Morton Fox's journal

Sunny, 30-34°F. Had a busy morning because I was doing some return-to-work preparations. Actually, I was busy in the evening too; I came back home for a bit to take care of a few things before going out again at night on an errand run. My only goal for geocaching today was to do the last two geocaches in the Delaware Geotrail series. These are the two toughest ones because of the steep uphill climb and tougher still right now because of snow on the ground, but I did those anyway just to finish the series. After that, I did some new geocaches in the Powerlines Trail series before calling it a day. Not too challenging, except it was a lot of walking in the snow and on icy ATV trails.

Dinner was onion rings at Arby's in New Castle. Well okay, it's not really dinner since I ate at home before going out again. I got the onion rings as a snack after shopping for groceries.

( The caches... )

Cloudy, 32-34°F. There was snow in the weather forecast for this afternoon. I planned to hit a couple of nearby Delaware Geotrail caches and be back before the snow started. Among other places, I went to Lums Pond State Park, where there were 3 DGT caches. Well, 2pm came and the snow still hadn't started so I went to White Clay Creek State Park and kept on geocaching. It was a bit of a hike for 3 caches but the trail didn't have any especially steep stretches so snow and ice on the ground weren't an issue.

At 3:30pm, there was finally a bit of snowfall. So I headed off to Churchmans Crossing to do some errands because I wanted to finish those and get home before the roads got really snow-covered. Then the snow stopped again, so I did one final cache, "Green Acres". I was pretty lucky with this one. It seems there usually are barking dogs near the cache site but for some reason, the dogs were absent when I got there. So I could search for the cache without interference. The snow really only started after I got home. So it didn't pose a problem and I could've done a full day of geocaching, but it's good to have some flexibility in one's plans.

( The caches... )

Sunny, 28-34°F. I left home this morning with the intention of doing a bunch more Delaware Geotrail caches. So I got the New Castle County DGT caches to the south of my place and all the remaining Kent County DGT caches. Then I continued geocaching until it was a bit past sunset and time to head back. The last two caches were in Greenwood. Looks like Kent County got more snow than New Castle. Their biggest problem seems to snowdrifts on the roads. After snow removal, the wind blew snow back onto the road. So when I was driving the backroads, I had to slow down numerous times for snow patches. On the way to Killens Pond, I came across a road so snow-covered that I couldn't tell which part was road and which part was field or ditch or whatever. I decided to turn the car around and try another route before things got really bad!

I only ran into one geocacher today. He was at Killens Pond State Park and he'd just completed the two DGT caches there as I arrived. At "Fisher Bridge Falls", I met two friendly locals who already knew about the cache. They told me they'd been giving hints to geocachers who couldn't find that cache. They were waiting to see if I needed help too but I found it on my own. I didn't think it was that difficult a cache but I happened to have to right idea and just needed to be systematic in my search.

Dinner was chicken tenders at Hardee's in Harrington. By now, I've had chicken tenders at half a dozen Hardee's, but this location seems to have good chicken tenders. They're also almost within range of free wi-fi internet. Too bad the restaurant can't be moved a bit up the road. :)

( The caches... )

Sunny, 38°F. The Delaware Geocaching Trail has started up again. The last time the Tourism Office did this was when I was in the middle of moving to the state. It's good to see that they're doing another one. The game this time is to find 8 DGT geocaches in each of the 3 counties and fill in your DGT passport. Then send it in to get a prize. Because I had a busy morning, I started late today but I still did enough caches to satisfy the requirement for New Castle County. I went towards the north and northeast parts of the county and the 8 caches were all within a few miles of each other. Met up with a few other geocachers who were doing this series too.

( The caches... )