Visit to Lancaster, Pennsylvania 2023

My wife and I went to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for a ballroom dance competition. We drove up the afternoon before and had a chance to enjoy the town before enjoying a day of dancing.

The view from our 16th floor elevator lobby at night!

We walked around (while it was still daylight) and saw a lot of interesting sites. A geocaching Adventure Lab led us to St. James Episcopal Church, which has some amazing brickwork that the cache owner contributed to. The outside is amazing in its use of bricks for arches and decorative angling.

The back of St. James Church

Penn Square Fountain is an interesting abstract sculpture that was across the street from our hotel (which was connected to the convention center where the dance event was held). 

Penn Square Fountain

Not too far down the street is the entrance to Steinman Park. The area originally (I mean in the 1700s) was home to a publisher that made documents for the government of the colony (and later commonwealth) of Pennsylvania, along with documents for the U. S. government. Right at the entrance is a statue appropriate to a park dedicated to a publisher and philanthropist. The statue is simply called Newspaper Reader and was crafted by J. Seward Johnson, Jr.

Print is not dead!

The park is a very urban park, with trees on the sides and plants here and there. A lot of bricks line the walls and make up the pavement. Mostly the area is for gathering or having lunch outdoors in good weather.

Walking into the park

Park plaza

The Central Market was built in reaction to several other markets (the North, South, East, and West Markets), to encourage farmers and others to sell their wares downtown. The building follows the familiar brick theme of other buildings. I visited on a Saturday morning and picked up some Shoo-fly Pie to take home to the kids and a pretzel donut to share with my wife.

Sign to the market

Market building with one ill-placed tree

Inside the market

An October visit meant pumpkins were for sale

I thought the building across the street had some interesting fire escapes.

I kinda want to try it out

The pie and pretzel donut

Our hotel room had a different view of Lancaster, including a look down on a rooftop restaurant (or two restaurants if you look carefully).

More of Lancaster

A restaurant or two

Also across the street from the hotel is the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial. Originally dedicated to the Lancaster unit that served during the American Civil War, several plaques have been added for locals who served in subsequent wars and a few prior wars (like the American War of Independence). 

View from the hotel

View to the hotel

Yet another angle

My wife and I with a chip on my shoulder

Wandering around Sunday morning after the competition, we saw some interesting houses.

I love these little turrets/bay windows

The Fulton Theater dates back to the 1850s and has been in operation since. Before that, the location was a pre-Revolutionary War jail where an infamous massacre took place. If I had taken a ghost tour, I am sure it would have stopped there.

Fulton Theatre

We went to breakfast at Lancaster Pie and Coffee, a little restaurant specializing in beverages and pies. We had a quiche and a liege waffle (like they have in Belgium). The very friendly lady at the counter asked about us and we mentioned the ballroom competition. She got very excited, especially when we said that we came in first place in our category (in which we were the only couple). She bragged about the celebrities in her cafe to other costumers who came in while we were enjoying a delightful breakfast.

Pie-licious

Pictures and videos from the dance event in the next post!

Geocaching October 2023

My geocaching month started off with finding the final Adventure Lab on Main Street in Laurel, Maryland. On the second of the month, I visited the weekly Monday morning meetup, which is turning into a habit for me. It's an easy way to get credit for a find and a chance to be sociable and to get advice on geocaching in general. No photos for either.

My next find was Dorsey Cemetery at Arcadia, a mystery cache requiring some information from the graveyard to find the hide by one of the shopping centers nearby. I had just been to the shopping center, so I probably should have gone for the cache first before making purchases. Priorities!

Spooky start for October

I avenged a DNF (that's a Did Not Find) at Cricket's Cache. I really think the container was changed because it was very easy to find and I don't think I could have missed it.

Typical bit of road near the cache

I found another pair of the sports-themed caches in southern Laurel, TYGR402: Baseball and TYGR402: Soccer. Showing the baseball sculpture/statue is not a spoiler, so I took a picture.

Go Orioles!

The next day I found TYGR402: Hockey, which was off in some woods with a creepy container. Sorry there is no picture, you'll have to go get creeped out on your own. 

For the earthcache weekend I went to Fort McHenry to find the earthcache MD - Fort McHenry Earthcache and the virtual cache A Great Big Liar. The Liar cache involves a statue of a Greek god with a lyre (nice pun) and the earthcache involves the preservation attempts of the bay around the fort.

Great big statue

Entrance to Fort McHenry

I went back to that business park and found TYGR402: Frisbee, a nice and easy multicache, especially on a Sunday afternoon. After a little math, I was on to the find. Some landscaping guys were there on a Sunday, so I had to wait a little for them to clear out.

Fetch!

We went to the former town of Daniels, Maryland, which was wiped out in the 1970s by Tropical Storm Agnes. We visited a cave which was the location of the earthcache The Camel's Den. Further up the hill from the cave is Stoned Cache. 

Relaxing by the cave

Taking shelter

Some ruins, not where the other cache was

I went back to the business park and found TYGR402: Lacrosse without much trouble (or a picture). The next day I found TYGR402: Equestrian, also without picture. I did not find the Fly a Kite cache, even with the hint.

I solved another Random Wiki Puzzle: Captain Andrew Offutt Monument in Odenton and found the cache in a business park. Unfortunately, the log was barely signable. I had to go back to the car for a pencil, which made more of a dent than left a mark.

The wet log

Next up was Non-traditional Traditional?! not too far from home and very close to grocery shopping that I planned to do anyway. There's a fun puzzle and I picked up a Travel Bug, which is an item that travels around from cache to cache, sometimes with a specific destination or certain activity from the TB owner. Super Duck wants his picture taken, the sillier the better. What's sillier than UFOs?

They need a hero!

On a cold and blustery day I found Ice Cubes... just off a road that has plenty of caches on it.

Typical geohiding area

Catch as Cache Can is an old geocache, first placed in 2001. I found it to qualify for a challenge cache which requires fifteen caches older than the twentieth oldest currently available cache in Howard County. This one makes fifteen!

Geocontainer

Nearby waterway

I had a two-for-one find in Baltimore at the memorial for Pride of Baltimore, a sailing ship that sank on its way back home in 1986. Lost Pride is a virtual cache which requires information from the memorial; Baltimore's Pride in Texas Pink is an earthcache about the Texas granite used to make the memorial.

Memorial

The Star-Spangled Banner - Maryland Style is a cache that asks a bunch of questions about Francis Scott Key and the attack on Fort McHenry in 1814. I knew most of the answers to the puzzle and was able to make the find, which was under an American flag! It was not anywhere near Fort McHenry. I didn't take a picture--just imagine a flag on display.

I Can't Drive 55 is next to an indoor racetrack and a very easy find to fill in a day for my current streak.

We went on a dance competition trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and found some virtual caches there to keep the streak going. Virtual Reward 3.0 The Eavesdropper is located on King Street and is where a second story eave has a sculpture of a human face listening in on passersby. Nearby is Hot Off the Presses!! which involves another statue, this one being a man with his morning paper. Finally, we found Soldiers and Sailors Monument which is in the city's central square. The memorial was originally dedicated to locals who fought in the American Civil War, though it has expanded to other American military engagements from the War for Independence to the Iraq Wars. 

Catching up on the news

Soldiers and Sailors Memorial

Waterfront Confections is by a pond near the closest Scout Shop (back in Maryland), so I returned an item to the store and found a geocache nearby. The pond is pretty, the GZ is a nest of thorns and undergrowth.

Photogenic lake

Bird at lake

My Birthday Hide: Cruising On.... is another quick cache that kept my streak alive on a busy day.

After finishing the Laurel Main Street Adventure Lab a while back, I found the bonus mystery cache. Adventure Labs typically have coordinates to a physical cache as a bonus. This final find was another historic site on Main Street.

St. Philips Episcopal Church, Laurel, Maryland

Having qualified earlier in the month, I found Historical Caches of Howard County Challenge out in a park.

Typical hiding area back in the good ole days

My son had a debate competition at Calvert Hall College High School. I went as judge and during a break found Easy Cache and Dash 2 in a parking lot and TLB - Remember the Best?, a multicache based on a mall that has changed several times in its over fifty years of existence.

School patrons

Library patron

Random fun wall decoration

I discovered a new series, the Random Word Letterbox Series. RWLS Rey Reisling Royals Ruby Revelation Swiftly is in a local park. I dropped the Super Duck Travel Bug there since this cache is new and will probably get a lot of traffic.

Super Duck and the Letterbox of Doom!

X did not mark the spot

I found Time Will Not Dim... on a day that needed filling. It's just outside of the Baltimore Orioles stadium and is a virtual with some easy questions to answer. A photo would have been a spoiler for the answers, so no picture.

The month ended with a total of 945 caches found overall and 42 in October. My current streak of days caching is 63 (with the hope of making 100) and I only have 6 empty days on the overall calendar.

Not too many white spots left!

Cherry Crest Adventure Farm--Part II

A continuation of yesterpost...

The guy in Cherry Crest Adventure Farm's chick barn recommended we go see the pig races. He said it was the best show on the farm. We headed over, not realizing it was a ten to fifteen minute walk with the kids.

Country Pig Race

Picture of the track

The audience was divided into different colored sections to root for one of the four pigs in each race. For every race, the organizer would pick one kid from the crowd to be the main cheerleader. That kid stood up front and saw the race up close. The kid won a prize too, depending on how the pig did. The preschooler was selected for the final race and got a third-place prize--a Cherry Crest Adventure Farm Pencil!

One race

Kid who won a pig's nose

Our son cheering on the red pig

The caller cheering on all the pigs

Winning a prize

Just beyond the pig barn was a display of tractors, some dating back to the early 1900s.

A big traction

Smaller, more modern tractor

Even further beyond was the country road carts, pedal cars that went along a dirt track. My son and I sat in back where we pedaled and steered. Meanwhile, the other kids sat in front and enjoyed the ride (and being front-seat drivers).

Rolling tubes by the road carts

Ready to launch

I had the steering job

Coming up the road

Having fun riding around

Finishing the race

The straw bale tower was fun to climb. It was five or six stacks high. Unfortunately we did not take a wide-shot picture showing how high up we were. So the pictures are not as impressive as they could have been. We'll do better next time.

Our gang at the top of the heap

This far side of the farm had donkeys who ate feed from our hands. The preschooler was interested but too nervous to feed them on his own.

Feeding donkeys

More of the same

Getting by with a little help from his friends

Walking back to the first part of the farm, we found their web site.

Searching the web

Ready to switch to a more challenging web--web 2.0?

A trickier site

Rain started coming down as the older kids got off the web. The light rain quickly got heavy and turned into a downpour. We sheltered under a canopy for about ten minutes as the storm spent itself. When it was done, we used up the last of our animal food on the goats.

Out of the rain and back on the job

Coaxing a goat out of the barn

Not sure he wants any

We were highly satisfied and a bit wiped out by that point, so we headed back to our van and back to our hotel. It was a fun adventure.

Topiary at the exit!