Morton Fox's journal

It was a rainy Saturday, so I went to South Jersey, specifically Sewell, Blackwood, Deptford, Voorhees, Marlton, and Mount Laurel for Munzees only. The strategy of the day was to focus on hotel, motel and timeshare munzees to minimize the number of times I had to step out into the rain.

Sunday's trip was to Lehigh Valley and across the state line there to Pohatcong and Phillipsburg. I actually ran out of munzees there, so there was enough time for a walk along the Tatamy Trail to get a bunch of geocaches, which were apparently video game themed.


( The caches... )

Saturday began with a collection of geocaches in the Caravel Farms area in Bear. Then I headed over to Rosedale, near Baltimore. I wanted to do the cache trail in Double Rock Park but I only got the first two caches before a thunderstorm cut my hike short. So for the rest of the day, I went for caches around shopping centers and office parks in Parkville, Towson, and Essex, between bursts of rain. What's odd about this trip is two caches I had trouble with in the past, "Evil Little Evergreen Hide" and "Suds on a Pedestal", were easy to find. Looking back through the logs, I believe the latter was missing and had been replaced. The former could have been dislodged and is now temporarily in an easier spot.

Sunday's trip was to Lehigh Valley again for another 45 caches. There is method to the madness though. Each park or cemetery, or in some cases the entire town, had caches named for characters from one TV show. So the ones I found that day were from Three's Company, All In The Family, Thundercats, Josie and the Pussycats, Seinfeld, Tom and Jerry, and My Favorite Martian. And the towns I visited were Bath, East Allen, Nazareth, and Tatamy. The Iron Workers Lunch Time sculpture was an interesting find. It's not related to any geocache yet. I saw it while driving to a geocache and I just had to stop and photograph it. Another great location was the Indian Tower. I used the spiral stairs to get to the second level and take some pictures of the scenery.

( The caches... )

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... )

On Saturday, I intended to stay local and get all the recently-published local geocaches, but somehow ended up going to Chestertown after a bunch of geocaches in Middletown and Millington. The one curious thing in the area was the Unicorn Fishing Lake, which, depending on the way you parse the sign, could be a lake where unicorns fish or a lake where one fishes for unicorns. The last stop of the day was back to Carousel Farm Park in Pike Creek for a set of toe geocaches, before I made my escape!

Sunday's trip was to Allentown for the "Celebrate Geocaching in the Lehigh Parkway!" geocaching event. It was a morning event though, so I was there only for the last five minutes before it ended abruptly. In that same area was another event celebrating the 175th anniversary of the covered bridge, so the geocaching event had to end before the next event began. I didn't stick around for the main festivities, so the rest of the day was spent getting the new geocaches in Coplay, Northampton, Laurys Station, and Walnutport, and walking on some of the bike paths in the area.

( The caches... )

On Saturday, I'd planned to go to Allentown to get the latest "Play Anywhere" Wherigo caches, but how could I resist a little side trip to the Morton Morton house? Folks in Lehigh Valley have gotten rather daring with their geocaches. This big frog geocache, for example, is slightly hidden only because of the vegetation but I think they're really counting on no one venturing out to that side of the park. And then, there was the Tuma Butt geocache. And you thought geocaches couldn't be risque!

Sunday's trip was to the Skillman / Montgomery / Hopewell area since I wanted to visit MOOYAH Burgers again. As I discovered, this area is rather artsy. The parks are decorated with various sculptures and art pieces, such as historic house scale models, abstract sculptures, a mask, and a meditative figure. I spent most of the day though on the Skillman Park Geotrail, a collection of geocaches in Skillman Park, a relatively large park built on the grounds of a former state-run psychiatric institution.

( The caches... )

After 4 years, February 29th, the Leap Day, was once again upon us. There were special geocaching events and souvenirs for Leap Day but this time, I decided not to take the day off for that day.

Saturday's trip was to Allentown Southside in Lehigh Valley to get the Logos Wherigo geocache series. The completed series produces a piece of geo-art, in this case an outline of the Wherigo logo. Most geo-art series thus far have used mystery caches to provide a layer of indirection so that the physical caches don't actually need to be laid out like the artwork. This series, however, uses Wherigo. Whereigos are data cartridges that one can play on certain Wherigo-enabled Garmin GPS models. There are also smartphone and Pocket PC apps for Wherigo. So here, the series used 32 Wherigo cartridges, each providing the location of one of the caches once it is solved. They were all easy one-shot questions about a corporate or product logo. (Well okay, I did have to do image searches on the web for a few of those. I don't know everything! :) ) So that was the layer of indirection. Anyway, I found most of those caches quickly. A few were tricky to navigate to because I was unfamiliar with entrances to shopping centers and the one-way streets in that area. One of the caches was missing but there could have only been one place for it, so I replaced it with a preform tube from my bag of spare parts. Also the same day, I did the "Dogs Playing..." series and the "Characters" series. The latter was also a series of Wherigo caches.

Sunday's trip was to Lancaster. Two issues kept me from considering a trip to Lancaster for a couple of months: the Route 41 closure and the snow. Both of those issues were over and there were new caches, so it was a good day for that. I completed the "GP" series at Gap Park in Gap. Each of those caches was related to one bird and had information I needed to find the final bird, which was a bit away from the park. It was a somewhat challenging day though. I had to wade into the water for two of the caches. "Birds Eye View" was in a flooded area. It was just 50 feet from the parking area but the last 20 feet was into the water. No problem. I rolled up my pants and went in with sandals. The water was cold but not too cold. The problem with "Guarded Water" is the cache got stuck in a bridge crevice so one couldn't pull it up by the string on which it was hanging. So once again, I had to wade into the stream water to get close enough to get the cache unstuck with a pair of pliers. This water was a bit deeper but still not up to my knees.

Monday was when I attended 3 Leap Day geocaching events. The first one was "Ha-Ha It's Leap Day" in Talleyville. It was a lot earlier than the time I usually go to work, so I had time for two geocaches and a quesalupa breakfast afterwards. Then at lunchtime, I went to "New Castle Delaware Leap Lunch" at Mary's Kountry Kitchen in Stanton. I decided to get a second breakfast. At dinnertime, I went to "New Castle County Leap Year Event - 2016". It was great having 3 events in one day in this area.

( The caches... )

It was a 3-day weekend for the Independence Day holiday. On Friday, we first went to finish some local series of geocaches that I hadn't had time to get to during the week. First, there was the set of 4 that was placed for last Monday's geocaching event. Then there was a set of 7 caches placed by West Whiteland Township for their 250th anniversary. It's also a nice way for the township to promote their parks. Stopped for lunch at the Exton Square Mall and ran into the Chick-Fil-A cow. The rest of the day was a round-up of various smaller batches of caches around Phoenixville, Trappe, Collegeville, and Limerick.

Saturday was a geocaching spree in downtown York, Southern York, and Spring Grove. The downtown York area was not my preference but a slightly rainy day was actually perfect for that. Urban areas that would normally be busy were free and clear because of the drizzle, so there was no trouble getting those caches. The one scenic area of the day was Indian Rock Dam. It is used for flood control, so it is normally dry unless there is heavy rain. On the way home, there were 4th of July fireworks visible from the US-30 bridge over the Susquehanna River. It seemed like every town along the way had a display like that too.

I wanted to go to the LVG G.E.M. geocaching event on Sunday afternoon, so we geocached in Quakertown, Coopersburg, Bethlehem, and Easton, before heading to Wegman's in Bethlehem for the event. There were some new geocaches in the area but also a bunch that I couldn't find on my previous visits because of ice and snow. It's surprising how easy those caches are, now that they aren't under a foot of refrozen snow.

( The caches... )

This weekend was probably the peak of snow accumulation for the season. I went to the Quakertown and Saucon Valley area on Saturday and Lehigh Valley on Sunday, and the snow was pretty much knee-deep everywhere with some snow drifts up to waist deep. The worst part was the snow was semi-frozen so it was like walking on ice but falling through it on every step. I checked cache descriptions and logs to screen for ones were findable with snow on the ground, but I brought my shovel, stubby hammer, and chisel everywhere too, just in case. These tools came in handy at "Tree Hollow". I thought that one would be findable but the tree hole turned out to be completely below the snow level and the cache was stuck under ice. Still, I managed to find the right tree by trial and error, and got it out.

Sunday went much better. I went to Gracedale Open Space in Nazareth for the "GOS" series of caches. All of those were up in trees, shrubs, and stumps and definitely winter-friendly. There was one cache in that preserve, "Gracedale's Backyard", that was on the ground and completely buried under snow and ice. Although the hint was very specific, it actually referred to a nearby object, not the exact spot. But I took a guess at where I should dig and I was correct. That afternoon, I stopped at Wegman's in Hanover Township to see the Lehigh Valley geocachers at the "LVG G.E.M." event. It was a nice little gathering and after half a day of stumbling around in the snow, a bit of a break was welcome.

( The caches... )

I actually wasn't sure which direction to go for geocaches on Saturday but the Whitehall part of Lehigh Valley looked good. Aside from the urban area, I also went farther north to Laury's Station and Walnutport to hike part of the D&L rail trail. "Message in a Bottle" was one of the geocaches along this trail. When I checked the likely hiding spot though, I saw a snake coiled up inside the hollow log! This is one reason to always look before putting your hand in something. It's only a small snake though and it stayed far back enough so I could still retrieve the cache. The most amusing cache of the day was "Whitehall Zephyr Cache". The cache container looks like a gargoyle, a demon or something like that. It's quite a character.

Sunday was the day I planned to complete the 7 Souvenirs of August. I only needed an event cache and there was an event that afternoon in Florence. I actually hadn't been up that part of South Jersey in a while, so there were lots of new geocaches to do along the way, although not as many new caches as in Pennsylvania. Later that day, during the event, I learnt that a stricter approval process in New Jersey could be the reason. Anyway, it was a good event and after that, I went for some geocaches in and near Florence before going home.

( The caches... )

First thing Saturday morning, I headed up to Borderline Restaurant in Allentown to attend "LVGC Breakfast in the Valley 2014, 2nd Qtr". I missed the 1st Qtr, 2014, of this event, probably because I didn't want to venture out to Lehigh Valley while it was still snowbound back in March. As usual, after the event, I went geocaching around Bethlehem and Allentown. The area was chock-full of geocaches! My theory on this was Lehigh Valley was snowbound almost all winter and when spring arrived, everyone rushed out to place geocaches. However, after finding many of the new geocaches, I had another theory: geocachers in the area had obtained a truckload of surplus preform tubes (plastic tubes that are heated up and blown to form soda bottles) from a bottle manufacturer. Indeed, that's what most of the 50 geocaches I found on Saturday were.

Cache series I found on Saturday were "Constitution drive" and "WPP". These were along the driveway to and on a trail in Walking Purchase Park, just across the river from the breakfast event. After that, I got some of the "urban" series, which is scattered all over Allentown. There are more than enough geocaches remaining for a second and even a third trip to Lehigh Valley.

On Sunday, I started geocaching in and around Quakertown. The last few times I was in this area, I got there in the evening, so there were some daytime-only geocaches that I wasn't able to visit. I got those on Sunday. After that, I went to Richland, Coopersburg, and Central Valley, almost to Allentown again. I also visited the campuses of DeSales and Penn State Lehigh Valley. It's interesting that these schools now have geocaching clubs and workshops.

( The caches... )