Plant Pilgrimage

Every year we take a drive to the part of Lancaster County that is closest to us, right off of Rt. 1. This year we decided to stop for a geocache first and went up and down some rural roads to end up at a very small cemetery.  It was actually across the road from houses similar to ours, so I guess many moons ago, it was way out in the country and provided a permanent resting spot for the local farmers and their families. Well at least a few of them. There were a few interesting ‘plots’ that had chain around them and metal tassels like you’d see holding fancy curtains back. I didn’t venture around much as the grass was thigh high and I already had one bad tick bite this year (just had a Lyme test today too). So I looked for about 5 minutes or so and couldn’t see anything. The cache owner and her mom have a few caches in these parts, but neither take care of them anymore. I even brought a new container and log as I saw where they needed replacing. I think the original is gone now.

So we were a little perplexed about what Street Road to go on and we turned way to soon! There is one before the reservoir and one after it! We’ve been here at least 3-4 times now, think we’d remember by now. Of course it turned out to be a blustery, cool day…again. And it didn’t take me long to go through the four different greenhouses and fill up a wagon and then some.

I will have to take photos of the different kinds of petunias I got from almost black, to yellow with a black edge, to the peachy yellow, the chartreuse with pink and pale lavender. All the plants came in last night as we had cool temps. Not tonight though. I gave them a drink and they are safe under the big evergreen out front.

This is the scene after we left with a skinny purse:

They have quite a long drive! They even had a tour bus come up with a group of older ladies. The owner said she’s only seen that one other time.

So we were trying to decide what to do. We always tend to get out after 2 pm and it was 4:30. We stopped at a local church to look for another geocache and came up dry. Wind blown, but dry.

We went down more back roads to one that was suppose to be a quick grab. We had to go in woods, no luck except for a tick crawling up the driver’s seat.

We decided to go to a little town where Brian use to work from and eat in a family restaurant. I can’t believe club sandwiches cost almost $9 each! Wow!

We stopped at a park on the way home and could not locate yet another cache. I was getting bummed! Today I emailed a husband and wife cacher as they found it the same day! They said it was in a grate in the middle of a parking lot hanging off a fishing line! What? I happen to see the grate, peeked in and didn’t see anything. They said you almost had to kneel down to see it. More seasoned cachers know about this stuff. We almost have 300, but haven’t seen a grate one before. We’ve seen one hanging off a wall with fishing line though, but people helped us find it.

To get one blasted cache, we stopped at a Wallie World on the way home. I thought for sure we’d find the lamp skirt one, but there was nothing there! We drove to another cache, didn’t want to go in a wooded area and then I saw where the Wallie World guy had another one. Went back there and I finally found one! One out of six is terrible.

Come on 300!

Waiting on some blood work I had done today to check my Vitamin D level and my parathryoids. 

Tick tock, tick tock

We hadn’t been caching for a week and I was itchy to go look for a few over this past weekend. I hadn’t been feeling good, so was ready for some fresh air too! Saturday I had missed a big Geocaching event and was a bit bummed by that.

We drove over to the Landenberg, PA area to find the ‘Ticking Tomb’. Here is the write up about it on the geocaching page:

 Back in 1764 when Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were surveying this area in order to figure out the border of Pennsylvania with that of Delaware and Maryland, the English King held a contest to see who could develop the best device to measure longitude. Charles Mason developed this device, a chronometer, but legend has it that it was swallowed before it could be submitted for review by Fithian Minuet, who was an infant at the time. He grew up to be a successful clock maker and he and his wife Martha lead a happy life and had many friends. It is said that you could hear the chronometer ticking in him his whole life and that it STILL ticks in him to this day. Many people have put their ears to his tombstone and heard the ticking. Edgar Allen Poe heard the ticking and was supposedly inspired to write “The Tell Tale Heart.” George Alfred Townsend told the story in “Tales of the Chesapeake.” And most recently, Ed Okonowicz included the tale in his book “Up the Back Stairway (Spirits Between the Bays).”

Interesting right? But alas, the ticking  sound people thought they were hearing was probably from underground springs and something like rocks and dripping water has shifted as no one is hearing that sound anymore. Anyway, I enjoy visiting the old meeting houses and seeing interesting markers like this:

This was the heart shaped stone that we were suppose to look for-the tomb was to the left of this.

What’s really neat is that we had to figure out the coords for the cache by looking at surrounding markers and to plug  in the numbers we got to get the new numbers for the final location. At first we were walking all around the cemetery, in the tall grass too. I looked at the description again and the ending coords were very close to the ‘suggested’ parking. We had parked down the road a bit. So we walked passed the parking lot and the numbers went down. I saw an old stump and looked closer and saw a tell tale pile of sticks and there was the cache! Not that close to the cemetery!

I never found of cache before! I was pretty proud of myself!

This is a neat old place and is used for a nature center. Lots of taxidermy showing thorough the windows.

We then went a little bit down the road to a nice trail with two nicely made bridges and found the cache in a handmade wooden container under the second bridge.

We did go get some pizza after our excursion which wasn’t as good as it usually is. Someone over salted the ingredients in it. Then we looked for one more cache and approached it from the incorrect direction. It was on the other side of a stream we were near. When I got home and read the logs, we were the only ones who didn’t find it! It shows that you have to read the logs carefully. A new geo pal said she’d show me where it is since she found it ‘first’ several years ago. She’s got many thousands of finds.

On a personal note, had a few days bad last week from overdoing it. Climbing in and out of the SUV is rough. I have noticed the bottom of my legs are red, almost like razor burn! And I can’ hardly button my jeans. I decided to ask pharmacist and when I mentioned my legs, he said to call the doctor. She called within a few hours and said I am retaining water and to stop the medicine I have been taking about 5 weeks. I have to wait a week to see if my legs get better and then I will call her back.

Two lips-I mean tulips!

Just a little play on words there. Ha ha!

Happy May Day!

My son  Sean and I headed over to Longwood Gardens a few days ago so we could see most of the tulips in their full spring glory. I can pretty much say I felt like I was in Holland as the waves of colors and the varieties of tulips were amazing!

Hi Sean!

There were other pretty flowers like poppies

Pansies and such

Tower of Jewels

Canterbury Bells and Begonias

And many more gorgeous things and plants!

Caching, history and tulips

I realized it’s been a while since I did a blog post. I’m going to keep this blog as long as possible as it’s a good record for me. I now upload my camera photos right to Flickr and Instagram, so it will be semi-updated there on the sidebar. They won’t have details like my blog, but you can kind of see what I am up to.

So what have I been up to? LOL Well. for one thing, we are climbing up to 300 geocache finds. This is pretty good for someone like me with my issues, but when we go out looking, I tend to forget I hurt sometimes.

Last Friday we went down to historic New Castle, Delaware to look for a few caches. First I wanted to stop near Wilmington to see ‘the biggest cache’ some people have ever seen, this of course is according to the logs for it. Well we found the location and the van-yes, it was the back of a van, like one used for a/c or heating which was near the business where it was parked. We were confused to where the key was to open the cache, feeling around under the bottom of the vehicle for a ‘MKH’-you all know what that is. All we did was knock off rust down there. I finally went into the business and they told me where to look and within a a few minutes we had it! So then we unlocked the back of  the van instead of the side-it said to unlock where a certain number was located-duh. I guess we were too excited to see it after all the hype.

Here’s what we found:

This was facing the back. I guess that’s a seat for photo ops! The lights even went on!

Right under this was a big notebook for the log book! There was a travel bug hotel (I was hoping for a bug, but it was empty) and lots of swag.

It was way cool!!!!

We then headed to New Castle and were stumped with a few caches on where to park for them. We had to resort to just picking and choosing off the phone. We did find one near a piling after a bit of a search.  The piling was in water and we didn’t feel like falling in. So we took a photo. The cache owner said you have to sign the log, but we can’t be running down to New Castle hoping that the water receded. Finding it was hard enough!

See what I mean? It was mucky all around this area too. You’d need some of those thigh high boots, ‘just in case’.

We snagged a few others and headed to the farmer’s market. We were looking for something to bring home for dinner and found a half of rotisserie chicken and two sides, so bought 3. We had enough chicken for a sandwich the next day! Wow!

Pretty mural near the walkway of the Delaware River

Battery Park coastline near the walk.

The next day was Saturday. We were sitting around and I remembered that a big craft warehouse place in Lancaster County was closing. The discount was up to 60% off and we decided to take a drive there-it would take about an hour. Of course I was again itchy to grab a few caches.  We stopped at one called ‘Ghost Train’. It was on an old wooden train bridge. Brian made the find! So proud he saw that one as I was going away from the structure.

We didn’t get to the sale until 4:30 and the place closed at 6:00. I did power shopping. I picked up mostly some Christmas decor and a few Christmas gifts. I got a few things I want to embellish too.

We were going to a smorgasbord, but about 5 lines had 30 people each waiting to get in. And they all will get in and touch all the serving spoons, you get my drift. We ended up retrieving a few caches, one at a tiny cemetery and the other in the parking lot of the restaurant. We had to leave and come back as a full tour bus was right near where we needed to look! They would have wondered why those people were messing with the lamp skirt. Ha ha!

There is a smaller restaurant under the smorgasbord and we ate there. The cheesesteak was a mess! They cut all the way through the bun and piled all this marinara sauce on it. I had to cut it up to eat it as I couldn’t pick it up.

There is a 40k square foot gift shop-it goes on and on! I found an owl wind chime and some Burt’s Bee facial cleanser I needed.

I asked Brian to stop one more time for a cache as I have always wanted to see it. It was an old grist mill in the heart of Amish country. It was getting dark, so I turned on the handy phone light app and although it was 20 feet off, we did find the ammo can.

We had a pretty fun day and found 10 caches in two days!

I think Longwood Gardens will be my next blog post. Sean and I went on Sunday. I have never seen such a variety of tulips in such an array of colors. Here’s a sneak peak!

A week we all want to forget

Well it certainly was a week from hell. We will never know what those two brothers were thinking up in Boston, but I will not give them more thought than they deserve. I know 4 innocent people are gone and almost 200 injured. When the younger one got captured, we had a storm going through, and then sat in the dark for 3 hours. That was really strange.

I was thinking just this past Wednesday how lucky I have been with not getting a cold for a few months. I was sitting in the car on the way to the preschool. A few nights before I had been in a crowded room with up to 30 people at one time. I watched the thermostat go from 67 to about 71! So on Thursday I woke up with my second really red left eye in a few weeks. Yesterday I went down and took my mom to a book sale, so I was around old books and pollen. Today I was walking around outside a little when the pollen count was 10.3 out of 12. I’m asking for trouble! I got it-post nasal drip, congestion and sneezing. Ugh.

We went to our second geocaching event in a year Thursday, a get-together in a Chinese restaurant.  We chatted with a few people, but you could tell which people knew each other better. We were given coords for new caches, but I didn’t have my device to plug them into it, and I don’t know how yet. We did go and find about 3 of them that were just in the area-easy ones!

So when I went to mom’s, we went up to my hometown and we ate lunch in a place called Sligo’s. There was some amazing Celtic stencil work in there, so I took some photos of it.

Today we went to church and after we grabbed a few hoagies at Wawa, I asked if we could find a geocache down the road (Delaware). We were lead near a big sign and it was magnetic. Lo and behold it was yet another cool reflector cache stuck to one of the metal supports of the the sign! It looked rather new and it was!

Then we went to find one in a neighborhood park. At first we couldn’t find the entrance and we finally did! It was deserted, so we had the place to look for ourselves. We went right instead of going left and when we got close to ground zero, I saw a weird piece of wood and flipped it over and the box was attached via magnet! Under the wood and under the lid of the box! It hadn’t been found for 7 months. Here is a cool tree we saw near the cache:

I made a nice pork loin dinner tonight. The guys were both working late. Hate eating along, but Brian got in after 7.

We have tickets to go to New York on Thursday to see the Rachael Ray show. I confirmed it-for the third time, but doubt we will go. They made it earlier to check in, so a friend who has seen it said to get there 2 hours before that! So we’d have to get up around 6 am, leave 8 or so, grab the 10 o’clock train and go stand and wait until 1:30 when they let us in the studio!  And you are not guaranteed to get in after all that! Sean and I went to see a Philly show, got there late, were last in line and made it to the second row and on tv a few times! We got to see Phillies pitcher Cliff Lee and comedian Kevin Hart. We have no idea who will be on RR.  Plus driving there (gas money to a train station in NJ) and the train round trip for two is $60. If we feel good, we may good. It’s really hard to get tickets to shows! I really miss NYC too.

Atlantic City in April

This gallery contains 10 photos.

We headed over to Atlantic City late Thursday afternoon and Sean checked in. First we went up to the 4th floor and it was suppose to be the 41st floor! This room had one king bed. So down we went, Sean got out his confirmation paper that said ‘two queen beds’ and up we went […]

Exploring some, researching and fun!

Since Sean didn’t go to Los Angeles, he wanted to see some place different, so he booked a room at the Revel Casino down in Atlantic City and said we could join him. Now it’s nice to see something different, but in April, you are going to miss a lot of the outdoor experience. It figures we did have summer like weather for a few days ‘before’ we went down to the beach, but unfortunately the temps went down 30 degrees and it was also windy and foggy besides chilly. The two places Sean wanted to see were closed on Thursday! Lucky for him and Brian, I wrote down some geocaches I thought would be interesting to find, two being at the places that were closed. They both agreed it would be something to do before heading to Atlantic City. We were in Stone Harbor, NJ and our first stop was at the Wetlands Institute. Sean is doing a research paper about NJ wetlands!

We did get to go in the next day and checked out their indoor exhibits. Sean went up in that look out yesterday as both Brian and I were weary of the circular stairs. We want to visit again when it’s nicer out.

There is a inside joke about every time I am close to the beach, it’s windy! See my hair! This is me with the 1st geocache find in hand. The other hand is holding my custom made stamper with my geocacher name on it. Stamp and go (and I do sign the date too-so it saves a little time, but looks nice with the red ink).

Our next stop was to the Stone Harbor Bird Sanctuary. It’s been here for 66 years and we have never seen it!

I knew the geocache here would be fast and it was. Another place that will be worth a trip back to see when it is green and lush…and full of birds! We had a few Chickadees giving us the business though.

One more look near the beach and it was 3 for 3! The little film canister blew away on me and Brian had to get it with a stick! We went behind a fence to see the beach and ocean and there was about a 10 foot or more drop due to Hurricane Sandy last October 2012.

Foggy and gray!

Sean on Friday at the 88th St. beach where there was a geocache hide(we didn’t find that one as the sand was really piled up)

So we asked the man at the Stone Harbor Museum (where we found another very nicely kept cache-4 for 4) where to eat and he mentioned Fred’s Tavern. We went and had the best burgers! I haven’t raved about food in a while, but these were on brioche rolls, so extra delicious.

We looked for one more cache near an ice cream parlor. It was a nano-Sean and me looked everywhere. Brian stayed in the car and generally if you tell him to find a nano, he can. After I logged it as a DNF (4 for 5), the CO emailed me and told me exactly where it was. The next day we went back and this time Brian found it.

Photo credits mostly go to Brian!

Next post Atlantic City!