Morton Fox's journal

I hadn't been to Lancaster since April, so I figured it was time to find the new caches placed since my last trip. Even if it rained in the afternoon, all in all, it was a pleasant day. I also took a look at the castle-like Lancaster County Prison, even though it wasn't a geocache site. It's still in use today and looks pretty much the way it did when it was built in 1851 for $102,000.

That night, I noticed that a series of 46 puzzle caches had been published in southern Lancaster. The cache icons spell out the word LOST on the map but the actual locations are all along the Enola Low Grade Trail between Martic and Pequea. It's yet another example of Geo Art, the latest fad in power trails. :) Anyway, it was too much manual work and all the puzzles were similar, so I wrote programs to solve the puzzles and convert the answers to coordinates. On Sunday, I started the hike at the east end of the series and worked my way towards Martic, moving my car twice. The only one in the series I couldn't find was #5. Most of the caches were easy, although there were a few that I considered tricky. After that, I finished a few more geocaches around the area before returning home.

( The caches... )

I noticed that there was a new power trail on the dirt roads at the Makepeace Lake WMA in Weymouth. I didn't go directly there though because I wanted to do a bunch of geocaches around Franklinville and Buena first, which may be the long way to get to Weymouth. Anyway, I did 9 geocaches before hitting the power trail. Then I did 33 geocaches on the Peace Train power trail. Like the other power trails I've done this year, this one too is composed of a cache every 0.1 of a mile. With a few exceptions, most of these caches are fairly close to the dirt road. There's a theme too. Every cache has a 60s hippie design.

Since I happened to have the barrel and a bunch of trash bags in the back of the car, I did litter patrol. Every time I stopped for a cache along the dirt road, I picked up any litter I saw. It was at most a few pieces of litter per stop because I didn't want to stray too far from the car, but by the time I got to the end, the barrel was pretty full! People are messy and I can tell that some locations along that dirt road were used as lunch spots because of the soda cans, iced tea bottles, and plastic takeout containers. However, I can't explain the empty laundry detergent bottle. It was probably just someone dumping household trash because who does laundry in the lake anyway?

Overall, it was quite an adventure. Most of the dirt road was fairly easy to drive on but there was one stretch that was narrow and full of puddles. At each puddle, I had to either drive with two wheels up on the bank or get out of the car and test the bottom of the puddle to make sure it is firm. There was also one location on the dirt road with a freshly fallen tree. I thought I'd have to cut up the trunk into pieces (Yes, I brought gardening tools too. You never know when you need those for geocaching.) but luckily, I was able to push the tree to the side and that was less work.

I didn't finish the whole power trail before it got dark so I'll be returning soon. Dinner was a two-fish combo at the co-branded Long John Silver's / Taco Bell in Berlin, which is about a half an hour drive from Makepeace so I'm glad they stay open later on Saturday. After dinner, I found another cache at a ballfield parking lot on the way home. That was by chance because I made a wrong turn and the GPS re-route took me right by "Does my insurance cover fly balls?".

( The caches... )