mortonfox | Entries tagged with old country buffet

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... )

Cloudy, 60-70°F. There was a geocaching event on Saturday morning in Northeast Philadelphia but I didn't attend it because I didn't like that chicken restaurant chain. Of course, I could've attended the event anyway and not bought anything but I didn't think that would be right either. There's no reason why I couldn't find the caches that were placed for the event though, so off to Northeast Philly I went! It was a pretty full day. I did a mix of caches from the event and caches that were there already. (I hadn't been to the area in a while.) Given the activity in the area, I was surprised that I only ran into other geocachers once. I saw lots of other log entries at the caches I visited so I must have just missed the other groups.

"The Food Here Gives Me Gas!" illustrates the problem with ticking off restaurant folks. I noticed that someone from the nearby pizza place had written the "F" word in black marker on the cache container. "Howe Easy 2" was the funniest cache of the day. When I got to the cache site, I saw something hanging from a fishing line, so I pulled it out. It was cash but not THE cache! There was another decoy in the same spot and then the actual cache was less than two feet away.

On Sunday, after a breakfast at Old Country Buffet, I headed back to Northeast Philly in the afternoon to continue what I started on Saturday. This time, I headed further out to Fox Chase, Bensalem, and Croydon. Although none of the caches were especially noteworthy on this trip, it was a fun time.

( The caches... )

Sunny, 45-50°F. I started the day with breakfast buffet at Old Country Buffet in Newark. Actually, that took pretty much the whole morning because I like to take my time. For the afternoon, I decided it was a fine day to do some walking, so I hit some geocaches in Western Chester County and Lancaster County. However, the only two that actually involved more than a trivial walk were "Goddard Park Cache" and "Homewood Nature Preserve". Those are in rather nice former-farmland preserve areas.

In the evening, I decided to do some geocaches in downtown Lancaster City since most of those seemed accessible after dusk. Lancaster has a few seedy neighborhoods but one place that bothered me was in the vicinity of the "Lancaster City, Pennsylvania" geocache. I saw what appeared to be signs of a recent car break-in. There was a car with a smashed driver's-side window and broken glass on the asphalt next to it. That location is right next to a busy road so I was surprised to see the smashed window, but maybe no one noticed or cared when the incident happened.

After the last geocache of the evening, which was in Leola, I decided to head down to the US-30 outlet mall area in Lancaster for dinner. The nüvi suggested a shortcut via a series of country roads. Country roads in Lancaster have slow-moving Amish buggy traffic, so standard practice if you're driving is to pass them if it is safe to do so. Anyway, I was driving along when I nearly got into a head-on collision with someone who was passing an Amish buggy at a blind corner! Scary! Good thing I was driving slowly at the time and had just enough time to pull over and let the fellow get through.

"Torqueo Leonis Cauda" was the funniest geocache of the day. It's in downtown Lancaster at a lion sculpture/fountain next to the road. I started looking around without success, so I thought I'd use mobile data to look up the Latin in the cache name. Once I did that, I knew where I had to look! Good thing it was late enough that no one else was in the area. What would passers-by have thought if they saw me picking the butt of the lion sculpture?

( The caches... )

The actual purpose of this trip to Long Island was to do a mascot gig with Hi-4 at the Jones Beach Autism Walk, but I treated it as a weekend away from home. A mini-vacation, if you will. I started driving off from home Friday evening after loading the fursuit and some overnight items into the car. It was raining that night and I hoped the rain would stop before my first geocache stop of the night, but that didn't happen. Oh well. Dinner was at Chevys in Lawrenceville to use the coupon I got on the receipt from using my birthday coupon there the previous weekend. (Would have been interesting if it was recursive but that wasn't the case.) I had a nachos grande. This is incidentally one restaurant that I think is okay, even though lots of Yelp reviewers panned it.

After that, I continued up the NJ Turnpike. I found the first cache of the night, "Kilmer Bunker", in the rain at the stroke of midnight. So it was technically my first cache of October. I stopped for more geocaches in the Perth Amboy area when I left the turnpike to switch to Route 440. I also did some easy caches in Woodbridge and Linden before deciding that it was time to cross over to New York. I got a few geocaches in Brooklyn and Queens, and arrived in Nassau County just before daybreak. Breakfast was a free Rooty Tooty at IHOP in West Hempstead. This was for the anniversary of my joining the IHOP mailing list. (Same freebie as the birthday coupon.) I suppose I can't really complain because I got free food but service wasn't that great and this restaurant has some rather foul-mouthed clientele. I didn't notice this as much back when I lived in North Jersey and visited Long Island frequently, but I guess I got spoiled when I moved out of the NYC area. I also saw a lot of bad driving behavior on the streets in that part of Nassau County. In particular, someone cornered too fast, swung around really wide and nearly knocked me over when I was just starting to cross the street.

Anyway, it was a super-productive day of geocaching. I found 48 geocaches on Saturday. The Long Island batch was mostly from Elmont to North Hempstead. I went around in a big curve, ending back at the Nassau/Queens border. I encountered one Nassau County police officer who was curious about what someone from out of state was doing in the corner of an office lot on Saturday, but he already knew about the geocache! In the evening, I went to

jbadger's house to meet up for dinner. (also, I was staying at his place overnight) After checking out several restaurants on Smithtown's Main Street, we settled on Luso, a Portuguese BBQ. It's a rather expensive restaurant (then again, I seem to think anything that costs more than Old Country Buffet is expensive :) ) so you'd think there'd be something special there, but that was not the case. They don't have exotic meats, for one thing. It was just ordinary beef, chicken, or pork. Service wasn't that great either but then again, maybe I'm spoiled. For all I know, it could be normal to have to ask servers at fine restaurants multiple times for stuff before you get it. Maybe we shouldn't have expected better service than say, Denny's, even when the meal costs an order of magnitude more.

( Sunday... )

( The caches... )

Cloudy, 85-90°F. I started the day with breakfast at Old Country Buffet. In retrospect, the dollar-off Labor Day coupon wasn't really that great but I thought it would be nice for a change since I haven't done an OCB breakfast in a while. Predictably, breakfast turned into a two-hour meal, which was alright since I didn't have much planned.

When I got back from breakfast, I noticed that some of the weeds I hadn't weeded out were blooming. So I did some wildflower photography. It's useful to have pictures of the flowers because there were some weeds I had trouble identifying by leaves alone. So what I have are Asiatic dayflowers and Virgin's Bower vines.

I'd planned on staying home if it started raining but it didn't. Since there was threat of rain though, I took the low-risk route of doing a bunch of geocaches not too far from home. I started in Woodlyn and Swarthmore and proceeded through Media, Haverford, Lower Merion, Ardmore, and Bala Cynwyd. The last cache of the day is just across the city line in Philadelphia. Although there was a bit of rain here and there, it didn't actually start raining heavily until after sunset so I was able to do a whole afternoon of geocaching after all.

( The caches... )

Sunny, 90°F. First day of the three-day weekend. It was a hot day but I decided to revisited the PPT series of geocaches on the Pennypack Trail in Holmesburg/Philadelphia to see how many more I could do. However, I started at Pennypack Park on the Delaware first to do the 5 geocaches in that park. "Pennypack on the Delaware Part 1" was a significant challenge because I had to wade through weeds that were almost as tall as I but I eventually made it to the cache site. When I read the cache logs, I noticed that others had taken the approach of climbing over a wall and walking through the abandoned industrial area outside of the park in order to avoid the tall weeds. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

After I was done with Pennypack Park, I started walking up the Pennypack Trail. Most of the PPT caches were easy and there were a few other caches, "A walk in the park", "Ssssss", "Cecil", and "Little City Overlook", along the same trail. There was also an earthcache "Fall Line at Holmesburg".

I stopped the hike early in order to make it to Old Country Buffet in Bensalem before they closed. (to use a July 4th weekend dinner coupon) Of course, there had to be two geocaches near the restaurant. Good thing I allowed a bit of extra time for those! :) Anyway, I had the usual plates and dessert.

( The caches... )

Sunny, 90-93°F. I was on holiday but it was a rather hot day and I figured I should avoid the shore crowd. So I decided to go just a bit north into Chester County and do some of the recent easy geocaches. How this little trip ended with a significant hike in Marsh Creek State Park, I'll never know. Since I was getting tired from the heat late in the afternoon, I stopped before dusk and had dinner at Old Country Buffet in Downingtown.

( The caches... )

Sunny, 34-41°F. Email and phone calls again this morning. This time though, the phone call was important. I'd gone to on-site interviews the last two Thursdays and this Thursday, I got a job offer. The call was to discuss the terms, benefits, etc. So I start mid-January. The commute isn't too long. The office is only 7 miles from home and I know a few different ways to get there. The location is a bit unusual but close to Trolley Square. I guess this means no more daily geocaching excursions, although given my track record with that, I'd probably do it after work anyway. :)

Since I had no reason to stick around at home the rest of the day, I went out for a bunch of local geocaches, 7 of them that were listed in the last few days. It's nice to not have to travel far for caches sometimes. I was done in about 2 hours so I had an early dinner at Old Country Buffet in Newark. Old Country Buffet remains the one restaurant in northern Delaware with not a single wi-fi network in sight, so I was glad I had the Cr-48 with built-in Verizon 3G broadband. Still helping Google beta-test this notebook computer. ;)

( The caches... )

Sunny, 45-50°F. It's hard to tell whether things went according to plan if there wasn't much of a plan in the first place. I noticed that all the errands could be done in the evening and it looked like a yard work kind of day, so I did that first. Filled another two trash bags with leaves and weeds. Seems like I just did that not too long ago! I also saw the neighbor's cat eating grass in my backyard. I watched and didn't interfere this time because I noticed that it was going for one specific kind of wild grass that I meant to weed out anyway. (I wonder if that's the tastiest grass or the best gut-cleaning grass.) So it was helping.

In the afternoon, I noticed a new geocache in the listings. It was about time to head out for shopping and this new cache wasn't far away, so I went out to Caching in the Country. This cache is next to Mary's Country Kitchen, a restaurant that I'd never noticed before in the Route 4 median in Stanton. Found it in about two seconds. I was FTF and only by a few minutes because Shinebox pulled into the lot shortly after.

After dinner at Old Country Buffet (food photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), I had the opportunity to check out the new Target store at Christiana Mall. I was informed that this store has been open for one month already but I didn't notice because I rarely visit the mall. I guess I'll go to the mall more often now since this Target is half the distance of Brandywine Target from home. It's an average-sized Target store that shares the mall parking area and has an indoor connection to the mall. This was a quick visit of under 10 minutes because I knew exactly what I was there for and I had no wait at checkout. Curiously, the cashier scanned my coupon four times because I bought 12 of that item. I'm not entirely sure how that was supposed to work but it beats Pathmark's coupon doubling!

Sunny and 85-95°F. Today is yet another day where the predicted thunderstorm didn't materialize. So I went to Exton and Uwchlan to tackle the "Surroundin9 the Castle" series and a few other geocaches. I saved the challenge for last today. "Paradise Lost 2" had not been found since the cache owner relocated it in March. GPS pointed to a spot next to the trail but I saw the cache after expanding my search to about 60-70 feet.

After that, I went to Old Country Buffet in Downingtown to use the 3rd of 5 coupons they sent. I didn't overeat (by my standards anyway) this time because I got there a mere 24 minutes before closing time and only had time to get two rounds of food, and dessert and drinks before they put away the food. So I got an East meets West mix of foods, a fried fish salad, ice cream in a taco shell, and a 3-color Icee.

( The caches... )

75-80°F and cloudy. Had a lot of work to do today so I didn't go out until the evening. Also, in the late afternoon, I took advantage of the cooler, cloudy weather to do some weeding. There was a lot of pokeweed (Gotta pull 'em all! :) ) but this time, I also identified some Virginia creeper, English ivy, and privet seedlings. I left the wild grape growing but I've yet to see any fruit from those vines, so I hope I identified this plant correctly.

In the evening, since I had a $3 discount, I went to Old Country Buffet in Newark, where I was able to make such dishes as Taco Monday, although I was really there for the fried seafood. The restaurant was just as I remembered it. I was surprised at how many people were there less an hour before closing and still eating after the restaurant closed! One change OCB made this year was they separated the buffet from the beverage so you have the option of buying a buffet without the beverage bar. (You can still get water, just no soda, icee, milk, or coffee.) I don't know why they did that unless it is to make the buffet appear cheaper until they tack on the additional $1.79 charge for the beverage bar that most people opt for anyway.

On the way home, I visited a Shell gas station that was having a "grand opening" even though it has been there since before I moved here. But if they're giving away free stuff, who am I to argue? :)

On Saturday, I woke up and 5am and drove two hours to attend SJG's March Meet & Eat. It was a breakfast event at Old Country Buffet in Deptford. I thought I was a few minutes late but people were still gathering outside the restaurant. Then we all went in and took over one section of the dining area. It was a fine time. There were some folks I hadn't seen since breakfast a year ago, and some I hadn't seen since two years ago. I had lots of breakfast foods and ice cream too.

After breakfast, it was a nice sunny day. So Grunriese and I went out for a geocache marathon. Although he was from South Jersey, there were still many geocaches in that particular area that he hadn't done so we could both log finds on those. We hit 23 geocaches, some easy and some hard. I was glad to have his help because some of those geocaches took quite a bit of searching. After that, it got dark so we went our separate ways. On the way to dinner, I did one last geocache in the dark since it was close to a strip mall parking lot. Then I had chicken strips at Wawa in Runnemede before taking a 2-hour drive home, arriving just before midnight.

On Sunday, I went geocaching mostly in Central Jersey but with a few North Jersey caches. It was another sunny day although the clouds did roll in later in the afternoon. Many of the caches were Sue & Barry puzzle caches. I'd solved those puzzles before heading out so all I needed to do for each one was hike out to the solution coordinates. I finished the day with a bunch of easier geocaches and went to Ruby Tuesday at Garden State Plaza in Paramus for dinner. I had chicken pot pie with salad bar. Compared to the salad bar entree, the chicken pot pie with salad bar combo was only a dollar more so I figured I might as well get the chicken pot pie.

( The caches... )

There was a bit of sleet overnight. Then it rained in the morning but all that cleared up by the time I was done with the motel breakfast. So for the rest of the day, it was sunny and 32-37°F. Other than wet ground and "rain" from ice melting off the trees, it was a pretty good day for going outdoors. I hadn't done too many geocaches in Wilmington yet so there were a lot I could find within an area of a few square miles.

While looking for "TDOC - Seven Swans a Swimming", I saw a fox. I was looking around for likely hiding spots when it jumped out of a tree hole and ran away. It was only about 20 feet away from another tree hole where the cache was. That wasn't the first time I saw a fox in the woods but it's always a neat surprise. My only regret was not being fast enough with the camera.

Dinner was at Old Country Buffet in Newark. I was going to go to a Korean restaurant recommended by a fellow geocacher but it was closed tonight. I see a problem with dining options in northern Delaware. Other than the usual chain restaurants, I just don't see much out here. I'm guessing for good food, people go to Philadelphia just like I go to Flushing Chinatown.

( The caches... )

Another cold but sunny day. 33-40°F. After having the motel breakfast and checking out, I headed over to Claymont, near the Delaware-Pennsylvania state line for a few more caches; a last farewell to the state, if you will. After that, I crossed over to Pennsylvania and bagged a bunch more geocaches in Northeast Philadelphia. There are still many more caches in NE Philly I haven't done that I hope to pick up on a future trip. Finally, I got a few more geocaches at night in Bristol (I thought I was in a relatively safe, clean area but one never can tell) and Levittown before heading over to Old Country Buffet in Fairless Hills for dinner.

( The caches... )

The temperature was anywhere from 39°F to 68°F today. It was rainy sometimes and sunny at other times. So at each geocache site, I didn't know if I should wear a jacket, bring an umbrella, or both, or neither.

Overall, it didn't seem like a good day for going outside so my plans were pretty modest. I headed out to Western NJ along I-78. After not having been there for years, I revisited Merrill Creek Reservoir today. What's changed is they now have a prohibition against photographing the dam or any of the buildings in the area. They didn't prohibit that the last time I was there. I think they've caught the MTA and TBTA's paranoia disease. They must think that photographers are terrorists and cameras are weapons of digital destruction.

Funny thing is I met up with a photographer at "O Little Town Of..." I thought he was a geocacher at first because he was heading right for the cache site but he said he was there to photograph the ruins, just like what I was doing after finding the cache. I think casual photography of sites of interest serves an archival purpose. I post my photos to Flickr and a couple of times, people have told me that certain structures have been torn down or remodeled since I took the picture. (Examples that come to mind: Sparta Theater was torn down, LJS in Patchogue became a Starbucks) So what I would ask the Merrill Creek Reservoir folks is whether it's worth shutting out all photographers just so that terrorists can't have pictures of the dam. Because of photography bans, there are many locations, especially on or around NYC bridges, of which we haven't had imagery since 9/11. Pity.

At the end of the day, I crossed over to Lehigh Valley, although I only had time to find one cache there. I took a wrong turn in Whitehall and ended up at an Old Country Buffet that I'd never seen before. Of course, that immediately answered the question of where to go for dinner. I'm glad I tried this OCB too. They had a bigger selection of food than any other OCB I tried so far. Most notably, they had 3 kinds of fish!

( The caches... )

Sunny. Temperature in the upper 30s in the afternoon. There was a weather forecast of a 30% chance of snow but that never happened. I was planning to go to Staten Island but I noticed that there were lots of new geocaches in Central Jersey so I figured I might as well stay in-state and avoid paying the exorbitant bridge toll.

On my way to the Boxwood Hall geocache in Elizabeth, I saw someone dump garbage from his car while stopped at a traffic light. It wasn't just a little garbage either. That was so shameless! What's wrong with people?

Did the Last 4 geocaches at night, so it was a good thing those were urban hides. After doing "Walzup" in Watchung, it was time for dinner. It was close enough to Blue Star Plaza that I thought that was a good opportunity to try the Old Country Buffet there. So I did. This one doesn't have as broad a selection of food as Hometown Buffet in Edison or O.C.B. in Oxford Valley, but it has fried catfish! So I had catfish, a salad, nachos and yams, strawberry pie topped with orange sherbet, and coffee with a chocolate ice cream float.

After dinner, I remembered that there was another night-accessible geocache just 5 miles northeast in Summit, so I went and found that one. It was the perfect time to do that because the town was pretty quiet on a Sunday night. The only tricky part was getting around the Springfield Avenue road closure.

( The caches... )

Woke up at 6am and headed out first thing in the morning to the The SEPAG Breakfast Club geocaching event at Golden Dawn Diner in Levittown, Pennsylvania. It was a nice meetup over breakfast.

After that, I headed out across Bucks County and Montgomery County and did a bunch of geocaches. Ran into Team Ducky for the second time today at "Hungry Panda II". (The first time was at the breakfast event as he was the event organizer.) Later in the day, I also ran into Yiprip at a cache site.

Did the last few geocaches at night, although seeing as how those were all at or near shopping centers along Route 611, darkness wasn't a problem. After that, I was craving fried fish and salad for some reason. So I took care of that by going to Old Country Buffet in Fairless Hills. I had two servings of fried fish topped with salad bar vegetables and followed that with a selection of boiled vegetables, just in case that wasn't enough. Finished up with the customary coffee with ice cream mixed in and a portion of cheesecake. While I was eating, an elderly man approached me and said that he'd "never seen a Chinaman this tall before." People point out the strangest things sometimes. :) However, I'm only 6'1", which is hardly an extreme. I was going to tell him about Yao Ming but he left.

( The caches... )

Good weather today. Sunny and a bit over 40°F. After the motel breakfast, my first stop of the day was Glasgow Park, just 3 miles to the South. There were 6 geocaches in that park! 5 of those were classic hides: regular-sized caches under piles of sticks. I appreciate the simplicity because there are too many tricky microcaches nowadays.

After that, I went to various parks with one or two geocaches in each park. I knew the Christiana Mall area would be congested so I avoided that, except for a quick in-and-out for "Junkies Cache". I figured it wouldn't take too long even with traffic since I didn't need to make a left turn for that one.

Went back to the motel to rest for a bit. For dinner, I headed out to Old Country Buffet at Centre Pointe Plaza for fried fish and a few other things. I looked up the address on the restaurant chain's website but I'm surprised I didn't already know this place from last year. There was a geocache just diagonally across the intersection.

( The caches... )

Cold day at around 40 to 45°F, but not intolerable. The weather forecast called for rain but it ended up just being cloudy.

Early in the day, I spent too much time on some geocaches involving longer walks. Those were worth doing, but I only had 7 finds when the sun set. Fortunately, there were 4 geocaches in Northeast Philadelphia that were doable at night.

Stepped on something disgusting that might have been left by a feral cat (or perhaps a feral human being) near one of the cache sites. It was dark so I didn't see it. Good thing the next cache site was near a Target store. I went in and washed my shoes in the restroom. I should've learnt my lesson from the poop episode in Bristol, but noooo.... I keep going back to that region.

Dinner was at Old Country Buffet in the Oxford Valley area. I've actually never been to that restaurant for dinner. It was interesting. I didn't eat that much by my usual buffet standards but I did try everything that looked interesting and I had enough fried fish and seafood patties to be satisfied. I also tried putting soft-serve ice cream in my coffee. I got the idea from someone else at the restaurant. That was the most creamy coffee I ever had! Also, I heard someone say "The cake is a lie" at the dessert table. Uh oh... video game catchphrases are leaking out into the real world! :)

( The caches... )

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Morton Fox's journal

Using the nuclear option every day!

Labor Day Weekend - Lehigh Valley, Four-State Challenge, Lancaster XXXXX

Northeast Philadelphia

Lancaster XXXXIV - Lancaster the Dangerous

Long Island weekend, Jones Beach Autism Walk

Labor Day - Main Line

PPT revisited

Memorial Day

Cool Runnings

Caching in the Country

Exton, Uwchlan, and Surroundin9 the Castle

Back in the Old County... Buffet

SJG Breakfast Event, South Jersey, and Central Jersey

Delaware II - Day 1

Returning from Delaware

Western NJ - Presidents' Day

North/Central Jersey

SEPAG Breakfast Club

Delaware Round 2: Day 2

Central Jersey, Bucks County, NE Philly

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