Morton Fox's journal

Continued geocaching up the Jersey Shore this weekend. This time, I went to Long Beach Island (LBI) and Seaside Heights. I think this will be the last daytrip targeting the Jersey Shore because it's about as far as I'd like to go. I'm saving the next stop, Point Pleasant Beach, for when I do a mascot gig there in May.

On Saturday, I got a bunch of geocaches in Manahawkin and Stafford Township before taking the causeway to LBI. LBI was chock full of geocaches because those were mostly placed for an event last November. I was surprised so many of those caches survived too because they were all regular-sized plastic boxes and ammo boxes and all placed in really obvious spots. Most of LBI is private property, so it was good that the caches were placed with permission of the various businesses. I got to talk to one of the business owners (the cache was sitting among one of many furniture/yard items outside his store) and he showed me his spinning wheel of swimmers. The exception was the bicycle store owner, who for some reason, didn't know about the geocache. Strangely though, he just let it sit by his fence all those months without even trying to find out what it was! Island living must put folks under some kind of spell. Anyway, I had a great time and went all the way to both ends of LBI, a 40-mile round trip just on the island alone.

On Sunday, I went to Seaside Heights, Lavallette, and Seaside Park. There weren't as many geocaches in that section of the beach, so I spent more time in Toms River and Island Heights before and Beachwood and Bayville afterwards. Seaside Heights, unfortunately, looked like a disaster zone. Although some parts of the boardwalk had been rebuilt, many streets and some parks were still closed for construction. I was able to detour around the closed roads to get to some of the geocaches, but I think the others are gone or inaccessible. Later in the day, I got to see Virginia, the Bayville Dinosaur. It's one of those roadside oddities you come across when traveling local roads.

( The caches... )

On Saturday, I went to Lancaster to attend the "38 Mack Fire Engine" flash mob geocaching event. Yes, we actually had a 1938 Mack firetruck to gather around. As with almost every Lancaster County trip, this one was interesting for the variety of caches. For "1.6 Away", I waded across a creek to the island where the cache was. The water temperature was perfect that morning and it was fun to dip into. Plus, the view of the dam under the bridge upstream was picturesque. "Thar She Blows!" was another interesting one. To retrieve the cache, one has to blow on one end of a U-shaped pipe to make it pop out the other end. "Eyes are on you" brought me to a creepy mural on the side of a bowling alley.

For Sunday, I decided to continue my cache marathon up the Jersey Shore in order to finish most of it before beach season begins. I got up to Avalon on my previous trip, so this time, I did Sea Isle City and Ocean City. This is one stretch that is chock-full of caches. Nearly every block in Ocean City had one. There were some interesting things to see too, like the pirate ("end of the road"), the stone turtle ("SEE THE ISLE"), and the sandal tree. ("Christmas tree...Ocean City style")

One thing I had no idea about was that the Doo Dah Parade was this weekend. Most of the beach areas looked rather quiet and there was no indication that anything major was going on. I have no interest in attending Doo Dah, but had I known it was this weekend, I would've stopped by the central boardwalk area on my way up Ocean City to see if any of my friends were hanging out. Oh well. Maybe next time.

( The caches... )