Morton Fox's journal

Over the Independence Day holiday weekend, I made my annual trip to Pittsburgh for the furry mecca that is Anthrocon. It's hard to believe that this is my 17th Anthrocon, meaning I've been to every one so far. I didn't think it was as good as last year's though, but that's mostly because I got sick just hours before the overnight drive out to Pittsburgh. The amazing thing is I was operating at 80-90% the whole con, crashing hard only when it was over. I feared though that I could have been Patient Zero, so if there was an outbreak of con crud, I apologize.

What's new this year were two groups attempting to produce fursuit music videos. I found out about one before the con through social media, but only learnt of the other one at the con itself. The first one, choreographed by neopantyger, was based on the Pon Pon Wei j-pop song and that took place on the DLCC rooftop Friday afternoon. I knew nothing about the dance moves but that turned out to be no problem. The dance was broken up into small parts and the whole group of us did multiple takes of each part until we got it right. The second music video was arranged by Dancing Duke. There were two filming sessions, on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. I took part in the Saturday filming. This time, there was an instructional video for the dance moves. However, there were some details I couldn't get from the video so I joined the group shortly before filming to practice it. Both music videos were a lot of fun to work on, even if the dance repetitions out on the hot DLCC rooftop were exhausting. The end result should be well worth the effort.

This year's fursuit parade, on Saturday, was an attempt to get into the Guinness Book of Records. To keep count, they handed out numbered straps at the door to Hall A, where we assembled for the photo. Those straps, I guess, were supposed to be armbands but were instead just stuck to our badges. The parade itself didn't seem to take that long, despite there being 1300 fursuiters in it. Maybe it was simply more efficient this time. I also took part in the fursuit team games on Sunday. I was in the green team and we were tied for third place. (No prize though.) The games this time were Scrabble (get large foam letters to form a word), machine charades (whole team has to act out each word together), hoop (get the whole team through the hoop while holding hands), and the hockey relay. (use a hockey stick to guide a ball around cones and then hit it through the goal) There were fewer players this year because of conflicts with other events, which is a far cry from two years ago when I was turned away because the teams filled up an hour before the games started.

( Side trips, geocaching, etc... )

( 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... )

Sunny, 45°F. I wanted to go to Hardee's for dinner so I planned the whole day to end up at the Middletown Hardee's! That meant a geocaching trip downstate. Even though I spent the whole day in-state (except for a brief cross over to Maryland for "Conditioned Response at C&D canal"), I saw and did a lot. First, I finished the color series (Green, Red, Blue, and final. I found the Silver cache yesterday.), which included a 1.6-mile walk on the bike path in Newark. Then I went to the C&D Canal Wildlife Refuge for four geocaches. (I'm still wondering about the helium tank I came across there.)

After leaving the canal, I did a bunch of suburban geocaches in Smyrna, Dover, Wyoming, and Leipsic. "can you smell it?" was next to a horse stable, so it's obvious what odor the cache description was referring to. Oddly, I didn't smell anything. I may have gotten used to it after many visits to Lancaster. :)

"Jaxon's First" was the last cache of the day and it was an easy one to find in the dark. After that, I went to Hardee's in Middletown and had a Southwest Patty Melt.

( The caches... )

There were lots of 11-11-11 geocaching events posted on Friday. It was a work day for me and I didn't take the day off but I still managed to attend two of those events anyway. The first event I attended was "11-11-11 at 11am - Let's Eat Lunch!" at Cafe Napoli in Wilmington. I figured I could take an extended lunch break and head out for this one since it's not too far from the office. I had a fish fillet sandwich and onion rings.

That night, I went for the "11-11-11 @ 11:11:11 PM New Jersey" geocaching event. Of course, since I wasn't out the whole day geocaching, I had dinner at home first before going to Jersey. The event was a simple gathering in the parking lot at a strip mall one block away from the Deptford Mall. We've had night gatherings in that parking lot a few times already and I'm surprised that mall security has never showed up to question a large group of people hanging out there at night. I also did two geocaches that night. "Big Ole Trees Around Here" has been in place for a few years already but I couldn't do it in previous years because it has either been too late or too dark. Well, this time, it was too late AND too dark but I went and found the cache anyway!

Saturday was a low-key day since I started out late and I had two errands to take care of first. I just headed down to Kent County to do some geocaches that were placed recently. Then I did a bunch of older geocaches in the Milford Neck Wildlife Refuge before returning to Middletown for dinner at Hardee's. I had a taco salad because there was a special on that posted in the window. I don't usually order from the Red Burrito side of their menu but I think I should start because their taco salad is pretty good.

( The caches... )

Cloudy/rainy, 90°F. There's a lot of geocache placement activity this time of the year. While I was out geocaching downstate yesterday, more geocache listings came up around Newport and Smyrna. So I went and did those today.

There was an interesting set of geocaches around Delaware Park. This is a casino and horse racetrack, so naturally, the caches ("Belmont Stakes", "Preakness", "Kentucky Derby" and "Triple Crown Cache") were horse race themed. One problem I hadn't anticipated is Delaware Park has two sections that are connected by footbridge instead of road. So I drove in from the east side and discovered that I couldn't get to the other side without going out to the main road and driving around the block to the north gate. That was inefficient, but I did eventually get all the caches, plus one more that was on the entrance road to the north gate. This little tour of the Delaware Park grounds reminded me that I haven't actually been into the casino building, so I'm curious as to what they have inside. Maybe one evening when I don't have anything else to do (yeah, right?), I'll take a look inside.

The rest of the day, I traveled down the west side of Delaware into farm country. Unfortunately, at "West West of Camden", I tripped over the guard rail, of all things. (So much for 1-star terrain. :) ) Since I seemed to be clumsy today, I decided not to do anything too physically demanding for the rest of the day, lest I actually injure myself. There were still a few easy caches, even with high difficulty ratings. "EVIL Bus Fare", for instance, is rated at 3.5 stars but I found it right away because I'd already done two other Kent County caches hidden the exact same way.

Dinner was chicken and fries at Hardee's in Middletown. Yes, same place as yesterday but I returned because I noticed that there was a coupon in the Hardee's app on my phone after yesterday's visit. So I might as well use it.

( The caches... )

Had a lot of packing to do on Monday morning. Then came the worst part of the con. With everyone trying to get their luggage down to the lobby at the same time, the elevators were full. To make matters worse, people were pushing the up button, in addition to the down button, to catch elevators on the way up. That makes things slower because the elevator has to stop twice on every floor. I decided to wait in my room for a bit until the elevator traffic cleared. So it was a bit late when I finally checked out and got going.

The other problem was the Pennsylvania Turnpike was closed because of a bus crash. The turnpike was reopened shortly after noon but I decided to do a few things before entering the turnpike to allow time for traffic to clear. I went to the Monroeville Eat 'n Park to get a free slice of blackberry pie. Thanks to athauglas for the coupon. After a few geocaches, I had a bacon and egg sandwich at Primanti Brothers. I hadn't tried the Monroeville location before. The food is the same but prices were oddly a bit higher than the Strip District location.

A few more geocaches later, I hit the turnpike. The sequence of events was similar to last year. I ran into the New York group at the Somerset Service Plaza even though I thought I was late getting there. This time, I stopped at Breezewood. Leaving and reentering the turnpike adds a bit to the toll but I was curious about the area. It was pretty much what I expected: A bunch of restaurants, truck stops, and hotels packed into a section of US-30 surrounding the turnpike and I-70 interchange. I was there, however, because I noticed a billboard ad for Hardee's. So I had chicken and fries for an early dinner. I also found two geocaches that were right in town. After leaving Breezewood, there was only one eastbound cache to do in the vicinity of Harrisburg. Then I left the turnpike and went home via Lancaster.

( The caches... )

Sunny, 55-60°F. Today, I finally went and did Delaware's Longest Geocache?. I was waiting for the perfect day, not too hot, too cold, or too wet, to do this cache and today was just right. It's a 5.3-mile round trip hike in a state wildlife area. It's a long walk but completely flat all the way. I also found Halfway Below Sea along the way. Only the last third of a mile to the cache site was difficult because of flooding on the trail. There was no way to avoid the water, so I just waded through. I saw lots of tadpoles in the flood water. I also saw one tadpole-eating snake. When I got closer to the cache site, I saw a big white owl fly out of a holly tree. Well, that was exciting. After that long walk, it's great that the cache was an easy find.

Decided to take a break at Hardee's in Middletown after that. I had a 1/3-lb thickburger and fries. I used a mobile coupon from the Hardee's Android app this time. It's one of their latest innovations. I didn't need a printout. I only had to show the cashier the coupon on my phone.

After that, because I apparently haven't walked enough for one day, I went to Maryland to do the Jackson School Hall Rd 2 geocache. This is the last cache in the Jackson School Hall Road series that I didn't do the last time I was there because I ran out of daylight. It's only 0.1 of a mile from parking but because of the way the trail turns around, the round trip hike was about 1.2 mile! However, it wasn't a difficult walk.

Sunny, 55-60°F. I was planning on hitting some Kent County geocaches. That led to doing some morning yardwork; if I'm going that way anyway, I might as well save a trip and drop something off at the yard waste collection site. This time, it was a bunch of sticks and fallen branches that had accumulated in the yard over the winter. I thought it was just a few branches but by the time I was done picking up everything, I nearly couldn't fit it all in the trunk. When I got to the yard waste site, I saw that they'd really let the place go downhill. It was full of yard waste, all the way to the entrance, so it looked like they hadn't been keeping up with the grinding. No matter. I just backed my car up to the gate and left the tree branches there.

The rest of the day was a tour of Kent County to round up all the new geocaches. There was a variety of scenery; everything from beaches to swampy wooded areas. (I took a picture of the creek but behind me was a lot of stagnant water and soft muddy ground.) Also went to the same Hardee's in Middletown for both lunch (BBQ chicken tender wraps) and dinner (turkey burger). I don't usually stop anywhere for lunch when geocaching, but I decided to make an exception because I haven't been to Hardee's in quite a while and I had a lot of coupons.

( The caches... )

Sunny, 28-34°F. After having breakfast at the local IHOP (on their menu, that's the "Split Decision"), I headed down to Cape Henlopen and Bethany Beach in Sussex County to finish off the remaining Delaware Geotrail caches in that area. Of course, I'd already qualified for the geocoin a week ago but I thought it would be fun to do the rest of the caches in that series too. And those were interesting locations. In particular, "DGT Bethany Beach" has a good view across the bay to Ocean City, Maryland. I was inspired by that view to cross the state line and find a bunch of geocaches in O.C. This beach resort town has plenty of parking during the off-season when all the beach house areas are practically deserted. So I had no issues parking near each geocache site. Better yet, no one was around to interfere with the search.

The sun set but there was still plenty of time before dinner, so I went back north to Dewey Beach and Rehoboth Beach to find some geocaches at night. "Shelter Me" is an interesting navigation challenge. For some reason, the automotive GPS told me to go there by driving on the boardwalk! I had to adjust the destination a bit to get directions to the nearest dead-end street instead. This area too seems rather quiet during the off-season, especially at night, but I didn't linger because it was already getting rather cold.

Dinner was at Hardee's in Middletown. I had BBQ and Ranch chicken tender wraps. I was the last customer of the night but I did finish shortly before closing time.

( The caches... )

Sunny, 33-38°F. Since I started doing the Delaware Geocaching Trail yesterday, I thought I'd continue with the Kent County part of the quest. It was a good day for doing that and I ran into other geocachers along the way too. After getting 8 DGT caches for Kent County, it was only 1pm so I thought I'd try to do Sussex County too. Well, that was almost too ambitious because of the driving distances involved. I managed to squeeze in the 8th Sussex DGT cache only minutes before sunset!

Dinner was chicken tenders at Hardee's in Millsboro. After that, I headed up US-113 intending to go home. When I stopped for a geocache along US-113, I realized that I'd left my hat at Hardee's. I returned to Hardee's and yes, the restaurant folks did find it and were keeping it for me. After that, I decided not to travel US-113 for a third time, so I crossed over to US-13 for a change in scenery. (not that there's much to see at night) That, of course, meant that I did a bunch more geocaches along both the connector road and US-13. I picked only geocaches that I thought were doable at night but there were still quite a number of those. Got home really late as a result but hey, I might as well make the most of a trip down south!

( The caches... )