Morton Fox's journal

Saturday's trip was to Haddon Heights, Cherry Hill, Mount Laurel, and Willingboro in South Jersey. This area is pretty much inexhaustible for Munzee because the local Munzers keep deploying more of those. However, I wanted to capture some of the new air mysteries that they have deployed in Mount Laurel and Willingboro. These are fun. Capturing the virtual air mystery scatters some feather munzees in the vicinity. Capturing the feathers in turn scatters some golden feathers.

Sunday's trip was pretty simple. Went down I-95 from Newark to Baltimore, capturing Flagstack flags along the way. Found one geocache at the turnaround spot. Then from Baltimore back to Newark, I captured virtual munzees as well as some of the flags I missed on the way down. What's remarkable is the way Flagstack has grown recently. Just this quick there-and-back trip alone netted 258 flags! There are many more flags along the other roads around Baltimore but I decided to save those for another time. Finished up with a little walk on the James F Hall Trail in Newark for a few more munzees before an early dinner.

( The munzees... )

Saturday's trip was to Laurel, Maryland, for the DMV Birthday Party Flagstack event. This event was in the late afternoon, so there was plenty of time to capture some Munzees and some flags, and even find 4 geocaches, before it was time to meet up. The only snag was a big rainstorm rolled through the area in the mid-afternoon. I was parked right in front of "Contee Cache" when the storm came in, so I had a good 15 minutes to think about this 4-star difficulty cache while waiting for the rain to slow to a drizzle. Great part is when I finally started looking, I had already read all the logs and narrowed the possibilities down quite a bit, so it took only 3 seconds to spot the cache!

The Flagstack event was really different from other events I'd attended so far. There were only 6 of us and we met in the parking lot of the Laurel Boys and Girls Club. (which used to be, and still looks like, a school building) After some conversation, we got in to DudleyGrunt's car for a whirlwind tour of Flagstack flags around Laurel. In contrast to Munzee, nearly all Flagstack flags are virtual. So all the passengers can capture those on their smartphones while someone drives around. We got nearly all the party flags (which had been deployed for the event), green flags, adventure flags, white flags, oracle flags, a dice flag, and even a number of jumper flags as they popped up around town. There was also one treasure flag, which was the only physical flag of the day. DudleyGrunt parked the car on the side of the road and we all got out to scan the data matrix. Most of those flag types are ones that I typically don't see anywhere else, so I'm glad there's at least one area within daytrip range with enough active Flagstack players to have those.

Sunday's trip was to South Jersey again. This time, I started in Atco and Berlin. One of the Munzee areas was around an abandoned Kmart. Not much was going on in that shopping center but it's perfect for Munzee activity because there's hardly any traffic. After that, I hit the usual hotspots - Woodcrest, Mount Laurel, Westampton, and Willingboro - before getting some groceries at the Asian food market and saladification at Charlie Brown's in Woodbury. Although it's a chain restaurant, this particular location is rather unusual. It is housed in an old-fashioned 18th century inn with all kinds of crazy narrow passageways and split levels. The dining area probably used to be the reading room or some such and still has bookcases on the wall.

( The caches... )

( The munzees... )

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's trip was to South Jersey because I knew it would be easy to hit the one million points milestone there. I got that fairly early in the day in Lawnside. After that, I went to the dead Burlington Center Mall. It surprised me how quiet the mall area is now since I remember this mall being moderately busy not so long ago. With no traffic in the parking areas though, it's gradually turning into a Munzee playground. Heavy rain in the afternoon put an end to the day's Munzee spree, but I stopped at the Asian food market in Cherry Hill for some goodies.

On Sunday, I went to Valley Forge National Historical Park. There were a bunch of virtual Munzees around the visitor center and the first stop along the park road but I also went inside to see the exhibits. It was fascinating. They have a number of display cases showing the gaming/entertainment items, cooking utensils, and General Duportail of the Revolutionary War era. It's interesting how some items, e.g. dice, cards, needles, and thimbles, are pretty basic and haven't changed much in over two centuries. There are also recreations of log cabin soldiers' quarters out along the park road. Those also show what the bunk beds and living space might have looked like inside. After that, I hit some Munzee clusters in Fort Washington, Dresher, and North Wales, and found a geocache in Franconia before dinner.

( The munzees... )

Saturday's trip was to South Jersey, to Mount Laurel, Cherry Hill, and Haddonfield. The main goal was to capture the row of prize wheel munzees behind Centerton Shopping Center since I only needed a few more for the next prize wheel badge. There was a lot more to do as well since this is the area where a number of munzers deploy.

Sunday's trip was to York. I hadn't been to York in quite a while because of the difficulty in getting there. Once you get to Lancaster, US-30 is a divided highway to York, but there just isn't a good way to go from my place to Lancaster. Since I hadn't been there in a long time though, there were some new geocaches around York, such as the one at the Mt Rose I-83 traffic viewing spot. I also took the opportunity to capture some Munzee gardens in the area, such as the Manchester Town Center smiley.

( The caches... )

I was going to wait until the end of the month to decide whether to continue my geocaching premium membership (which expires on June 3rd) but after seeing the "new dashboard experience", I went ahead and canceled the auto-renew. What on earth were they thinking? This is a prime example of the school of web design where they think people won't notice that they have removed features if they just put a pretty face on it. Except that this "pretty face" is one of those misguided new-style web designs that convey less information in more space through the use of big fonts and copious whitespace. It's like moving from Lego to Duplo, only not nearly as fun. The worst problem in the new dashboard is it only shows 20 recent logs instead of a month of recent logs. Also, it mixes in friends' recent logs. With the kind of avid geocachers in my geocaching friends list, that guarantees the list won't even cover a day of logs. Maybe not even an hour of logs sometimes!

Anyway, Saturday's trip was to South Jersey again for more munzee and a few geocaches along the way. I went to Riverside, Delanco, Beverly, Burlington, Florence, Mt Holly, and Lumberton, just a big ol' circle on the way to the Asian food market for restocking. There was a good view of the Delaware River in Burlington and a caboose on display in Mt. Holly. I was told that the caboose was being refurbished.

For Sunday's trip, I took a short detour to Havertown, a few miles off the Blue Route. I was surprised there's now a collection of munzees there. Slowly, the game will enter every town. Then I went to Plymouth Township for a mix of geocaches and munzee. It's where I saw a bronze german shepherd and contemplated whether a bird in the bush was worth half a bird in the hand. Then I went to the Gwynedds, North Wales, Colmar, and Ambler. Ambler was pretty good for munzeeing. I parked in the public lot and took a walk around a few blocks, capturing everything. Also found a rare pirate nomad just a bit outside of Ambler. Nomads are a lot harder to find than mythologicals because there are so few of them, so running into one just made my day.

( The caches... )

Saturday's trip was south to Salisbury for another munzee raid since there were more dense areas in and around the city that I hadn't hit yet. There were also a few geocaches along the way in Camden, Bridgeville, Seaford, and Laurel.

On Sunday, I did a mascot gig at the Lawrenceville Jubilee. Solo gig this time because Damian couldn't make it due to an automotive problem. I wore the raccoon fursuit this time and it was this character's first appearance at the jubilee. It took the crowd a few minutes to warm up to the character and then it was high-fives and hugs everywhere. It was a smaller crowd than in some of the previous years because of the weather but it was still a great crowd. I did five rounds, about once per hour, and only one round was cut short a bit because of rain. Otherwise, the gig went rather well. After that, I still had time for one geocache near Trenton and a bunch of munzees in Mount Laurel.

( The caches... )

For me, this weekend was all about Munzee events. There were a number of Easter Tea Party events scheduled around the world. Two of them were not too far from home and on different days, so I went to both.

On Saturday, I went to the Egg'stra Special Maryland Munzee Easter Event at Fuddruckers in Annapolis. It was mostly a meet and greet, although there were prizes in a couple of Easter baskets. I checked later and those turned out to be special munzees, so I'll deploy those in my home area later. After that, we went out to the shopping area to capture the event pin munzees that had been deployed for the event, as well as anything else in the vicinity. That was a lot of fun. I kept running into other munzers at various spots even though we were all going in different directions. After that, I went to Sandy Point State Park to hit the evolution munzee garden before heading home.

Sunday's event was the NJ Bilby Event at Voorhees Town Center. (formerly Echelon Mall) Since I was early, I went around the mall to capture the munzees and also stopped to take a "I Love You" murals near the parking area. When it was getting close to event time, I went inside to the food court to meet up with the rest of the attendees. There was a delay in setting things up but once we got going, there was an Eventzee photo scavenger hunt of items that could mostly be found inside the mall. There were also event pins to capture both inside and outside the mall. They had a raffle too and I got the bilby puppet! And finally, there was the riding of the motorized animals.

The weekend was two whole days of foggy and damp weather. It rained a bit more on Sunday than on Saturday. On Saturday, I returned to the same area in South Jersey as the previous trip to finish off more of the caches I didn't have time for before. Went to Mullica Hill, Deptford, Marlton, and Voorhees. I got more caches in built-up areas because I knew wooded areas would be wet and muddy, although I did take a bit of a walk for "New Jersey Hangman Cache #1: Constellations" and "Over the hills". The most interesting location was the labyrinth at "Labyrinth in Cherry Hill" and the strange object of the day was a plastic torpedo, which turned out to not be the cache even though it was very near the cache site. "This Cache Really Blows!" was the last find of the day only because I had to return at night for it. It is located right next to a Wawa air pump that is constantly in use during the daytime. Sometimes you just have to come back later for a cache.

Sunday's trip was to the Baltimore area, specifically Middle River, Essex, Parkville, and Towson. The caches were mostly new ones, although there were two, "Coffee Break" and "Illumination", that were missing on my previously but have recently been replaced.

( The caches... )

New Year's Eve and New Year's Day fall on the weekend this time but I had Friday off too. Friday's trip was to Lancaster County since I hadn't been there in a while. Tried to get a few more geocaches on the Manheim and Mount Joy side of the county since I'd skipped those on previous trips. The most interesting location was the circle of rocks, like a small Stonehenge, in Manheim.

Saturday's trip was first to Morgantown, to finish the "Morgantown Overlook" multi-cache. I got the first 3 stages last weekend but I could not complete it then because it got dark. After that, I hit the Reading, Leesport, and Lenhartsville areas with a stop in the oddly-named Virginville. For the day, there were some unusual caches and a mysterious stone artifact.

And finally, Sunday's outing was to Hammonton, Egg Harbor City, Laureldale, and Mays Landing in South Jersey. I hadn't been to that area in quite a long time so there were lots of new caches. The view of Lake Lenape in Mays Landing was pretty clear on a winter's day.

( The caches... )