Morton Fox's journal

The weather looked fine this evening, although it was a bit deceptive because I encountered some sprinkles of rain while driving out. I went for two geocaches. The first was Keep it Beautiful at Long Pond Ironworks State Park in Ringwood. Actually, it was at the park entrance, practically roadside, and easy. Then I still had time so I went to Hewitt State Forest in West Milford for Easiest One of the Day. This one is near the parking area for the State Line Trail and is therefore the easiest one of the day if you're climbing up the mountain for the other caches. I wasn't going to do that this evening.

After that, I went to Boston Market in Mahwah to use this $3 coupon. I had a crispy country chicken dinner. That was over $7 before coupon for not that much food, so I don't think Boston Market represents great value any more. If I didn't have a discount, I'd just have gone home and made myself some rice and beans.

9991 geocaches found; 9 to go. I'll go for #10000 this weekend and I have Saturday all planned out already.

( Friday Five )

This evening was almost the same as last Friday evening. It was again a rainy day and once again, I went out to hike the Cooper Union Trail in Ringwood State Park. I parked at the church again too. First, I went to Sparrow Nest 4. This is a new geocache that wasn't listed last week. It's just under half a mile from parking. Then I continued another 0.4 mile down the Cooper Union Trail to Not the Road I Wanted. This geocache was the one I couldn't do last Friday because I ran out of daylight, so I was glad to find it this time and finish the set.

Ran some errands this afternoon. One of the things I did was get some postcards for Postcrossing at Travel Mart in the Garden State Parkway rest area near home. It was a frustrating experience. I bought 30 postcards. At 3 cards for a dollar, those would be $10. With a 7% state sales tax, it comes out to $10.70. Anyone with an elementary school education can do this math in his head, right? So why did the two cashiers on duty at the time come up with two wrong answers on the cash register? I should've taken their first wrong answer because it was under, but I had to be honest and I told them to try again. I ended up having to tell them the amount.

Chestnut Husky got nominated to fursuittourney. That was quite a surprise because I didn't nominate myself and I didn't expect anyone to nominate me either. I have a guess as to who put in the nomination, and if so, thanks very much. The preliminary matchup is April 16-18. Vote for me if you please. :)

( Friday Five )

Another day with good weather. So this evening, I went out to Ringwood to find the Governor Mtn / Monk View geocache. It's on Governor Mountain in the southwest section of Ringwood State Park. I actually was up there five years ago for Governor Mtn/ Cupsaw. Surprisingly, that old cache is still there and still in good condition. Of course, there are geocaches older than that but five years is pretty long.

Anyway, since I'd been on the mountain before, I already knew the correct approach. I parked behind a church on Carletondale Road. I followed a local trail from the corner of the parking lot and that trail quickly joined up with the yellow-blazed trail. Although uphill, this trail is not nearly as steep as the mountain trails in Ramapo Reservation. It went up a bit and leveled off for quite a stretch before going up again towards the south slope of the mountain. I then took a short off-trail hike to the cache site, which was on a gently sloping rock face and found the cache right away. After this evening's adventure, I had a Spicy Italian footlong at Subway in Ramsey.

Consumerist used my photo of a rusty gas pump here. It was an interesting item I saw in Denville while on my way to a geocache in town. Also, NowPublic asked for and used my photos here and here but it'd be difficult to find my contributions. It seems that NowPublic asks for hundreds of photos per story.