Adventuring Elf Sisters

I tried to go on a geocaching adventure earlier this week - but it didn't turn out so well. I've since found out the I was looking in totally the wrong spot (long story) but hey, at least I got some pictures!

Oops, forgot to blog this earlier this week. My dad (Yosemite1) and I went caching around the Swarthmore College campus on Friday- this was one of those times were I'm incredibly not suspicious looking. I mean, a girl in her 20's carrying a schoolbag? Yup, fit right in. My dad joked that there aren't a lot of college students with huge Yosemite Sam mustaches, though, so he was a bit out of place. ;)

The first cache we hit was called Horton and the Tree Swing. This was a nice easy find without much walking- just the kind of thing I need. :) The reason for the name? The cache was in a bush/tree that looked rather elephant-shaped. Silly me forgot to get a picture of it, though.

Here's what the inside of the cache container looked like:

The logbook was full, so someone had added a new piece of paper to sign.

After this we headed to the other cache of the day- Shhh!...It's a secret! This one I really liked- not only was the cache hidden around my very favorite plant:

English ivy! :D (Yup, that's the cache hidden in there.)

The theme was actually "Cornus Florida" ("Flowering Dogwood"), but after poking around said type of tree:

(And yes, I got a kick out of the fact that EVERY plant seemed to have a nametag. It must be some sort of study for the school, but it made me laugh anyway. "Hi, my name is Flowering Dogwood, but you can call me 'Cornus'.")

I got distracted by all the ivy and went to poke someplace else. Which was dumb because I had been poking right next to where the cache was. Thank goodness dad was there to find it. lol! (He actually was suspicious that he was in the right place because he found a sharpie lying on the ground. Not a lot of sharpies in the middle of a wooded area, normally. Marker trees aren't too common around here.) ;)

We signed the log and headed to what we'd seen coming over to the cache- the Whisper Bench:

Yeah, it just looks like a stone bench, but when you sit on it, it's like the person across from you is talking into a microphone or something. We didn't try whispering, but dad was talking to me normally from across the seat and his voice was really loud and clear. It was neat!

I forgot to get a picture of the really nice inscription on the bench, but I got a picture of the sign next to it:


And dad and I got some pictures of us on the bench, of course. Here's dad:


And here's me:

Why yes, I am wearing a kitty hat. This was the first time I had to wear a coat caching since our first adventure in May- can't say that I'm a fan of being outdoors in the cold, as much as I love geocaching. (How the heck did I ever manage to get used to going to college on a mountain, anyway? I hate the cold.)

I'm hoping for some warmish nice days this winter so that dad and I can find some of the ones that were too overgrown for him to find in the summer. :)

Yesterday the Plurkfish and I went on another adventure- to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked because I felt silly carrying around a fish without my best friend there (she couldn't get off work that day), and my fiancé flat out refused to be in a picture with a fish.

Still, I did get pictures! Josh snapped one of me and Plurkfish outside my favorite shop at the faire- the bead shop. ;)

This is a terrible picture of me, so I resized it small. But hey, that's my elf costume I just finished on Saturday- my very first sewn things (a tunic and cloak). I'm really proud of how well they came out! This is just the first incarnation of the costume, though- I'd like to add bits of leather and fur to it and make a longbow and quiver (saw some patrons at the faire with archery gear and I was jealous!), and eventually get/make some leather armor.

Anyway, onto more pictures! I was so embarrassed to ask "Hey, could I get a picture of you holding my fish?" but luckily Don Juan and Miguel are great guys and went along with it. I tried to explain that the fish is traveling the world, but I was so shy that I'm not sure how clear I was. Heh.

Here's Don Juan with the fish:

I love that Miguel is in the background. LOL!

And speaking of, here's Miguel:


I'm really really hoping I remembered to thank them. I was so embarrassed about asking this that I'm afraid I came off as rude. So consider this a heartfelt thank you in case I did forget- they made this shy elf-girl's day. :D

Those were the only pictures I got of the fish that day, but here are a few more from the faire. The first show we saw that day was the Duo of Woo; I'd seen this show years ago, but I don't think they were at our faire for a few years. We sat too far back to get good pictures, but I did get two:



I found videos on Youtube of what they were doing in those pictures: the first you can watch here and the second was part of their Olympics.

After this show we saw Don Juan and Miguel- I got a lot more pictures of them since we had better seats.
Here's Don Juan having a whip contest with Esmeralda:

(I find it so cool that his daughter is part of their act.)

Here's Don Juan using Miguel as target practice:


Here's Miguel as the queen of Spain:


And a French guy:


And a pirate:


Here's Don Juan and Esmeralda (as a pirate) sword fighting:


I took more pictures, but that's probably enough to share. I love this act!

The last show we saw of the day was the human chess match. I only got two pictures of this, though, and it was before it started. Here's the queen:


And here's a less zoomed in picture of her court presiding over the match:


Me and the Plurkfish had a lot of fun yesterday, to say the least!

I'm crossposting this to my regular blog, so you can find that here, too.

The Plurkfish is a small fabric fish who is swimming (well, via the post office) from place to place visiting the artists on Plurk.com; if you don't know what that is, Plurk is a social networking site like Twitter, only better (and sideways).

I was lucky enough to get a visit from the fish this week, so he's been spending the weekend having adventures and getting into mischief with me. ;) The first thing we did was go geocaching; these were just simple park-and-grab ones, but the Plurkfish enjoyed himself immensely. It turns out he's also a good luck charm!

The first cache we hit was called The Dangler, which my dad spotted right away. The Plurkfish got all nosy and wanted to see what we were doing:

But he was so nosy that I forgot to sign his name in the logs. Whoops!

He liked the caches we found that day because they were all his size. No, Plurkfish, a cache container isn't fish food:


"Where are we going next?" the fish wondered.


"Are we there yet?"


I couldn't get a picture at the next two caches without looking suspicious (we were in the middle of a parking lot), so we snuck the cache container into the car- I'm not sure if this was the 2nd or 3rd since both containers were identical (Bull's Eye and Bull's Eye - Again!).


And what's this inside the 2nd cache? Wow, Plurkfish, you really are lucky! It's a pair of dice! Green ones! (This is especially funny because my elf-sister said before we left to cache that I needed to tape dice to the fish for geeky game night later. She's psychic!)


I didn't have anything small enough to trade, so I left money in the cache pretty much equal to the price of dice. As someone who buys dice on a regular basis, I figured this was a fair trade. (I also switched out the baggie in the cache because the old one was too big.)

Then we were on to the second Bull's Eye cache, which was booby trapped with a fold up magic wand (it was like snakes in the peanut brittle- my very favorite prank- so this made me laugh!). After the wand popped out, Plurkfish wanted to try being a wizard for a while:


We reset the wand so that it would pop out for the next unsuspecting cacher... although if a muggle ever found this one and opened it, I'd love to see what happened when they were hit by a spring-loaded wand. Mwahaha! All caches should have something like this to keep the clueless away. ;)

Then off to the last cache of the day, What was it?, which neither dad, the fish, nor I can figure out the purpose of. A guardhouse, maybe?


Alas, here Plurkfish's luck ran out- we couldn't find it. It was too muddy to really look around, so dad and I will have to go back another day. The fish did have fun exploring inside, though! Me, I was creeped out by the spiders that kept escaping from the leaves inside as I poked around. *shudders*


Since it was getting dark and my friends were expecting us, I traded dad for my fiancé, and Josh and I went to hang out with my best friend Care (she's a Plurkie, too!), her guy, and her mom. I'd never met Jason before so I'm quite pleased that he got to meet both me and a fish at the same time. Hey, never claimed to be normal. ;) Here they are with Plurkfish:


Thanks for humoring me, guys. Now onto gaming! We played Munchkin and since I won two out of three games, the fish's luck was continuing.

I tried to convince the other players that Plurkfish should serve as a Henchman card and give me extra hands to hold items, but that didn't work. Probably because a fish has no hands. Heh.

That lack of hands didn't stop him from joining in a fight, though! Here he is trying to steal my fiancé's sword; bet you didn't know fish could sword fight. (Even ones who aren't swordfish, it turns out.)

I wanted to join in, but I'd left my foam mace at home. Alas! Ah well, at least the fish got to join the melee. ;)

And before we left, we got a picture of me and Care and the fish:

Darnit, sis, don't wear those boots- I like being taller than you. :-p


And that's all the adventure from Friday. I'm planning on taking the Plurkfish with me to the renfaire on Sunday (assuming I'm feeling okay), so hopefully more pictures will come soon! I'll get pictures of Josh with the fish then since I forgot to do that yesterday.

My dad and I went geocaching today, but since it's the end of summer, it got dark long before we were done. Because of that, some of my photos had to be heavily edited so they show up- sorry about that!

Today the first cache we hit was Leiper Railway Cache in Leiper Park in Nether Providence, PA.
Since the park had a sign, I took a picture:

The gps was acting wonky because the cache was under a bridge/overpass, but I was able to figure out where it was despite the "help" of the gps. ;) I took a kitty-shaped silly band and left one of my bracelets (note to self: make more of these- I'm down to one left).
Here's the cache:


The next cache (Psycho Suburban Cache #1: Abandoned Springhouse) wasn't one we originally intended to find; my dad just wanted to show me the place because he knows how much I love old buildings (even if they are just in ruins) and it was right down the road from the Leiper Railway cache.

We climbed all over it so that I could get fun photos.
The view from the road of the outside of the springhouse:


The inside of the springhouse- the wall to the left is the other side of the one that's next to the street:


Here we started climbing up above the building- that's an above view of the "inside" of the building:


Then we climbed slightly higher...

And dad says "Hey, what's the square part over there? That looks suspicious." (You can't really see it here, but just below the car is the rectangular part he was referring to.)

We walked (well, climbed) back around the building to get to the front and dad headed in the direction that we'd seen from above. While he was climbing around inside (I wasn't about to- it was way too muddy and full of dangerous-looking bushes and I was wearing shorts), I made friends with a few bumblebees living in the bushes on the outside wall, but you can't see them in the photo (well, sorta- there's a blurry flower in the center where I think one was).


Dad finally reached the spot where he thought the cache to be, and after designating me flashlight girl so I could retrieve it from the car (good thing I didn't go in there!), descended into the square building bit:



Sure enough, he found the right spot- in a pile of cinder blocks (why the heck were cinder blocks in an old springhouse, anyway?) he found the cache. Here's the inside of that square building bit thing and that hole in the ceiling is where he climbed down:


He climbed back out so I could sign the log, too (hey, I was right there- I just wasn't up to a downward climb onto cinder blocks), and I forgot to get a picture of the cache (distracted by talking to the bumblebees. What? I never claimed to be normal).

Then we continued on our way to the third cache of the day, omg spiderz! in Furness Park (we were still in Nether Providence Township).

Needless to say, as soon as dad told me the name of that cache I freaked out, and did in fact see a spider hanging out right next to the cache. I wasn't about to put my hand in to grab the cache, so my dad pulled it out for me. Dads are useful like that. ;) Here's that cache:


I really wish the photos had come out of this park, but it was too dark. :( This is the only one I could get to come out remotely clear:

This park really reminded me of the lands around the estate where my D&D/writing character grew up (and no wonder- like a lot of the parks in Pennsylvania, this was apparently once an estate) and I wanted to get pictures since I could still see, but, alas, it was too dark for the camera. I'll have to drag my fiancé out to the park during the day so I can get some pictures.

I did some random research on the park when I got home and it looks like they're thinking about adding trails and such; this saddens me because I think it's really nice in its natural state. Hopefully they won't change things up too much- as it is, I already found trash there. Stupid people, dirtying up such a pretty location. :(


The last cache we found was a much easier one- literally a walk in the park. This one was brookhaven walk, a quick grab just off the walking trail. It was dark by now so the only picture I was able to get was of the cache container while dad was signing the log:

I found this one right away, but my first reaction was "Hey, is that trash?" since it was stuck into those grates (I pulled it up to open it- it was attached with a wire).

We looked for one other cache after this (Phobia #5), but it was far too dark at that point and since it was in a parking lot, dad and I were afraid we'd be too suspicious poking around in the bushes with a flashlight. We'll have to find that during the day.