Morton Fox's journal

Saturday was another day to get some geocaches in my area, to the northwest and northeast of home. Went from Newark to Pike Creek, London Britain, Kemblesville, Kennett Square, Concordville, Springfield, Newtown Square, and Lansdowne. Attempted some of the tougher geocaches as well, which meant tackling the overgrowth on some of the less-used trails in DelCo wooded areas. The funny cache of the day was "Class of 3:16", which came with its own action figure.

Sunday's geocaching trip started in Penns Grove and Logan Township, before venturing north to Trenton, Ewing, and Pennington. However, any area that even suggested picnic or swim hole was packed with people and parking areas were jam packed. Moreover, traffic was crazy on the New Jersey side. So, after getting a few geocaches, I decided to head over the river for the relative calm of Bucks County, PA. There were a lot of new geocaches, mostly from Taxman, in Newtown and Bensalem. Also, I was finally able to find some caches with which I had trouble in the past. "Cry Baby #5 * 8 - Newborn" was one such problematic cache. I'd been there before but encountered a vagrant hiding behind the fence, which really discouraged me from returning for a while! Finally found the cache this time and it turned out to not be that difficult, except for having to deal with the overgrowth in that unused slice of land next to the Wawa parking lot.

Couple of interesting geocaches on Sunday. The first was the cow-spotted box, which was furry on the inside! "Shadowy Span" was near an unusual sculpture of an armored horse. What the camera didn't capture very well was a golden heart behind the bars in the center of the horse's body. So that's some neat symbolism. And the last cache before dinner was a gnome, which ties in to the puzzle in "Where's Dog VII - Follow Your Gnome".

( The caches... )

I hadn't been to South Jersey much since the State Parks geocaching policy debacle earlier this year because I was waiting to see what the impact would be and truth be told, I wasn't fond of the way it was handled. However, months later, I see nothing much has changed. Many caches remain out in WMAs and state parks, and some New Jersey geocachers have been placing new caches, although mostly not in state areas. So a trip to South Jersey was warranted. This time I went to Penns Grove, Logan Township, Greenwich, Williamstown, and Sicklerville. Best views of the day were at the inlet and floodgate in Greenwich.

Sunday's trip was to Bensalem to hit some new Taxman geocaches and then to Wrightstown for some older caches at the Middletown Grange that I could not seek previously because my last visit happened to fall during the weekend of the Middletown Grange Fair. I am not sure which other weekends they use the fairground but it was deserted this Sunday and parking was not a problem.

( The caches... )

Went for jury duty on Thursday morning. It was actually my first time because I wasn't eligible all the previous times I received a jury summons. The county courthouse in downtown Wilmington was pretty busy that day. There were 17 cases on the trial calendar, so it took most of the morning for them to sort through those cases. They whittled it down to 3 cases after settlements and plea bargains. I was in the third group of jurors to get called. After calling 35 jurors for jury selection in each of the first two cases, the bailiff decided to just call the rest of us for the third case. So nearly 100 people, including myself, had to take the elevator to a courtroom on the 8th floor. (Courthouse stairs were reserved for emergency use only.) It was like the elevator line at the Westin during Anthrocon. :) By the time we all got to the 8th floor though, the prosecutor and defendant had both agreed to a bench trial (trial by judge) due to the complexity of the criminal case, so they didn't need a jury after all. The judge took a few minutes to explain that decision to all of us and then we all went back down to the jury assembly room. By the afternoon, they decided no more jurors were needed so they handed out the juror certificates and dismissed us. Even though it was just a lot of waiting, I still thought it was an educational experience because the court staff explained what was happening every step of the way. There was still some daylight afterwards, so I went to Logan and Mullica Hill in South Jersey for a quick geocache run before returning to Delaware for errands and dinner.

Saturday had bad weather, with a mix of snow and rain, but I figured if I headed south to Eastern Shore, there would be only rain down that way. This time, I went to Wye Mills, Wye Island, and some of the fingers of land next to Easton. The hard part about geocaching in that area is the shape of the land. There are lots of fingers of land, up to 10 miles long, into the Chesapeake Bay with no bridges linking them. If you venture down one finger for a geocache, it takes a lot of driving and time to go back out of the finger and down another finger. So I picked only those fingers with a good collection of geocaches. Prospect Bay was nice. Even though it looked like a very exclusive community, no one bothered me and it looks like they leave geocaches alone too, even those really obvious cache containers that I saw sitting out in the open. Near the end of the day, I revisited St Michaels to finish the geocaches I didn't have time for last week, and ended the day at Claiborne Beach. (the only time that day the sun came out)

On Sunday, I hit the trail loop for 11 geocaches at Kirkwood Preserve in Newtown Square. There was some snow on the ground from the previous day's snowfall but not really enough to make it hard to find those geocaches. There was one geocache in Radnor that required climbing a concrete pillar. I brought my ladder but it didn't feel safe because the ladder didn't reach high enough, so I decided not to retrieve this cache until I can get a longer ladder. The shape of the pillar also makes it a lot harder to use long tree branches to knock the cache off, although some have done it that way. After that, I continued onwards to Lower Gwynedd and Horsham. Things were a bit rougher there because of some uncleared parking areas. "Up Against the Wall!" was findable despite the snow, although I had to dig up nearly a 10-foot line of snow before I saw it. Of course, I put the snow back for the next person! :) "Enterance[sic] to the Woods" was difficult for no good reason. That whole area was a messy mix of water and snow. After kicking away the snow fruitlessly for a while, I saw the cache just sitting out there on a tuft of grass. It wasn't a hiding spot that made sense but I think some caches just put the whammy on folks. I noticed in the cache logs that others took a while to find it too, just because of the weirdness of the placement.

( The caches... )

This weekend was yet another step towards finishing the Jersey Shore geocaches before beach season starts. I didn't get to Atlantic City until Sunday because Saturday was mostly working my way along the Route 322 corridor through Glassboro, Clayton, and Williamstown, getting some new geocaches placed since my last caching spree down that way. There were a few sites of interest, like the ruins of a dugout / pit house and Unexpected Road. When I reached Hammonton and started looking for "Just log the DNF now", I met the cache owner, jct.jr. That was an extremely tricky 5-star geocache and I was glad he supplied the hint and the required tool for that one. Then he was nice enough to take me on a tour of some of his geocaches around Hammonton, which were a lot of fun. And finally, I grabbed a few geocaches farther southeast in Mays Landing before dinner.

On Sunday, after a few geocaches in Mays Landing, I finally hit the seaside area, from Longport, through Margate and Ventnor to Atlantic City. I didn't think this stretch was as good as the beach areas to the south but there were some things to see, such as Lucy the Elephant and King Neptune. The downtown part of Atlantic City, aside from the casinos and outlet mall, was a bit sketchy so I didn't stay there too long. But there were only a few caches there anyway.

The final stretch of this tour will be Long Beach Island. And beyond that, I'll save Point Pleasant Beach for when I have to travel there anyway to do a charity mascot gig. So I should be done before Summer, easily.

( The caches... )

On Saturday, I did the Route 14 powertrail, 51 geocache starting from Harrington and going towards the DE/MD border. It was pretty easy and I was done in less than two hours. After that, I geocached along western Delaware before heading to Dover. The last two geocaches of the day in the Dover area were by the beach at the Ted Harvey Conservation Area. "Beachfront Property" was closer to the boat launch parking area, while "Ospery Landing" was a 1.3-mile walk along the beach to an ospery platform. So it was a truly diverse set of geocaches since that one cache was a longer, more scenic walk than the 51 caches with which I began the day!

On Sunday, I headed to South Jersey to do the duck series of geocaches. These were spread out from Swedesboro to Brooklawn, in a variety of environments from urban to wooded area. "Duck Series: #10 Northern Pintail" was at an interesting spot, an enormous hollow tree that one can crawl into and stand up inside. "Duck Series: #3 Common Merganser" was the most challenging cache of the day but only because it's in an area that one can walk to only at low tide. (It's also rather muddy and full of debris washed ashore but that comes with the territory.) I used Tide Chart FREE on my phone to figure out the best time to go for this cache and that worked rather well.

( The caches... )

It has become a trend lately to hold geocaching events on special dates, although Groundspeak's special souvenir for finding a cache on 12/12/12 also served to encourage this. So I was able to attend 3 events, all not too far from home, on that day! I decided not to take a day off from work since two of those events were right in this county and could fit my schedule.

The first event I attended was the midnight event, "12-12-12 @ 12:12:12 AM New Jersey". It was in the parking lot of a strip mall in Deptford. I left home a bit after dinner but I was so early that I had time to do a few geocaches before getting to the event. We actually had quite a crowd going, which was funny because the rest of the shopping center was deserted by that time.

The next event I attended was "12-12-12 @ 12:12:12 PM Flash Mob Event" at the quiet side of the Prices Corner Shopping Center parking lot in Wilmington. We decorated a tree, had cookies, and found a bonus cache, "121212121212", on the other side of the shopping center.

The last event of the day was "Meet, Greet & Eat on 12/12/12" at 6:12pm outside SAS Cupcakes in downtown Newark. This too was rather well-attended despite the traffic and parking problems that evening and even though we all had to fit on the sidewalk! We had cupcakes. After this event, some of us went to look for "Old Man Cooches' Hat", the bonus cache for this event.

( The caches... )

Rainy, 45°F. I took the day off this February 29 so I could attend a few Leap Day geocaching events. There were many events in the area but I picked 3 that weren't too far away and didn't overlap. The first event was "Leaping with EPAC", a breakfast at Wegman's in Malvern. I had a brown rice California roll. Yes, sushi for breakfast! Got to live a little. :) After that, I did "WO - Spike", the geocache that was placed for the event, before heading north and east towards the second event of the day.

The second event was "LEAP - LUNCH - CACHE #TWO", a lunch at Applebee's in North Wales. This Applebee's has all-you-can-eat soup & salad lunch specials, so I had a house salad and potato bacon soup plus two refills of that. After that, I geocached around North Wales, Lower Gwynedd, and Maple Glen until it was time to head over to the third event of the day.

I made a possible mistake of going through Philadelphia to get from Abington to Deptford, so I arrived at "The Quest for 366 - 2012!" a bit late. It was a dinner event at Old Country Buffet in Deptford. I had many kinds of food in strange combinations. After this event, I did one more geocache on the way home. Aside from the rain, it was a good day. The multi-event format is a lot of fun. Like myself, many other geocachers event-hopped and I saw some of them at all three events.

( The caches... )