Adventuring Elf Sisters

Yesterday was another gorgeous day of geocaching in woodsy Pennsylvania with my dad. :) We looked for five caches and I snagged them all- a good day. I think dad had found all of these, but he tags along with me so I can find them, too.

First we hit a playground for Playtime:

After trying to figure out what the funnel things were on the jungle gym thing and agreeing with my dad that they were something from Dr Suess (later I realized they were things you could talk into, but I like our idea better), I located the cache. Er... after ending up with a pound of woodchips in my hair. Note to self: pull hair back when near the ground.

And then it was playtime- after signing the cache log, I jumped on yet another bouncy animal, this time a horse:

Dad asked why I didn't pick the duck again; I said I wanted a change. ;) Luckily there was no one around because it meant no one got suspicious of me poking around- or wondering why a grown woman was sitting on a bouncy horse. LOL!

Next up we headed into the woods for Stream to Screen. This was one located at a gauging station next to a creek. My camera decided to make this picture be very green:

I have to say, this is the most... er... vertical cache I'd located so far (a status that didn't last long because we found two on top of cliffs later that day, lol). While climbing up this one, I had to joke-grumble about the cacher before me being tall- or at least taller than me. I really had to stretch!


I thought this one was neat because my dad was actually the first to find earlier this week and I was #6:


Next up we crossed the street and headed for three caches that were in the same general area; these were all near an old railroad track, a future Rails to Trails:


First up was A Grim Adventure. Yup, this one was themed on "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy", so of course I insisted on quoting that show as we hiked to the cache. Alas, my dad hasn't seen it, so my speaking in a Jamaican accent just confused him. Oddly enough, I was going to wear a shirt with Grim on it without realizing what caches we were hitting, but decided at the last minute not to. Double alas!

I braved sticker bushes, poison ivy and spiderwebs (spiders are definitely the worst of the bunch!) and got to a spot that looked rather suspicious. And yup, there was the cache, in it's Grim-ly glory (hope it's okay to share cache pictures- this one was just so cool! And apt!).


After I signed the log, we headed off to the next one nearby, The Edge is Never Dull. Great cache location with a great view- I was kind of wishing it was winter, though, because so much greenery meant I couldn't really see down to the creek. But since I wouldn't want to be caching in winter, I'll take the greenery. ;)

I'm going to assume this was painted to look like a face? Anyway, I practiced my climbing skills and located the cache, then climbed the rest of the way to the top:


Unfortunately my camera didn't really show how high up I was; dad was pretty far below:


We continued on, but near the cache I spotted the word "Art" graffitied on the rock. Since I'm an artist, I had to pose for a picture:


Picture taken, we headed for the last cache, Rails and Trails 2. We joked that this one you needed to be half-goat to get to because it was even higher up than the last one. But we made it up! (Yay, I'm in better shape than I thought I was!) Something caught my eye, and I wandered towards it without realizing that this geocache had a hint. ;)


I found the cache and went "Ooo!" or rather "Yarrr!" when I saw what was inside:

That ruby gem is a travel bug! How cool is that! I signed the log and grabbed it, and will try to drop it off at a different cache this weekend.

Dad and I headed back down the mountain (why did I not get a picture of that? Oh, right, I was too busy sliding down on my butt on the slippery dead leaves, lol!), and wandered over to check out a bridge. Or what was left of one, anyway:


At this point I was all sorts of worn out, so we called it a day. But it was a lot of fun! I love getting to hike in the woods- what can I say, I'm an elf-girl. ;)

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!