, it allows customers to do research to find out what technology they need and it shows that CompUSA is serious about competing with online stores. On the other hand, I used those internet terminals to read reviews on Amazon and after finding out what utter garbage the stuff is, I ended up not buying it.

After that little shopping detour, I decided I wanted to do a long hike. So I went to St. Jones Greenway Trail in southern Dover for 5 geocaches. I'm not sure how long that walk was but it was longer than I thought because the two trails do not form a loop so I had to backtrack to the trail fork and go the other way for the last of the five caches. After that, I rounded out the day with a few geocaches that are a bit more out of the way and chicken strips at Hardee's in Dover.

The caches... )
mortonfox: (gps)
Rainy then sunny and 75-85°F. This whole exercise started when I noticed that I'd found geocaches on 12 of the 14 pages in the DeLorme maps covering the state. So I figured I might as well attempt to complete the Delaware DeLorme Challenge. I only needed caches in pages 33 and 34 in the southwestern corner of the state to fulfill the requirements. Conveniently, there is a cache, "Mason-Dixon-A3", close to that corner of the state. So that was the first destination I set on the GPS. It's a fascinating location with a benchmark in its own shelter marking the corner in the state line. From there, I went eastwards to Delmar to fill in page 34. Of course, I couldn't resist doing a bunch more geocaches in Delmar, including one on the Maryland side of the town.

My secondary goal for the day was to visit "dElAWare 7{1}", the oldest cache in the state. So after I was done with Delmar, I headed northeast to Trap Pond State Park. The bushwhack in from the road was rather rough but it was worth doing to find this gold-painted ammo box with a special plaque. It used to be a Gladware plastic container but a few years ago, a local geocacher did some cache maintenance and improved the container.

And finally, I visited a bunch of geocaches in Laurel and Seaford to round out the day before having dinner at Hardee's in Harrington.

The caches... )

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Morton Fox

May 2020

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