Monday, April 15, 2013

Yet Another NJ Caching Trip.

Wow, I seem to be great at not posting when I say that I will.   I actually have a reason, though - I either have a hernia (I blame the hike I took to get a difficult cache about a month ago) or some other similar pain type thing going on right now (kidney stones maybe?).  I have been to the doctor and we're figuring out what the issue is, but in the meantime I've been in a pain-filled fog and haven't felt up to typing in complete sentences.

Oh well - I'm going to give it a shot anyway.  Please excuse me in advance if my writing isn't up to my usual low standards.

I did end up having a great week off with Jack for spring break, and on Friday March 29th, we ended up heading over to my parents' house and spent the bulk of the morning caching.

There is a stretch of Rt. 130 from Cinnaminson up through Delran and Willingboro that is full of caches.  Mostly park and grab stuff (light pole skirts and the like), but a few interesting ones can be found along this route as well.  My dad works in this area and suggested that I bring Jack along with both him and my mother for a family morning of caching.

Seeing as we were caching with a 7 year old, my father wanted to make sure that we were finding caches that would keep him interested.  Jack loves old horror movies (well... he thinks that he loves them) so we picked up one from a local series - The Masters of Horror: The Shining.  Each of these is themed around a horror film, and the containers and locations all fit the theme.  I'm not going to give away any spoilers about the container, but this particular location was at a hotel, so you get the idea.

Jack actually made the find himself, so he was pretty excited to find some more. It was a short drive to Army Ducks - Torpedos, Tanks, And Mines...OH MY!, which was another neat one for kids.  I didn't think to take a picture, but the street view image should show you why:

Lots of hiding places, even with the hint!
Jack and I had actually found a cache last year near an old artillery piece in a memorial section of a park, and there are always a million hiding spots.  It took a few minutes but we did make the find and moved on.

To this:
You can't see it from this angle, but trust me, the cache is there.
This was at the site of an abandoned marina that closed down years ago.  It's basically a parking lot with lots of debris lying around.  My dad had (unsuccessfully) looked for this one in the past, and since it was on the way to our ultimate destination we wanted to give it a shot with more people.  It took about 10 minutes of looking, but we made the find and moved on.

Willingboro Lakes Park, formerly known as Olympia Lakes, was formed when the sand from this area was shipped to Philadelphia at the turn of the 20th century for use in the construction of the subway system.  The two huge resulting sand pits filled with water and this area became a recreation spot from the 1930s to the 1970s.  It is still a popular spot for fishing, and the county is working on plans to add hiking trails and docks.

It's right on Rt 130.

The park has changed hands from the township to the county (I think) and there are plans to spruce the park up a bit.
 
There are lots of remnants of the old recreation area here.  This paved path goes on for a bit.

I didn't realize it when I took this picture, but there are some folks fishing right past  that  "No Swimming" sign.

Sandy trails.  Reminds me of the Pine Barrens.

Jack and his grandfather.  We brought walkie-talkies and were having fun using them, even though we were never more than 100 feet apart.

Jack's grandmother fished this little shell out of the water.

Someone fishing in the distance.

More ruins.  We were guessing that this overgrown area was closer to the water years ago,  with fewer trees between the paths and the lakes.
There are 9 caches in the park, of which we found 6.  The standouts for me were I'm Logging for You!, which was a very cleverly disguised container, Olympia Lakes cache #3 -nice little spot, which was indeed at a nice little spot, and also had the local history in the cache description, and Just Another Brick in the Wall,  which was located near some ruins.  We didn't really try to find the remaining 3 because it was approaching lunchtime and Jack was getting punchy.

We drove back to my parent's house in Marlton, at which time Jack decided he wanted to hang out and watch movies with his grandmother.  My dad and I ended up going out again and revisiting the areas I mentioned in a previous post.  I managed to find the 1743 potter's field cache (the right coordinates certainly helped) before we headed back to Laurel Acres park to pick up a few caches there.

The standout cache there for me and my dad was Lone Tree, which is just a nano hide, but a very cleverly concealed one.  I had never seen one like this before, and it was totally worth a favorite point.

That's it for now.  I haven't been caching in the past several weeks due to my pain issues, but I'm supposed to be helping the local cub scout troop with a caching trip in the coming weeks and will document that if it happens.  A lot of new caches have also popped up now that the weather's warming up, so hopefully I'll be able to pick some up in the coming days and post about them.

I also have several tutorial posts in the works, but I really need to be able to focus a bit better in order to finish them.  No ETA yet, but I'll get them posted eventually.

Caches found on this trip:

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