Adventuring Elf Sisters

Or, rather, apple-themed geocaches. Today I went on a quest to find a trio of connected caches located on the Middletown Trails (near Linvilla Orchards) named after apples: McIntosh, Honey Crisp, and Granny Smith.

Dad had found these last week but went with me so that I could find them (my fiancé didn't come along this time). After a stroll along the trail (which was rather strange, since it butted right up against a neighborhood and their yards and some of the houses didn't even have trees planted to block their yards from the trail), we reached the first cache, "McIntosh". This was pretty easy to find because the GPS was telling me I was standing right on top of it; after spinning in a circle to figure out a likely spot, I found it in a log.


I signed the log:

Took what I thought was a geocoin (turns out it was Pathtag- I signed into that site and logged it when I got home) and left one of my bracelets (a yellow and orange one).

We then headed off to find the second part of this cache trifecta. This time the GPS was acting a bit screwy and kept leading me off in random directions. My dad helped by telling me I'd gone past it and after picking a wrong tree to look around, I found it in a hollow tree a few feet away.


I signed the log (left a brown wooden bracelet and took an hourglass- how neat! I love hourglasses!) and noticed the drawing on the back of said log; you can sorta see it in this picture- it's an arrow with a criss-cross pattern:

That means train track time! Here I was tempted to walk back to the car because I was getting very tired and worn out, but I'm glad I didn't because the 3rd part of the cache series was very close by.

Sure enough, after passing some stone ruins, we made our way to a very overgrown (and very old) set of train tracks. I didn't get pictures because ... well, you could barely see them this time of year. We couldn't actually go onto the tracks where the drawing told us because a large branch had fallen on them, lol. Eventually I found the cache (much quicker than my dad had, but I did have him there giving me the general area it was in) hidden just off the tracks in a place where the wood beam had split.

This cache had some cool swag, too (all three of these did- it was awesome!), and I couldn't decide between goofy glass:

(I really wish that photo had turned out better! Darn phone camera!)
Or a useful pair of gloves:

After modeling the glasses, I decided to put them back and leave them there for a kid, then took the far more useful gloves. Considering all the poison ivy we'd been passing, that was the logical choice. I signed the log, left another bracelet (this time in blue and yellow- I feel bad leaving the same thing each time, but at least they're all different), and we trekked back to the car. Well, I stopped back at cache number 2 to get pictures of the log (I'd forgotten to do that- I like to keep them documented).

We also took a detour at those ruins we'd passed on the way down the hill to the tracks. The one side had a large building with only three walls left:

You can see the left and back wall in this photo. I'm wondering if this was a house, but I can't figure out where the fourth wall would have gone, unless someone reused that stone to make another building somewhere else.

Right across from it was a smaller stone building with four walls, but a gap in the front where I'm assuming a wooden door once stood; I'm thinking this was probably a barn of some sort:

That greenery in the middle is the gap in the stone where I think the door must have been.

You can tell this has been in ruins for a long time, judging from the tree growing right in the middle of the building:

My dad thinks that tree is at least 60-70 years old. I'm really curious about what buildings used to be here, so I'm wondering if I can find that info out somewhere. I thought it neat that sometime in the near past, someone had patched up the stone with bricks- "near past" is relative, though; this could have been a hundred years ago.

We got some pictures in front of the smaller building:

Dad


Me. You can sort of see the bricks behind us in the photos.

I thought this was kinda funny- on the way back we stepped over a power cord laying out on the trail in the middle of nowhere. What the heck is this connected to? There's nothing electrical that I could see; it must belong to the orchards, but it was out in the middle of the forest. I bet there's a family of squirrels who get cable tv. ;)


When we got back to where we'd parked we noticed that someone had pulled up behind us. When they got out of the car my dad asked "Are you geocachers?" and it turns out they were, which was cool because we'd never met other cachers before. We talked to them for a bit and they told us they'd been doing this for a few years and had over a thousand finds. Woah! I'd only just finished my sixth, lol!


Oh, and here's the swag I ended up with:

The Pathtag, the hourglass, and the gloves. :)

I'm tempted to start bringing my camera with me so I can get better photos than my cell phone takes, but I really don't want to risk damaging it. I did learn that I need to invest in a good walking stick, though; I found a useful fallen branch after snagging the last cache, but had I had one from the beginning, that would have been helpful. Now I know why my D&D character carries a quarterstaff; it doubles as a walking stick and those things are useful!

The trip ended with a stop for water ice on the way home, so definitely a fun time even if I am sore and worn out now. With all this walking I'm bound to get in shape!