I have a new favorite cache -
Let The Sun Shine In, located in
Nether Providence Township. This one kept popping up on my GPS every time I drove up Rt. 252 - my "last resort" route I take to work if I see that the Blue Route is jammed. It's a pretty scenic drive, actually, especially when you get up to the
Springton Reservoir, but it takes upwards of 40 minutes (due to the lights) to get to work this way.
But I digress...
The GPS showed the cache only a little bit off of Rt. 252, but you actually need to go to Houston Park and walk down a nature trail. There is plenty of parking, and the start of the trail is right next to one of the parking areas.
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| Start of the trail. |
About 2 minutes down the trail, if you look down the little valley to the left, you can spot some ruins.
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| It's hard to see. You can click to enlarge, for what it's worth. |
A little farther on, and the stone bridge comes into view.
The ground is deceptively steep, but I've been doing this kind of thing for almost four whole months now, so I knew what to expect. When I got down to the bottom I wandered around the bridge for a few minutes.
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| Closer to the bridge. It's missing some chunks, but that just makes it look more interesting. |
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| It was a lovely fall day with lots of fallen leaves. Yes, I said "lovely". |
The area is actually what remains of the grounds attached to the Houstonia estate, which was the home of the mayor of Chester, PA from around the turn of the 20th century. To be clear - he was mayor then, the house and buildings are a little newer.
The house is there and still in use for... something? Not sure it it's a residence or open for tours. A little Googling shows that it's available for movie shoots, so that's something I guess.
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| On the path toward the house. |
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The hole was at least four feet deep. The graffiti has dates ranging from the '50s on,
but honestly what's to stop someone from carving an inaccurate date? I could even
carve a date from the future if I was so inclined. |
The fun thing about the house is that the no trespassing signs all warn about the
attack dogs that will be sent after you if you approach.
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| For all the warnings about dogs, I didn't see or hear any of them. |
After being warned off by the signs, I walked back down to the bridge again and wandered around a bit. My GPS showed the cache several hundred feet up the path past the bridge, but I had time to kill and I love ruins.
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| On the bridge, looking downstream. Loads of fallen trees. |
There were lots of fallen trees and we're only a few weeks after Hurricane Sandy, but most of them looked like they had been down for a while and starting to decay.
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| The bridge dates from 1921. |
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| This would be a good place to take artsy pictures. Alas, photography is not one of my strong points. |
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| Steps to nowhere. Very pretty, but functionally a bit odd. |
Once I crossed the bridge, I took a short detour in the direction opposite the cache to check out that little building that I originally spotted from the trail up the hill. I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like it might have been a little
spring house or something.
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| The barred windows give it such a welcoming, homey look. |
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| About 2-3 inches of water. There were brackets on the wall where it looked like shelves were attached. |
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| It's still in good shape, even without a roof. |
After checking that building out I decided to finally make the walk up to the cache. The trail is easy to walk, as it looks like it was a well kept road sometime in the past.
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| There are some really neat old non-working street lamps lining the path. |
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Closer shot of the street lamp. Again, note how I'm good at making my shots blurry.
I guess that's a hot thing with Instagram and all, but I've never attempted to sell my
technique to Facebook for $1 Billion. Lost opportunity I guess. |
A few minutes up the path takes you past this neat place:
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| It looks like some kind of cinder block bunker. |
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| Stone stairs lead down. |
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| Over the fallen tree. |
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| What remains of a generator or something, and some rude graffiti on the wall. |
This was still a little ways down the trail from GZ. After exiting the building I went a little farther down the path and started looking for the hide. The cache took me a few minutes to find, as my GPS put me about 20 feet away near a spot that was full of potential hiding areas. I'm getting better at relying less on my GPS, but sometimes it takes me to a promising place and I can't help but check things out for a few minutes. In this case, if I had used my geosense I would have made the find a bit quicker.
This is one of those caches where I
love the site, and the cache is just an added perk of exploring back here. I have found quite a few caches that were fancier containers or more complicated hides, but this location was just
so cool it was totally worth a favorite point. It meets quite a few of my criteria for a good location:
- Scenic
- Off the beaten path
- Ruins
- History
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| A little farther down the path. |
After finding the cache, I followed the trail to the end, right before it hits Rt. 252. I really just wanted to see what it looked like from this side of the road, as I've driven by it often enough. After that I made the 10 minute walk back to the car and headed out. I'm planning on taking Jack here in a few days, because he likes ruins almost as much as I do.
Apparently there is a puzzle cache somewhere in this park as well -
Houston, we've had a problem is
somewhere back here. One of these days I'll take the time to solve the puzzle, as it'll give me an excuse to come back!
Caches in this post:
I know I'm a little bit late to this post but I thought that I'd inform you on some of the pictures that you took. The 'road' was really the original driveway to the Houstonia Estate and the 'springhouse' was the original guard house for the estate. The house was built in 1921, just as the bridge was, when there was no need for a spring house since running water was invented. There is also a carriage house and a neat green house on the estate's grounds. If you would like to view the interior of the house, you can view the pictures on many realty websites as it is currently listed on the market. My family and I are looking at potentially buying this house if you were wondering why I know the information that I do. And I can agree with you that this is a gorgeous property.
ReplyDeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteDid you end up buying the house? I've always wanted to walk that trail and will do so this spring/summer as I only live right up the road from there. I never realized it was accessible for hikers.