Morton Fox's journal

Another trip to Lancaster on Saturday. Tried to clear out geocaches in Lancaster County Central Park, which I didn't get to on my previous trip. There was a long walk along the bend of Mill Creek and an Ursine Urn. Also a rat geocache. Moved farther westward to Landisville and Mount Joy, and the cutest geocache there was a zebra, even if it was a bit dirty from having sat under the bridge.

Sunday's trip was to Lehigh Valley for the "LVG G.E.M." geocaching event at Weggies in Hanover Township. Of course, I took the chance to grab some cache series before the event. Two of those were the "Characters" series, a set of play-anywhere Wherigo cartridges, and the "PBURG MALL" series, a ring of geocaches around the Phillipsburg Mall. Easily the best cache of the day was this Nintendo geocache, over on the Phillipsburg side.

( The caches... )

It was a 3-day weekend with Labor Day on Monday. I went up to Lehigh Valley to finish off more geocaches in that area. First, I took the opportunity to mail my passport renewal application since I noticed there's a UPS store conveniently just off one of the exits in Allentown. No reason why I can't get things done on geocaching excursions. This time, I spent most of the day around Bethlehem and Fountain Hill. I saw the stacks of the old Bethlehem Steel Plant at "A view of the Stacks". I also met up with Frostbiter at "Shell Micro" because the cache was right outside where he works. I hadn't seen him in over 3 years so we took a few minutes to catch up. I learnt that the geocaching community in Lehigh Valley is not what it used to be; some folks had significantly cut down on their geocaching activity due to health or other reasons. In addition, one of them is moving out of state and archived all his caches just prior to the weekend, although I was still able to find "W - 3". Maybe he hadn't gotten around to picking up that one yet. :)

Sunday was a rainy day, so I decided to do the Four States in One Day Challenge It is literally what the name says: I had to find geocaches in 4 states in a single day to log that challenge cache. In the Philly area, it's easy because New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland are quite close together. The reason why I wanted to do this on a rainy day is because I figured I'd be doing more driving around than walking and searching. This challenge turned out to be a bit harder than I thought because I'd already found nearly all the easy caches in the area. So I was basically just hitting the new caches. First, I did a cache in Newark on the Mason-Dixon Trail. Then I headed over to Conowingo, MD, where thankfully there was a new cache. From there, I headed northeast to Oxford, PA, for a few countryside caches. (I only needed one but I might as well do them all since they were quick!) Next, I stopped at the challenge cache in DE to sign in so I wouldn't have to double back after crossing over to NJ. And then I completed the challenge by doing a cache in Gibbstown, NJ. After that, I continued geocaching in South Jersey until dinnertime since I was already there. It was a soggy time because of the light rain.

Monday was another rainy day. However, I had an Old Country Buffet breakfast coupon, so I had a leisurely breakfast while waiting for the rain to go away. Then I took a long drive out to Lancaster to hopefully give the rain enough time to stop. That almost worked. It was still raining lightly when I got to the first geocache site but it stopped soon enough. This time, I geocached mostly in Lititz, East Petersburg, and Manheim, all to the north of Lancaster City.

( The caches... )

There was rain in the forecast for Saturday but it turned out to be a sunny day and the thunderstorm didn't hit until the evening when I was about to go for dinner anyway. I headed out to Martic Township in Southern Lancaster for the "Flash Mob Event on the Trail". This was a great little geocaching event because after the meetup, we went out as a group to tackle two of the hardest nearby caches. Of the two, "Flying Instruments" was notable because it was about 15 feet above ground on the pylon of an old railroad bridge. The way to get there was to climb up on the road side of the bridge and crawl out on a beam across the chasm to the next pylon. Ordinarily, I'd have been too nervous to attempt that but with moral support from the group, it was no problem. Four of us went out to the cache, found it, turned around and went back, and no one fell off. After that, I hiked around the rustic areas of Southern Lancaster to get more high-terrain caches before the rain came.

Sunday varied between rain and heavy rain pretty much all day long. I went to "Nine is Fine", a geocaching breakfast event at Shore Diner in Egg Harbor Township. That was a pretty good event for meeting up with some of the New Jersey geocachers I don't see as often any more. After that, I found some geocaches around Egg Harbor Township before heading off to Ocean City to do a series of caches. I hadn't been to O.C. since 2005 because the last time I was there, I had an encounter with the police on the boardwalk and I thought they were rude. I admit I went there on Sunday looking for a reason to extend my boycott another 10 years. Nothing bad happened this time though. Then again, everyone was probably huddled up indoors in that town because of the weather. Many of the new geocaches in O.C. are of the roadside variety. To avoid getting my electronics wet in the rain, I left my phone and GPS in the car. In most cases, I was able to find the cache by zooming in all the way on the aerial photo to see which corner or tree it was near. Sometimes I was lucky and guessed well. After 38 geocaches, I left O.C. because I got tired of the rain and the area was actually starting to flood! However, given travel conditions, it was just the right time to leave to be in time for dinner anyway.

( The caches... )

Sunny, 70°F. Today, I went to Martic and Conestoga Townships in Lancaster County to finish the geocaches along the last stretch of the Enola Low-Grade Trail. First, I parked just before cache #46 and did caches #46 to #60. I'd already finished caches #28-45 on a previous weekend, so I parked near cache #25 and did #25 to #1, and #26. #27 is on the other side of a closed rail bridge, so I moved the car again and did one last 1-mile round trip hike to get that one. I think I covered about 10 miles on foot. It wasn't much of a problem except my feet started to hurt near the end of 20+ miles of walking on the uneven gravel path in two days. So thank goodness it's done and over!

The most interesting thing I saw on the rail trail was a praying mantis, which I almost stepped on by accident because it was right in the middle of the path. It's in the nature of the praying mantis to be still. It didn't budge an inch as I circled it and took a couple of photos. The oddity of the night was a Burger King that used to be a funeral parlor. I picked that this one, on Lititz Pike in Lancaster, to make a stop at because it was the last day to use a coupon for free chicken tenders. I was wondering about its unusual design until I read the comments on its Google Local entry. Would be funny to drive a hearse under that covered area in front and ask for takeout. :)

( The caches... )

Sunny, 85°F. Although it wasn't as hot today as yesterday, it was worse because of the humidity. I started the day with breakfast buffet at Old Country Buffet in Newark. Had I known they were doing breakfast until noon, I wouldn't have woken up quite as early, but I needed to get going anyway.

My plan for the day was to find "Hen Fruit" in East Marlborough and then head over to Lancaster County for more geocaches. That turned out to not be the best idea because there isn't a direct route to the next cache site near Colerain. "Bells Run Nature Preserve" turned out to be the hardest bushwhack of the day. I went into the woods and it was like a dense jungle in there. No wonder most of the geocache logs for that are not in the summer.

"Here's Amos" is at a huge figure of an Amish farmer. I'm sure I'd passed by that before but never noticed until someone placed a geocache near it. It's in the parking lot outside Hershey Farms restaurant in Strasburg. Dinner was a two-fish combo at Long John Silver's in Lancaster. After that, I watched the fireworks for a little while before heading home. This is the second fireworks display I've seen this weekend. I also saw the one in Philadelphia on my way home yesterday night. (There was another one last weekend in Pittsburgh of which I only just caught the end.)

( The caches... )

Overcast and humid. Rained a bit in the late afternoon. 75-80°F. Went out to Lancaster County. First, I went around Lancaster and Leacock to finish a few geocaches I skipped over for various reasons on previous trips to the area. Then I went to Lititz/Warwick to do the other half of the geocaches in that town that I ran out of time for previously. Then I headed further north to the wilderness area to do a few geocaches in the Speedwell Forge area before heading southwest a bit to Manheim for the remainder of the day's geocaches. I thought I spent way too long on some of the geocaches but managed to cram a lot in anyway. After the last cache, I noticed that I was on the same route number as Long John Silver's. So it was a 6-mile straight shot down Route 72 to dinner. How convenient.

The most fun cache of the day was "On the First Day of Christmas". It's a microcache hanging high up in a pine tree. However, this tree has lots of thick horizontal branches so it wasn't that dangerous or difficult of a climb. I just stepped up from branch to branch, holding on to a few branches at a time, until I got there. I'm always amazed that a tree branch no thicker than my wrist can support my weight, but I suppose that's why we have wooden furniture.

( The caches... )

Sunny and 55-60°F. Colder than yesterday and just as windy. Went to Lancaster and found a few geocaches there. While I was going for "Happy Pi Day!", I kept hearing truck horns in the distance. As I was driving to the next cache site, I found out why. There was a Mother's Day Truck Convoy going down US-30. People had parked their cars all around the New Holland Avenue / US-30 interchange to watch the convoy. I went a bit further down the road to "RCA", which was just behind the staging area for the trucks.

Since the police had closed off some of the roads for the convoy, I decided to go north to Lititz instead. There were many geocaches in downtown and residential Lititz that I hadn't visited yet. The best caches from today's batch are the "Nanny Nano Boo Boo" series: 3 tiny geocaches artfully adapted to look like part of the structures on which they were placed. I didn't have any trouble figuring them out though. Only #2 took a little while to find because I didn't know which part of the wooden platform to focus on at first.

Finished up a bit earlier than usual because I was getting tired of being blown around in the wind. I went to Long John Silver's in Lancaster and had a chicken and fish variety platter, a substantial meal for which I had a $2-off coupon from a previous visit to this LJS.

( The caches... )

Sunny and 60-65°F. Went out towards Lancaster to experience Pennsylvania Dutch culture and eat fried fish named after a fictional pirate, but didn't actually get to do the latter. Maybe next time. Did find many geocaches though. Almost all of today's caches were quick park and grabs just off the main road but I'm sure I'll see more types of caches on the next trip.

It's an interesting area. There is a lot of farmland on rolling terrain. Saw a number of Amish horse carriages out on the roads and even at one of the strip malls. (I guess they have to go shopping sometimes too.) Lowe's in Lancaster actually has a parking area for horses! It's a wooden shelter with a shovel and chunks of horse evidence on the ground.

Dinner was at Cici's Pizza in Lancaster because I saw it near one of the cache sites and because they do honor the current $3.99 buffet special. I had pizza, of course. Also salad, soup, brownies, and cinnamon buns. It still sucks that the Newark Cici's has closed but this is the same thing, only about 40 miles further. One thing I noticed is this Cici's closes earlier, at 9pm. Almost the whole town seems to shut down at that time too. This will be a problem in the Summer if I insist on geocaching right up to dusk. There will be no late-night shoo-fly pie buying!

( The caches... )