Adventuring Elf Sisters

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.

Now for a current update. :) Yesterday my dad and I found three more geocaches- the first was really closeby in Rose Tree Park called dnf 777. That name was appropriate because dad had gone looking for this one and couldn't find it- turns out it was muggled and no longer there. It was replaced, though, and our GPS led us right to it.


Dad snagged it right out of the tree:


And as he was signing it:


I took a random picture of myself mostly to document the absurdity of dad trying to be stealthy in a park full of muggles. I was wearing a PINK SHIRT. Trust me, people would see me in the trees. On the plus side, in a pink shirt with a kitty on it, I certainly didn't look shady or dangerous. I have that going for me, I guess.



After leaving the park we went to my favorite geocaching location so far. This one just took my breath away and made me so glad I'd brought the camera! This one was called Bat Guano and is located in Oakbourne Park. When we pulled into the parking lot, this is what we saw:

Oh my gosh, that old Victorian house was so friggin' COOL! And it's in such great repair, too- usually old houses are just foundations, but this was a house! Or, rather a tiny mansion. Well, I'm pretty sure it was used as a woman's hospital thing for a long time. But whatever it was, it's so neat looking- patinaed ironwork, random windows, all sorts of odd shaped bits to the building...

And then we went to the actual cache location and my jaw dropped even more. The house may have been gorgeous, but this was just ... bizarre. What were those Victorian architects on, anyway?

That thing that looks like a weird misplaced castle turret with a weather vain at the top, windows scattered even more randomly than the house's, and is only about five feet wide inside? It's a water tower. I'm serious! Look, here's the gauge:


And if you still don't believe me, here's the plaque next to that old castle-looking door:

Man, I really wish we could have seen into the windows! Water tower though it may be, it's just so weird that I wanted to be able to see more of it.

Here I am in front of the tower:

(Darnit, now's a time I wish I was wearing one of my renfaire-ish costumes. Pink kitty shirt just does not get the same effect across.)

I made dad stand in front of it, too. He was as excited about this place as I was!


When we were leaving we pulled around to the front of the house so I could get a picture of that. Not as strange as the back/side, but still utterly gorgeous:


We're definitely going to have to come back so I can get more photos- I completely forgot to take pictures of the garage and bizarre fountain, for one thing. There are more caches in this park, so I'll do that when we get those. Oh, right, cache. I got so distracted by the architecture that I forgot to post a picture of that- it was a small one:


Looks like I'm not the only one so taken in by this location- I did a search for "Oakbourne Park" to try to do some quick research and I found someone's set of photos on flickr, complete with amusing blurbs. Go check those out- he took more than I did and has pictures of that fountain and garage.


And I suppose I should blog about the last cache we hit that day. Normally I would have thought this was really cool, but after getting to time travel back a few hundred years... well, I was still thinking about old buildings (and putting together a design in my head for the manor house that belongs to my D&D character's family).

This one was called Phobia #2 (we'd found one other Phobia one in that series- a beehive), but this one was fear of alcohol-related; or, rather, it was behind the beer distributor and had a matching cache container:

I seem to be getting pretty good at knowing which caches are going to be magnetic (I learned from one of the last caches we found), but dad was the one who realized that the poles are hollow (he's taller, so no wonder). We make a good caching pair because otherwise we wouldn't have found this one- he had been poking the wooden fence and I was poking the outside of the poles.

A very fun day- I'd missed geocaching but my health hasn't been too great this summer. Stupid asthma. Once the weather cools down, you can bet I'll be back to my wanderings!

I just realized that I never blogged about the three caches my dad and I found July 1st, so I'll throw together an update with pictures from that and hope I remember everything.

The first cache we hit that day was Rambo's Cache, the smallest one I've found so far:



Luckily the hint ("Magneficent") clued me in, although it left my dad clueless- he was looking all over on the bridge, but I went to the right spot, having caught the "magne" part of the clue. ;) We weren't actually the first to find, but we we the first after it had been fixed, so we're in the first spot on the log:


After that we headed to a nearby multi-cache called Hollow Paradise on the East Bradford Township Trail. The first part of this one involved finding this plaque on a bridge:

And doing a bit of math. Unfortunately my dad and I are terrible at math, so we were baffled on this one for a bit. Here's dad taking a rest at the start of the trail as we tried to work it out:

Eventually we realized what was wrong with our calculations ("d" does not equal "D"), though, and made our way uphill towards the cache. Here's a huge field we passed (or rather, had to walk through).


After wishing I'd had a walking stick to help me up the hill, I was utterly distracted by an AWESOME tree and grabbed my camera again. This reminded me so much of something out of my beloved Mirkwood that I couldn't resist!

It was covered in vines and tendrils and just looked so cool! And it turns out that while I was distracted, dad had realized that the tree was actually our destination. lol! He pulled the cache out of the hollow trunk and I got there in time to snap his picture:


In the cache was a neat toy knight's horse, so of course I took that one (I left a geocoin)- I think dad left a toy car and took a geocoin, this one certainly being large enough to hold swag. Needless to say, though, I was wishing that horse was a real one after knowing I had that long hike ahead of me again! Fortunately it was now downhill, but before leaving dad took a picture of me in front of the tree:


and I took one of the awesome branches:

See? It's like being home in Mirkwood, only with more sun coming through the trees. Heh. On the way downhill we passed another neat tree:


And we also passed a sign that made me laugh. I'm assuming "equine activities" don't involve poker or water polo. ;)

Since the only horse we saw was the plastic toy one I had stuck in my bag, I figured we were okay.


The last cache we hit that day was a quick one close to home- UPP which is in I think Upper Providence Park? (I think that's what the UPP stands for, anyway.) The GPS was acting wonky but luckily dad had been to that one already and steered me in the right direction. This was another big ammo can thing:

You can see the toy horse I got from the cache before this tucked into the mesh part of my bag (the white and red thing is the horse). Just thought I'd mention that. I took a bouncy ball and left one of my hemp bracelets.


And here's dad hiding it when we were done:

I think there are still a few more caches in that park, so we'll have to get them later.

Yesterday I went geocaching again! :D This time I went with my fiance as well as my dad; my dad had once again found these caches earlier but came back with me and Josh as we looked. Our travels took us to the small Indian Acres park then back over near where dad and I had gone the other day to the Linvill Trail.

As we pulled up we noticed this structure, but didn't get a chance to explore it until we were leaving- I'll share it first, though:


A random chimney; we're trying to figure out what it was to and why the opening is facing downhill. My theory is that it was on an outside wall, maybe to prevent the fire from catching inside but still keep the building warm. Who knows, though?


Me and dad standing in front of it:


I did think it was neat that one of the families on the plaque is "Yarnall"; that's Josh's last name and it's highly likely that he's related to them:


Back to caching. The first one we hit was Phobia #10, a bee-themed cache. The GPS took us right to it and Josh saw it before I did:

This was a micro cache hidden in something not so micro. ;) We signed the log (and Josh drew his signature goblin drawing), but since this was a micro there was no room for swag.

I got some photos as we hiked over to the next cache. The creak running along the trail:


We passed some huge trees and I figured, what the heck, time for another group picture:


The light looked so pretty on the trees, but alas, it didn't come out so well on the camera:


This was a very old stone fountain that we passed. I wonder how long ago it worked?


This wood plaque was on a tree, but I have no idea why (trail marker?) and any writing that may have been on it was no longer there:


We thought I had gotten us lost (we went around a longer way than dad had gone before) so we made some jokes about hobbits and their direction sense (I offered to call Tom Bombadil if Josh and dad got eaten by a tree), but I finally lead us to our destination, Scouts' Stash. The GPS was pretty accurate here and after only a bit of looking we found the cache in a hollow log.


When I opened it up I went "Hey, a geocoin! ... Wait, that's the same geocoin!" I'd forgotten that dad had dropped off the travel slug coin he'd found a few days ago in this cache when he originally visited that morning, so no wonder it looked familiar. LOL!

I took a beetle toy (Josh loves bugs) and left a bracelet, then we signed the log and Josh doodled another Igik:

Dad changed his username to Yosemite1 after we got home, so he's still Gary87 in the logs he signed yesterday.

Then off to the 3rd cache! This one (X-Men Marks The Spot: Colossus) was a LOT harder to find than the other two- the GPS kept leading me in the wrong direction until Josh finally found the (very well camouflaged) cache. Of course after he called over to me, then the GPS told me the correct direction. Go figure! This one was really really cool and actually looked like a log and when we opened it up, we figured out the reason for the cache name:

The action figure was attached to the underside of the lid. See all that bumpy brownness? That's what the outside of the cache looked like- a log. That mummy rubber duckie was what I took from the cache when I left a bracelet.

We headed back to the car (detouring at the chimney) and drove over (well, drove to the street nearby) to the last cache of the day, Sink or Swim. We passed a lake on the way to it:


This was an easy one to find once we got there, but first we had to cross the stream. This was a lot further down than it looks and it took me a while to cross on those large rocks (I have very poor balance), but luckily I managed to not fall in. ;)


This cache was in a large old ammo box:

This one was filled with little toys, which was cool! We left a bracelet and a bunny toy my dad had picked up at another cache so I could get a silver-colored cat charm/pendant thing and- hooray- a geocoin! This is the first one I've gotten and it had just been put there probably not even an hour before (it was dropped off by someone sometime after dad had gone geocaching that morning and we were out in the early afternoon). I'll be moving this to a new cache very soon. :) I forgot to get a picture of the coin, though.

This logbook was a bit larger than the others, I think, so along with the drawing of Igik, Josh also wrote a cute "by the way, Igik says hi", but I forgot to get a picture of the log. Darnit!

This last cache was right down the hill from a swim club, so after a day of geocaching I was all sorts of jealous of the people we heard swimming!

I'm running out of bracelets to leave behind, so I think I'm going to make some keychains next so I can change things up a bit. :) If you notice the photos look better quality than before, that's because I found my sister's old digital camera and will now be using that instead of my cell phone. Yay, hand me downs!