Morton Fox's journal

Good weather this evening so I went to Ramapo Mountain State Forest for two geocaches. I started at the upper parking area along Skyline Drive. The first one, On A Walk with My Grandson, isn't actually that far from the road. The catch is the part of the road it's near is 0.35 mile from the parking area. The last time I went that way, I walked on the side of the busy road for that 0.35-mile stretch. This time though, I noticed a new white-red trail going roughly in the right direction so I tried going that way. It turned out to be a connector to the Cannonball Trail. From the Cannonball Trail, I went to the white trail and then to the cache site. Piece of cake. Just above the cache site, there is a large area of bare rock surface, which is typical of mountain tops around here and a good place to sit and watch the sunset.

After that, I continued down the white trail towards Hawk Nest 1. This part of the trail was steep and rocky. Near the end of the hike, I switched over to a pipeline cut briefly before bushwhacking uphill the last 200 feet to the cache site. I felt rather hot after the effort of climbing up to the cache site so I removed my jacket and put it down on a large rock. Well, guess what? The cache was hiding just below that rock! This is the second time in two weeks my jacket helped find a cache. My shopping bag is so jealous. :)

After the hike, I went to Spring Valley and Nanuet to get a few items. I finally used the Free Diet Dr. Pepper coupon. The reason why I didn't use it earlier is the coupon was actually for $1.59 and all the places I've checked around here sell the 2L bottle higher prices than that. So my strategy was to wait for a sale. I found that sale this evening at Target in Spring Valley: $1.25 for the 2L bottle. Great. As I was driving past KFC in Nanuet, I noticed a window ad for their new grilled chicken meal so that's what I got for dinner. I thought the sides were better than the chicken but it's KFC so what do you expect?

This evening was the only evening so far this week when it wasn't raining. And, conveniently enough, there were two new geocaches, both along the same trail. So this evening, I went to Ramapo Mountain State Forest in Wanaque to find both of those geocaches.

The first of the two was Cannonball Source, which is located near the beginning of the Cannonball Trail, by a soccer field in Pompton Lakes. The Cannonball Trail crosses the field but the tricky part is figuring out where it goes on the other side. I walked the perimeter of the field looking for the other trailhead. While looking around, I saw someone in the woods patting down some dirt with a shovel. I'm guessing he had just finished burying a deceased family pet, but I didn't stick around to inquire.

Then I continued up the Cannonball Trail to The Pit, about half a mile away. It's near a mysterious fenced-off area, which I'm sure someone will come up with an explanation for before long. After that, I went to Garden State Plaza to pay (or prepay, rather, because I took care of it before the invoice actually arrived) the phone bill and have food court Thai food.