Morton Fox's journal

The last few years, Metro Gathering was in October and had a Halloween theme. This year though, the geocaching mega event is in September and has a pirate theme. I guess it needed a bit of a change. I think October is preferable for this kind of event because the weather would be cooler and better for hiking. However, the weather in Northern New Jersey this weekend turned out to be pretty cool, in the mid 60s. So it worked well.

As usual, there was a Friday evening event, the Pre~Pirates of Port Royale Meet and Greet Event. It was a pot-luck dinner at the Mt. Allamuchy Scout Reservation. I talked to some geocaching friends and had food but didn't stay to the end.

Saturday was the big day. I went to Waterloo Village in the morning for 2019 Metro Gathering ~ Pirates of Port Royale and spent nearly 6 hours walking around finding geocaches and talking to people I knew from way back when. As the organizers seem to do every year, they archived the previous year's geocaches and published them again in the same hiding spots. I remembered most of the hiding spots so it was really easy for me. The twist this year is most of the geocaches had code words in them that you can log in the Adventure Lab app for an additional lab cache find. There were also a number of standalone lab caches around the village and along the hiking trail. Lab caches were also available at the mega event in previous years but you had to log them by entering the code words on the web when you got home after the event or in a web browser on your smartphone as you find them. I think the phone app is a bit more convenient for this activity.

After leaving Metro Gathering, I headed over to Riverside Park in Stanhope for the NJ - Small Town Stanhope 3 Munzee event. This is a smaller event for Munzee players who happened to be in the area for Metro Gathering, as well as a few others who came just for the Munzee event. There was Munzee-related chat and also some special munzees for the event. After the hiking workout at Metro Gathering, this smaller event was a good way to cool down and relax a bit before heading back to the hotel.

What a weekend! I went to Central and Northern New Jersey and attended four events. Those were "This little cacher wants a burger" at The Burger Shop in Matawan on Thursday, the "Pre-Metro Gathering Mega Meet and Greet" at the Mt. Allamuchy Scout Reservation on Friday, "2017 Metro Gathering ~ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" on Saturday, and Small Town Stanhope, NJ later that Saturday. All those were geocaching events, except for the last one, which was a Munzee event.

In years past, there have been Thursday evening events in Central Jersey before the mega event. I just haven't been going out of my way for those. This year though, I decided to go a bit east to Matawan to meet up with those folks, even though that meant I'd be late getting to the hotel. The Bacon Royal Burger at The Burger Shop wasn't really that spectacular, but the chance to meet up with a few Central Jersey geocachers, who I hadn't seen in years since I stopped going to the Central Jersey events regularly, was priceless.

On Friday, I puttered around the Budd Lake, Netcong, and Flanders area, getting some Munzees and geocaches. A big plus to only coming to this area once a year is I had a lot to choose from in the various GPS games. Well, except for Flagstack, which hardly anyone seems to play over there, but its time will come. In the evening, I headed over to the scout camp for the Pre-Metro Gathering event. It was a pot luck dinner in a rustic dining hall, featuring spooky food such as a meat corpse. Signal, the geocaching mascot, made an appearance.

Saturday was the big event: Metro Gathering in historic Waterloo Village, which had been decorated with all kinds of Halloween stuff, including a mock graveyard, the Headless Horseman, and a spider skeleton. The entrance to the village was like a fair with exhibitors and vendors, and even a pumpkin carving contest. Mostly though, I went for a hike with other geocachers through the village for the 20 special lab caches and the themed Wherigo cache, and spent a lot of time talking to the North Jersey and Long Island geocachers on various things that have happened in the area while I was away. There was a fair amount of gossip and griping, which I'm not going to detail here. Suffice to say there are two sides to every issue. (Unless you're in the Octagon Society. Then there are eight sides to every issue.)

After Metro Gathering, I went down the road to Riverside Park to meet up with a smaller group for the "Small Town Stanhope, NJ" Munzee event. We had some event munzees placed around the park and adjacent trail. Couldn't stay too long though because the event started pretty close to sundown. I found out the reason that there had to be a separate Munzee event was Space Coast Geo Store was forbidden from vending Munzee-related goods at Metro Gathering. It's a new rule imposed by Groundspeak, the company running the geocaching website. If they find any Munzee stuff at a mega event, they'll yank the "mega" status. I spoke to a number of people about this and everyone thought it was a stupid rule and would hurt geocaching in the long run. A lot of people play both Munzee and geocaching so this kind of separation makes no sense. Munzee and Flagstack, on the other hand, don't mind if we mix games and even encourage it by offering "co-exist" badges for multi-game events.

( The caches... )

Saturday was another South Jersey Munzee spree, this time to Washington Township and Mount Laurel. I placed some of my own too at the Cross Keys Shopping Center to see if the local munzers will go get those.

Sunday's trip was to the Munzee 6th Birthday Celebration event at Fuddruckers in Annapolis. There were presents and special Munzee badges, and after the event, everyone went out to capture the special event munzees that were deployed all around the restaurant and nearby retail/hotel complex. It's good to go to an event once in a while, not just for the game bonuses, but also to get to know other munzers in the area.

( The munzees... )

Saturday was a big day because I had a combined geocaching and Munzee event in Allentown, NJ. The geocaching event was "Christmas Coffee Cup Clash" and the Munzee event was "NJ Christmunz Party". Both were held at the same time in the NJ Fire Museum office. The museum wasn't actually open for visitors yet but we had permission to enter and view the exhibits during the event. They have antique teletype equipment on display in the office and vintage fire trucks in the barn. Anyway, I've been to lots of geocaching events before but this was my first Munzee event. Munzee took center stage this time. There were a lot of codes to capture in the building and out on the museum grounds. There was also an Eventzee scavenger hunt. It was a cold day so thankfully most of the scavenger hunt items were available in the fire museum office.

After the event, I went geocaching in Crosswicks, Wrightstown, Cookstown, and New Egypt. The area is mostly small towns and countryside. Fortunately, there wasn't any hunting going on at the Crosswicks Greenway, so I was able to take a walk around the pond. There were also cows in Cookstown and hairy tree lumps in New Egypt.

Sunday's trip was to Glasgow, Edgewood, Middle River, Rosedale, Overlea, Parkville, and Towson, going from Northeast Baltimore to North Baltimore. I'd been to the area not so long ago but there were enough caches that I wasn't able to get to on previous trips to make a full day. Now that the foliage is down, it was the perfect opportunity to go for "Clayton Road Park Bushwack". There were a few other wooded areas that were dense and would've been a problem in the summer too. "Carmaggedon" was the interesting cache site of the day. It's at the top of a parking garage in Towson with free parking. Hardly anyone uses that parking garage on the weekend so it was fun to drive round and round all the way up.

( The caches... )