Morton Fox's journal

I was in Northern New Jersey October 18 thru 22 for Metro Gathering, the only geocaching mega event I've been attending annually. I went to fewer events this year than last year. Those were:

• Pre~Witches of Salem Event Meet and Greet at the Mt. Allamuchy Scout Reservation the evening before the main event. This was a pot luck dinner and also a chance to pick up the attendee packets early.
• 2018 Metro Gathering ~ Witches of Salem, the main event, at Waterloo Village.
• NJ - Small Town Stanhope, a Munzee event at Riverside Park in Stanhope.

There was also a smaller geocaching event on Monday morning but I decided not to go to that one because I would've been busy packing up and getting ready to leave. The weekend was a good time as usual. There were the usual two sets of 10 lab caches that got everyone walking around Waterloo Village. Each lab cache location had a spooky item or setup from which one had to get a code word to enter into the mobile website to register a find. Some of the regular geocaches in the area had also been archived and relisted. Since I was there early, I found and logged those the day before the main event so I could focus on activities in the village during the main event.

After leaving the mega event, I went to the "NJ - Small Town Stanhope" Munzee event just down the road. Same as last year, the reason we had a separate Munzee event at a separate location is Space Coast Geo Store was forbidden from vending Munzee-related goods at the mega event. It was a short event because by the time we got there, we only had an hour or so before dusk. Still, we packed a lot in. In addition to capturing the event munzees around the little park, we also had cake and celebrated a fellow Munzer's birthday.

What a weekend! I went to Central and Northern New Jersey and attended four events. Those were "This little cacher wants a burger" at The Burger Shop in Matawan on Thursday, the "Pre-Metro Gathering Mega Meet and Greet" at the Mt. Allamuchy Scout Reservation on Friday, "2017 Metro Gathering ~ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" on Saturday, and Small Town Stanhope, NJ later that Saturday. All those were geocaching events, except for the last one, which was a Munzee event.

In years past, there have been Thursday evening events in Central Jersey before the mega event. I just haven't been going out of my way for those. This year though, I decided to go a bit east to Matawan to meet up with those folks, even though that meant I'd be late getting to the hotel. The Bacon Royal Burger at The Burger Shop wasn't really that spectacular, but the chance to meet up with a few Central Jersey geocachers, who I hadn't seen in years since I stopped going to the Central Jersey events regularly, was priceless.

On Friday, I puttered around the Budd Lake, Netcong, and Flanders area, getting some Munzees and geocaches. A big plus to only coming to this area once a year is I had a lot to choose from in the various GPS games. Well, except for Flagstack, which hardly anyone seems to play over there, but its time will come. In the evening, I headed over to the scout camp for the Pre-Metro Gathering event. It was a pot luck dinner in a rustic dining hall, featuring spooky food such as a meat corpse. Signal, the geocaching mascot, made an appearance.

Saturday was the big event: Metro Gathering in historic Waterloo Village, which had been decorated with all kinds of Halloween stuff, including a mock graveyard, the Headless Horseman, and a spider skeleton. The entrance to the village was like a fair with exhibitors and vendors, and even a pumpkin carving contest. Mostly though, I went for a hike with other geocachers through the village for the 20 special lab caches and the themed Wherigo cache, and spent a lot of time talking to the North Jersey and Long Island geocachers on various things that have happened in the area while I was away. There was a fair amount of gossip and griping, which I'm not going to detail here. Suffice to say there are two sides to every issue. (Unless you're in the Octagon Society. Then there are eight sides to every issue.)

After Metro Gathering, I went down the road to Riverside Park to meet up with a smaller group for the "Small Town Stanhope, NJ" Munzee event. We had some event munzees placed around the park and adjacent trail. Couldn't stay too long though because the event started pretty close to sundown. I found out the reason that there had to be a separate Munzee event was Space Coast Geo Store was forbidden from vending Munzee-related goods at Metro Gathering. It's a new rule imposed by Groundspeak, the company running the geocaching website. If they find any Munzee stuff at a mega event, they'll yank the "mega" status. I spoke to a number of people about this and everyone thought it was a stupid rule and would hurt geocaching in the long run. A lot of people play both Munzee and geocaching so this kind of separation makes no sense. Munzee and Flagstack, on the other hand, don't mind if we mix games and even encourage it by offering "co-exist" badges for multi-game events.

( The caches... )

Saturday's trip was to Haddon Heights, Cherry Hill, Mount Laurel, and Willingboro in South Jersey. This area is pretty much inexhaustible for Munzee because the local Munzers keep deploying more of those. However, I wanted to capture some of the new air mysteries that they have deployed in Mount Laurel and Willingboro. These are fun. Capturing the virtual air mystery scatters some feather munzees in the vicinity. Capturing the feathers in turn scatters some golden feathers.

Sunday's trip was pretty simple. Went down I-95 from Newark to Baltimore, capturing Flagstack flags along the way. Found one geocache at the turnaround spot. Then from Baltimore back to Newark, I captured virtual munzees as well as some of the flags I missed on the way down. What's remarkable is the way Flagstack has grown recently. Just this quick there-and-back trip alone netted 258 flags! There are many more flags along the other roads around Baltimore but I decided to save those for another time. Finished up with a little walk on the James F Hall Trail in Newark for a few more munzees before an early dinner.

( The munzees... )

Saturday's trip was to Laurel, Maryland, for the DMV Birthday Party Flagstack event. This event was in the late afternoon, so there was plenty of time to capture some Munzees and some flags, and even find 4 geocaches, before it was time to meet up. The only snag was a big rainstorm rolled through the area in the mid-afternoon. I was parked right in front of "Contee Cache" when the storm came in, so I had a good 15 minutes to think about this 4-star difficulty cache while waiting for the rain to slow to a drizzle. Great part is when I finally started looking, I had already read all the logs and narrowed the possibilities down quite a bit, so it took only 3 seconds to spot the cache!

The Flagstack event was really different from other events I'd attended so far. There were only 6 of us and we met in the parking lot of the Laurel Boys and Girls Club. (which used to be, and still looks like, a school building) After some conversation, we got in to DudleyGrunt's car for a whirlwind tour of Flagstack flags around Laurel. In contrast to Munzee, nearly all Flagstack flags are virtual. So all the passengers can capture those on their smartphones while someone drives around. We got nearly all the party flags (which had been deployed for the event), green flags, adventure flags, white flags, oracle flags, a dice flag, and even a number of jumper flags as they popped up around town. There was also one treasure flag, which was the only physical flag of the day. DudleyGrunt parked the car on the side of the road and we all got out to scan the data matrix. Most of those flag types are ones that I typically don't see anywhere else, so I'm glad there's at least one area within daytrip range with enough active Flagstack players to have those.

Sunday's trip was to South Jersey again. This time, I started in Atco and Berlin. One of the Munzee areas was around an abandoned Kmart. Not much was going on in that shopping center but it's perfect for Munzee activity because there's hardly any traffic. After that, I hit the usual hotspots - Woodcrest, Mount Laurel, Westampton, and Willingboro - before getting some groceries at the Asian food market and saladification at Charlie Brown's in Woodbury. Although it's a chain restaurant, this particular location is rather unusual. It is housed in an old-fashioned 18th century inn with all kinds of crazy narrow passageways and split levels. The dining area probably used to be the reading room or some such and still has bookcases on the wall.

( The caches... )

( The munzees... )

Saturday's trip was to South Jersey, to Mount Laurel, Cherry Hill, and Haddonfield. The main goal was to capture the row of prize wheel munzees behind Centerton Shopping Center since I only needed a few more for the next prize wheel badge. There was a lot more to do as well since this is the area where a number of munzers deploy.

Sunday's trip was to York. I hadn't been to York in quite a while because of the difficulty in getting there. Once you get to Lancaster, US-30 is a divided highway to York, but there just isn't a good way to go from my place to Lancaster. Since I hadn't been there in a long time though, there were some new geocaches around York, such as the one at the Mt Rose I-83 traffic viewing spot. I also took the opportunity to capture some Munzee gardens in the area, such as the Manchester Town Center smiley.

( The caches... )

I was going to wait until the end of the month to decide whether to continue my geocaching premium membership (which expires on June 3rd) but after seeing the "new dashboard experience", I went ahead and canceled the auto-renew. What on earth were they thinking? This is a prime example of the school of web design where they think people won't notice that they have removed features if they just put a pretty face on it. Except that this "pretty face" is one of those misguided new-style web designs that convey less information in more space through the use of big fonts and copious whitespace. It's like moving from Lego to Duplo, only not nearly as fun. The worst problem in the new dashboard is it only shows 20 recent logs instead of a month of recent logs. Also, it mixes in friends' recent logs. With the kind of avid geocachers in my geocaching friends list, that guarantees the list won't even cover a day of logs. Maybe not even an hour of logs sometimes!

Anyway, Saturday's trip was to South Jersey again for more munzee and a few geocaches along the way. I went to Riverside, Delanco, Beverly, Burlington, Florence, Mt Holly, and Lumberton, just a big ol' circle on the way to the Asian food market for restocking. There was a good view of the Delaware River in Burlington and a caboose on display in Mt. Holly. I was told that the caboose was being refurbished.

For Sunday's trip, I took a short detour to Havertown, a few miles off the Blue Route. I was surprised there's now a collection of munzees there. Slowly, the game will enter every town. Then I went to Plymouth Township for a mix of geocaches and munzee. It's where I saw a bronze german shepherd and contemplated whether a bird in the bush was worth half a bird in the hand. Then I went to the Gwynedds, North Wales, Colmar, and Ambler. Ambler was pretty good for munzeeing. I parked in the public lot and took a walk around a few blocks, capturing everything. Also found a rare pirate nomad just a bit outside of Ambler. Nomads are a lot harder to find than mythologicals because there are so few of them, so running into one just made my day.

( The caches... )

Saturday's trip was south to Salisbury for another munzee raid since there were more dense areas in and around the city that I hadn't hit yet. There were also a few geocaches along the way in Camden, Bridgeville, Seaford, and Laurel.

On Sunday, I did a mascot gig at the Lawrenceville Jubilee. Solo gig this time because Damian couldn't make it due to an automotive problem. I wore the raccoon fursuit this time and it was this character's first appearance at the jubilee. It took the crowd a few minutes to warm up to the character and then it was high-fives and hugs everywhere. It was a smaller crowd than in some of the previous years because of the weather but it was still a great crowd. I did five rounds, about once per hour, and only one round was cut short a bit because of rain. Otherwise, the gig went rather well. After that, I still had time for one geocache near Trenton and a bunch of munzees in Mount Laurel.

( The caches... )

I needed one geocache this weekend to get the Celebrating 3 million active geocaches souvenir, but I got a few more geocaches along the way. The cache that actually got me the souvenir, "Ava & Alex cache", was a bit of a dubious placement because it's right next to a private driveway. Hopefully it's their property or they have permission. Anyway, my destination on Saturday was Mill Creek Park in Willingboro because there was a nice loop of munzees all along the circular park road. I parked in each parking area and walked back and forth a bit to capture them all. Also took a look at the Futuro House, a must-see oddity in this park.

Sunday's trip was also to South Jersey, but this time to the Mount Laurel Corporate Center, which is packed with munzees for reasons known only to those who deployed them. Although most of the munzees were in the parking lot, there were also a bunch along the walking path around a pond behind the QAD building. Needless to say, Sunday was a good time to go for those because the area was deserted, except for one bird who watched me capture a munzee.

( The caches... )

Just like the previous two weekends, my focus was not on geocaches although there were still some on the way to the munzee areas. Saturday's actual goal was to claim my free AIRism t-shirt from the Montgomery Mall Uniqlo. I had that coupon in my email for the longest time but my previous attempt to head that way was foiled by an injury. So once again, I headed the same way up. Enroute, there was a stop at West Goshen Township Park in West Chester for a few geocaches, as well as a quick look at the helicopter museum. Then I went and got the munzees up the Rt 309 shopping area in North Wales and Montgomeryville. And the last stop before dinner was at Uniqlo to get the shirt. I'd never been to this store before. My overall impression though was clothes there ran a gamut of sizes from tiny to super-tiny. Seriously, even their size XL seemed a bit small for my apparently giant frame. (No wonder I fall down so hard! :) )

Sunday's trip was to Audubon, Cherry Hill, Voorhees, and Collingswood, after picking up a few geocaches in Penns Grove along the way. My plan was to bag all the resort munzees with empty rooms before getting to the meat of the day, which was a walk around Knight Park in Collingswood. This park is closed to vehicular traffic on Sunday, so I walked the 2 miles all the way around to capture the munzee trail. It was a rather nice day for a walk and I even showed a curious passer-by what the game was about. (He thought I was geocaching at first. Heheh, no.) After that, I got some dragon munzees in Mount Laurel. Decided that was enough for the day, so there was time for a trip to an Asian supermarket in Cherry Hill before dinner.

( The caches... )

To avoid any strain on my shoulder, I decided to plan the weekend around Munzee instead of geocaching, although I did still get some geocaches along the way. Most Munzees are in built-up areas and I'd say more than 95% of them would be rated 1 or 1.5 stars for terrain. I took a look at the Munzee map and the area just south of the state line, from Salisbury to Ocean City (Maryland, not New Jersey), was chock full of Munzees. So that's where I went.

Saturday's trip was to the south end of Ocean City. I got some geocaches in Bear and Ellendale on the way. There were two geocaches I hadn't gotten yet in that part of Ocean City but for the most part, I had the Munzee app open to grab the virtuals and some physicals along the boardwalk. Of course, I did the tourist thing too while I was there. I gawked at the dinosaur bones and the funny batmobile. Munzee total for the day was 2,203 captures and 30,912 points, the best I'd ever done and enough to bag the 25K Day badge, which I'd been eyeing for a while.

On Sunday, I went down to Salisbury. There were large groups of Munzees at the shopping center on southbound US-13, entering Salisbury, and at the Salisbury University sports fields, but the real treat this trip was to the Salisbury Zoo. I didn't walk in all the way but I saw a representative sample of animals and captured a full set of the limited-time charity paw prints Munzees. It made sense that the Maryland Munzers would deploy those at the zoo. Sunday's totals: 1,755 captures, 29,220 points. Then after leaving Salisbury, I got some geocaches in the Seaford area along US-13, on the way to dinner.

( The caches... )