Adventuring Elf Sisters

Yesterday's weather was gorgeous- after two months of rain and cold weather and a week of sweltering August weather, we had a gorgeous June day with clear skies and a wonderful breeze. So of course my dad and I went geocaching! I took tons of pictures because the greenery combined with the bright blue skies was so pretty, but I had my crappy old camera and most of the pictures didn't turn out. :( I have a nicer camera, but it's the one I use for my business, so I'm afraid to take it somewhere it could be dropped. Maybe I should, though, because then you can see just how gorgeous Pennsylvania is! Still, you can click the pictures to view them larger.

Anyway, today our trek took us through Lenni and Concord Township and down into Delaware. First we hit Two Creeks Make One. This was a nice sandy beach and creek- dad wants to bring the dogs here. :)

And here's dad signing the log. He spotted this one much quicker than I did, then let me look for it. I was getting frustrated so he kinda told me which direction to face, which helped because I was able to snatch it from its hiding place then. ;)


Our first cache of the day found, we set off to find J&J 4 THE KIDS. And here is where my camera decided it wanted to be stupid and not give me clear photos. *grumble grumble*

Here's the best picture I got of the location:


This one had all sorts of swag in it (which was the point- it's a kid-friendly cache), so I picked up a tiny toy frog (I love frogs!) and left a toy car behind. And here I found a travel bug: Joel's Empire Penguin


Oddly enough, there was another penguin in this cache, too! But this travel bug wanted to come with me for a bit, so I carried him to a few more caches until I found one dry (and large) enough to leave him. Here he is saying goodbye to that cache:


Here's another view as we headed back out of the woods:


And we passed some really pretty flowers along the path, too:

(And now I'm baffled- why do some photos come out crystal clear and some utterly blurry? I'm taking them on the same settings...)

Penguin acquired, we set off to the next cache, Park and Recreation Cache. Dad told me that the tree stump where I was looking had been the location of this cache- back when it had been a tree before it got hit by lightning. LOL! I was in the right spot, just a year behind. So I started looking in other spots and came up with it. Hooray!

You can see the stump here. Isn't the sky so pretty? :D

Here I snagged a six-sided die that was in the cache. I was going to put an eraser in it to swap, but the log was really damp so I was afraid anything in the cache with the log would mean it would seal even less tightly. I figured since it was a micro, this was for the best.

Next we headed to a nearby dog park to look for Luna's Cache. Pulling in I saw the oddest thing- Mount Doom!

There was a pile of... well, stuff outside a barn and in that pile was a volcano. Or at least the front of a volcano, looking like a stage prop. Who randomly keeps a volcano outside, though? LOL!

We'll definitely have to bring the pooches to this dog part because there are some really nice fenced in places for small dogs and big dogs to keep them separate. This used to be some sort of horse ranch thing because there were at least six stables and a bunch of large, fenced areas. Only the two for the dogs were kept up, though.

Here's dad looking at the one stable:


And a slightly better view:


And here's the stable area that was turned into the dog park:


Right, we were looking for a cache, weren't we? ;) Sorry, dad and I always get distracted by architecture and stuff like that. Here's the cache:

I was amused because the squeaky toy in there matched my pants.

Cache log signed and stables poked at, we headed on to the next: Clayton Pipe Refit. This was a multi that my dad had searched for for an entire year, finally completing it last month. With his help (mostly on the 2nd part because I didn't want to be out in the direct sun too long), I found it in one day. ;)

Here's the view near the first part of the cache:

From here he found the coordinates to go to the second part. And this is what I love about Pennsylvania and why I never want to leave the state and live somewhere else. The greenery. I know other states have trees, too, but these are my trees. As an elf-girl, that fact is important. ;)

Here's a creek we passed on the way to part 2:


And here's a view looking back towards part 2:
(Part 2 was just off that golf course and baseball field.)

On to part 3 to find the cache!

I'm currently writing a centaur as a main character for a story and all I could hear was his voice in my head saying how much he loved a grassy field on the edge of a forest with the bright blue sky above. :)

Once we reached the coordinates, the cache was an easy find. I signed the log and dad snapped a picture of me in the woods near it:

I was going to leave the penguin here since the cache was large enough, but it was also rather damp, so he stayed in my purse for a bit longer.

Next we hit a park-and-grab kind of cache located just off a ballpark. Luckily on a weekday early afternoon, no one was there. ;) This one was Tanks for the Park @ BCP!, a micro, so nothing really to say about this one other than another good cache on a gorgeous day. :)

Following this was another park and grab one (HSG), this time outside a shopping center in Delaware (our GPSs didn't extend maps past PA so we joked that we were driving off the edge of the world or in the "here be dragons" spot on a map). My dad snuck around the fence and found it first, but he let me find it, too. :)

Then onto another woodsy trek! Yay! This one was a mystery one called Happy Jack. The coordinates only led us to the parking lot... where I was convinced Batman lived:

(Okay, these boxes were all over the place, as I later learned. Must be a lot of bats!)

We passed what appeared to be a kid's drawing of Medusa:

Now on the lookout for super heroes and gorgons, we also had to locate Happy Jack, who we knew to be a tree stump.

But we found him peeking around a turn in the trail:


And posed for a photoshoot:




Happy Jack faced the coordinates of the cache, so after locating those and entering them into our GPSs, we located the actual cache, where I dropped off the penguin travel bug. :)

On the way out I just had to play on the bouncy animals we'd seen in the way in since now there were no kids around. I picked the duck over the frog or the squirrel. ;)


Whew! Really long post, but it was an equally long day! I think we ended up caching for five hours. It was a lot of fun!

Yay, the warm weather is finally sticking around! Today my dad and I found three caches- whoot! All were in the wooded area around an industrial park. (Sounds weird, but this is PA. We have LOTS of trees, hence why my caching name means "Forest Wanderers".)

The first one we looked for was MPI #4. Didn't get any pictures around this cache because I was too busy avoiding sticker bushes, poison ivy and pulling ticks off my arm. Sheesh, and here I was thinking this early in the spring I'd be safe from those, but no dice. Even just the quick trek to the cache found me a tiny tick hitching a ride. Hmph.

However, there was dice- well, one die, anyway. Picked that up from inside the cache since I'm a tabletop gamer and always find myself needing dice. ;) Left a skull ring I'd had in my purse since last Halloween:

Happily acquiring one of my favorite things, we set off to the next cache just down the road: MPI #11. I made this one FAR too difficult and joked once again about the Brandybuck direction sense and how I was bound to get us eaten by Old Man Willow. (Not too far from the truth; got stuck in a tree when it decided to eat my hair.) Turns out the cache was near the edge of the woods. Whoops?

I blame being distracted on the fact that we kept finding bits of what appeared to be green sheep:


Eventually we located the source: a rare and dangerous rogue recliner in its natural habitat, lounging near the cache with its stuffing sticking out.


WHO dumps a large chair in the middle of the woods? I mean, really? Hmph. Anyway, this mystery solved, I soon spotted the cache near some of the misplaced chair-stuffing that an animal had kindly left, possibly as a trade for swag. Who knew squirrels could geocache? ;)

We also located a cinder block with rocks perched neatly on it. Apparently the squirrels had also been using it as a table and were playing a kind of bizarre game of rock-chess:


This cache was amazingly dry, so I left the last of my hemp bracelets (will make more this week!) and took a bouncy ball. Because of caching, I not only have a new stash of dice, I also am collecting rubber duckies and bouncy balls. ;)



Bouncy ball in hand (well, in purse), we headed off to the last find of the day, Good All Gone. This one I wisely approached with a poking stick in hand, as it looked like the prime location for a snake or something that would decide an elf girl would make good dinner. Luckily the cache location was empty of wildlife. Whew!

The picture's not so great, but here's the HUGE fallen tree near the cache:


While we were climbing back up the hill, took a picture of me:

(Can't really see, but I'm wearing my "I work knights" renfaire shirt. Me, geeky?)

And snuck one of dad:

If you ever wonder why he goes by Yosemite1, look at that mustache. ;)

And on the way out I noticed one more amusingly misplaced thing- a drunk tree:

Yup, that's a tree drinking from a glass bottle. I would have removed it, but couldn't really get to it from where I was, so dad said to leave it.

So a fun day in good weather! On the way home, we also looked for another cache we have yet to find, but fourth time wasn't the charm. Someday we'll find it! We stopped for water ice on the way back, so that made up for the one "did not find" of the day. ;)

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And I just realized I never blogged about the caches Josh and I found a month ago- but it was so long ago that I can't remember the details, so I'll just share the picture I took of Josh while looking for a cache last month:

It's an incredibly goofy picture but do you want to know why I shared? (Other than blackmail, I suppose...) Josh looks so much like Igik, the goblin he draws on our logs entries. Look, it's the same face! It would probably be more offensive for a fiancee to say this if said fiancee didn't have a thing for monster humanoids. LOL!

Finally got some daytime caching in- and that means pictures! This past weekend my fiancé Josh (he signs logs as JoC) and I decided to test out the GPS feature on his new fancy phone; I think it was called GeoBeagle and it seemed to work pretty well since we found six out of the seven we looked for. :)

Since it was a gorgeous day (finally been warm enough to cache!), on Saturday we decided to head to a local park near Josh's house to find the two located there. First we searched for Broad Run Park. Since this was our first time using that GPS, we had some difficulty at first. I thought I was where the cache would be, but couldn't find it, so wandered away with the GPS to test the accuracy and see what kind of numbers I could narrow it down to.

Unfortunately, while I was wandering away and spinning in circles, Josh located the cache. Exactly where I'd been looking, but I was too short to see it. Bah, tall people, getting all the luck. ;)

Here he is hamming it up while he riffled through the cache:

As you can see from the view near the cache, early March in Pennsylvania is still pretty ... brown. Things aren't blooming yet:


And as you can notice from the logbook, not a lot of caching going on in the winter:

And since Josh was with me this weekend, "Taurandirath" got a drawing of his signature goblin next to it. Say hi to Igik!

After pausing to take a picture:


We headed onto the next cache in the park, Stumped On The Run. We hunted around for this and once again Josh made the find:


While signing the log, a lady walking a dog said "Hey, are you guys geocaching? I think my husband's found that one", which was neat! I'm always afraid we look suspicious while caching, so I'm happy when we come across non-muggles. ;)

After strolling back to the car, passing more people with dogs (gotta have my dad stop by this park to cache- we have two dogs who'd love the trip!), we headed off to find some park and grab caches.

I'm not entirely sure if this order is correct, but I think first we found Wile E. Coyote Can Do It in Less Than 30 Minutes.

I snagged this one with some help from a dude working at the nearby store (who was taller than me; this is not a day to be short, as the cache was pretty high up)- he knew exactly where it was, and, judging from other comments on that geocaching page, has helped others find it. Yay, helpful people! :D Josh had taken a phone call right as we got out of the car, so that was tying up the GPS anyway. Even though I had help, I considered this a find for me and my only one of the day. Darn Josh, being so good at this! ;)

Here's the view at the cache:

Lots of geese were milling around, wading around in the flooded ground (we'd gotten a lot of rain recently).

I mention all that rain because the next cache? Well, we pretty much had to cross a swamp to get to Caln School House Cache. I should have gotten better pictures because these two don't even begin to describe the mud and sand we had to cross to get over to the cache:



This time I was distracted by a phone call (not that I minded- it was my best friend saying she was coming over that evening) and Josh snagged it. The location of this one surprised me when he pointed it out- I was expecting it to be ... well, not where it was. This wasn't technically a park and grab, but it wasn't a lot of walking, either. Or, rather, it wouldn't have been a lot of walking if we'd been able to take the direct route, which would have involved swimming through a temporary swamp.

Oh! And when we pulled up in the parking lot, we saw someone come walking out of the direction of the cache. We'd assumed he must have been looking for it (not much other reason to be out that way in the mud!), but when we got to the log the last visit was a month ago, so either he didn't want to cross the mud and gave up or wasn't actually a cacher. Who knows?

After acquiring more mud (I was beginning to feel like Pigpen), we headed off to the next cache across the street, Go Sit in the Corner - Again!

I have no idea what this had to do with a corner since it was in a tree, but Josh put my elf-ness to shame and found it before I could:

What can I say, the boy was on a roll. I honestly have no idea how he found this itty one so quickly:


Hoping that we were going to be lucky, and having a bit more time before our friends would arrive at Josh's house, we tried to find one more: Don't Take The Speaker!

And here's where our luck failed. Twice. We came back on Sunday to find this and still couldn't, so I have no idea where this one is. Arg. We'll find it at some point! Not sure how it's had 65 finds and only one other DNF. Alas, we are baffled.

On Sunday we also searched for another cache (Trackside near Thorndale) and- tada!- found that one. Or, rather, I finally found one. Yay! I seem to be good at finding shiny green things in trees; I'd found another one like this recently, too.


Honestly, though, if it hadn't been for the sun glinting through the trees reflecting off the cache, I don't think I would have found this nearly as easily. Still, I would have kept looking because we wouldn't have caught the eye of anyone; it was the parking lot of a train station and since it was a Sunday there weren't any cars in the parking lot- and we were sheltered by the pine trees anyway. :)

Although I am realizing that "Taurandirath" was probably a poor choice in name:

It's so long that it's sometimes longer than the logbooks, and forget writing in "Meri and JoC" with it at times like that. And have I mentioned that I'm rather dyslexic? Yeah, half the time I spend too long muttering the letters trying to figure out the order they go in. Ah, Elvish, making things complicated. ;)

Edit: Eep, and forgot to post the picture of me and Josh caching Sunday- I'm using that as our profile picture on geocaching.com now. :)


So all in all a great caching weekend! Fingers crossed I'm up to going again this weekend and the weather holds out. :D

Since the weather has gotten nicer (meaning it's still cold, but at least the snow's mostly gone), my dad and I decided to try caching again today, with some luck. We managed to find 3 out of the 6 park and grabs (parking lot and easy terrain caches) we looked for. Unfortunately, since it's still winter that means it gets dark stupid early, so I wasn't able to get many pictures. Sorry about that!

First we hit A giant cache, located in the parking lot of a Giant. Obviously. No luck here- both of our GPSs were bouncing us all over the place. I finally got mine to settle down, but it told me the cache was in the middle of the parking lot. The middle- where the cars turn in. Umm... no. It's obviously on one of the grassy islands where cachers won't become pancakes, but we couldn't figure out which, so we'll have to come back later.

Next stop- Play Ball or Die. I really liked this one, but it was too dark to get a picture- dark enough that I told dad "There's no way we'll be able to find this". He turned to walk back to the car for a flashlight when I said "Wait, no, there it is!". Yup, I found a tiny, well-hidden green cache in a tree. What can I say, my Elf-instincts must have kicked in. That and the cache was shiny and my favorite color. ;)

1 for 2, we headed to the next cache: Phobia #5. This is one we'd looked for back in September, but couldn't find. This time around we still couldn't find it. I emailed the cache owner for another hint, so maybe next time!

Now 1 out of 3- not very good odds- we drove off to the next one: The Coop's Warning. Which meant another tree- and not just any tree. A sign-eating tree! Really!

I wish I'd gotten a better picture, but the metal pole of the sign? It was inside the tree! If it'll let me link directly to an image on geocaching.com, you can see a much better picture taken during the daytime here.

Onwards to the next one! Feeling better at 2 finds to 2 nots, we headed to Got Pizza?. I'm really glad I went with dad on this one because he wanted to look on completely the wrong side of the row of stores. I pointed out that the parking lot probably went behind them because the GPS was telling me it was about 600 feet away (and pointing towards the buildings), and sure enough, we were able to drive behind them. We poked around a lamppost (think it was a lamppost, anyway) and I felt something stick to my glove. Pulling it out, I found the cache now velcroed to my hand. (Note to self: if I wear gloves, I attract caches. Probably not a helpful note come summer, though.)
Got a picture of this one, although it's blurry:

Or maybe I just attract green things? ;) Still not sure why this had velcro on it in the first place...

Feeling quite proud of ourselves at finding 3 out of 5 caches, dad and I decided to try our luck and look for What was it? again. You know, the weird building Plurkfish and I visited in October. Alas, this time we still couldn't find it. *grumble grumble* People have found it since we last looked, but in that time it was found wedged in the mud, so I'm wondering if it got knocked loose again. Dad and I poked everywhere. Sigh, guess we'll just have to keep looking for this one!

Final score for the day: 3 finds, 3 did not finds. Well, at least we found some. :)

Finally had a chance to go geocaching again when the weather turned slightly warmer than it has been. But caching in PA in February? Not particularly easy. Still we set off to find Walk the Plank, a cache near the blacksmith shop and plank house in the historic village of Goshenville.

After a lot of "Arrrr!" and "Avast!" and "Where'd I put my pirate hat?" (didn't actually wear it, but wondered anyway), my dad and I set off. The weather may have been warmer, but there was still a good 5-8" of snow where we were walking.

The area was wetlands with a boardwalk. Not that you can really tell that in the snow:

I'm pretty sure we found the correct coordinates (this being a puzzle cache), but after searching for ... geez, a while, we came up empty handed. Alas! I'm hoping that all the snow and ice we've had recently didn't dislodge the cache container, but for all I know, it was still buried under all the snow. I think my dad said he was going to ask the cache owner for a hint.

Still, this was a really neat location (I love old buildings!) so I definitely want to come back when the weather is warmer to get better pictures. So I guess it's not entirely bad that we couldn't find the cache. ;)

Here's the blacksmith shop:


And here's the plank house:


There's also apparently a letterbox nearby- Dad and I have been meaning to start letterboxing, so maybe we'll hit that next time, too. :)

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. :)