So this past weekend we traveled up to Selinsgrove for the 20th Anniversary-Reunion of CompCons.
As usual, I stayed up all night trying to get things organized and packed for the trip. Then I slept in the truck for most of the trip up. Before going, I downloaded a bunch of PA waypoints and descriptions into my GPS and PDA, respectively. We made a stop at McKee's Rec Area, which is on 11/15 about 15 minutes south of Selinsgrove. I've been past this area MANY times, but just never stopped. It has a breathtaking view of the Susquehanna, and you can go down some steps to the actual water. Entirely too cool.
It also had a geocache. We wandered around in its general area for a few minutes, but then we sat down for a few just to watch the river as it flowed past. I renewed my search and quickly found the cache.
We stayed at the Hampton Inn this time. While the Comfort Inn may be cheaper, their non-smoking rooms still have the taint of smoking in them. Not very comfortable for me.
We did Perkins for dinner, and I had one of my favorites, Granny's Country Omelette. They remodeled a few years back and I still can't get used to the change inside. :(
We were the first people to arrive at the meet and greet. It was ok, we sat around and chatted and Audrey showed off her walking skills. Once more people arrived, the people divided into 3 distinct groups. Current Students, Recent Grads, and Old Fogeys (as we called ourselves.) I was the oldest person there. Damn you Andy! As the children approached meltdown, we took our leave and threw them into bed. Then we fell into bed... before
midnight, unbelievable!
Saturday morning we availed ourselves to the breakfast bar at the hotel, then hung around until it was time to go to Ted's on the Hill. That place hasn't changed at all.
Once again, the group factionized, and we were with the rest of the Old Fogeys. We did learn some interesting changes that are being made to CompCons. They're dissolving the BYTE (computer help) line and they've moving out of Seibert! The BYTE line is the reason why CompCons had to be in Seibert, it's the only building where the phones could be tied in together. With it going away, it leaves them free to go for a place where it can be quieter, with no one storming through the suite using it as a stairwell-shortcut. Having lived in the suite, I can't say I blame them.
We had some free time before bowling, so we headed to campus so I could buy stuff in the bookstore. I finally got myself an SU hat! I also got an SU sticker for The Gas Guzzler. Mikey got a stuffed football. I wanted a new T-Shirt, but the school still operates under the premise that students are skinny. I am not. So nothing for me!
Bowling was cool. The Old Fogey's teamed up into 2 teams. My team was Jerry, myself, Mikey, Curt, and Keara. [We wound up chatting at the meet & greet. They live in WESTMINSTER. Scary, huh?] I still suck at bowling. I had a lot of trouble due to the inflammation in my wrists and in my finger joints.
While bowling, Tim and his gf showed up. We mutually agreed (without a word) to ignore each other, without being rude (ie. obvious and with dirty looks). As we had nothing to say to the other, this worked out splendidly. As bowling wound down, all the younger people left. There were just us Old Fogeys left to finish up.
There were a couple of hours left until dinner at BJs, so we went to Wal-mart, then Geocaching. First stop was a park in soutern Sunbury. Easy to find! Very nice park. I did have to wait until a walker was out of sight before I replaced the cache. Perfect timing, as a wedding party rounded the bend as I was leaving. Off to the next one!
It was a multicache. I couldn't get near to what I perceived as the hiding spot as there were a couple of guys sitting on a picnic table watching me. I went to the monument I thought the cache was speaking of and wrote down the date, so I could do the math to find the final cache coordinates. Only... they weren't working out right. The guys were still there, so I was not about to get back out of the truck and look around some more. So we went off to the next cache.
We wound up not finding it on Saturday because I couldn't find the cemetary at the Historical Society. Jer did say something about one, but it was across the street and I hadn't noticed it as we went by. I was too busy looking at my GPS. We'd try again later.
So we drove out of Sunbury on 61 to find the next one. It was part of a Northumberland County cache series, this one was a covered bridge. Nice old bridge which apparently has quite the night life, as indicated by the syringe I found (complete with needle) and pile of beer bottles. The other side of the bridge boasted deer carcasses. At the bridge I realized that I should have bought a flashlight at wally-world. The water in the stream was tainted. Yellowboy. Jer had never seen it before. I wasn't surprised, as one of the roads we took to get back there was called "Anthracite Rd". There was a coal mine nearby. We were in the region for it, after all. We burned a lot of time looking for the cache, I had neglected to read the portion of the description that said it was IN the bridge. We spent most of our time looking under. We really needed the flashlight to properly investigate the inside of the bridge. We called it quits and returned to the hotel to freshen up before going to BJs.
Old Fogeys sat together again. We could order from a limited menu, so I did that, but I did order some BongoBongo dip. Boy did I miss that stuff. I did have him try some, he liked it, but not in a die for it sort of way. Someone else had a Bomber, so I was able to point out to Jer what it looked like. Dinner was uneventful and we left first. Audrey was tired and needed to sleep.
Back to the hotel we went, and all of us (except Mikey) had a shower, as we reeked of smoke. We had been seated in the smoking section.
I had trouble getting to sleep, as I was not tired enough to fall asleep before Jer, I was subjected to his snoring. I think I fell asleep around 5am.
I awoke to Jer packing around 10am. We were due at Seibert to meet prior to Farewell Brunch at 1030-11ish. We arrived at Seibert at 11 to find that we were to meet in the meeting rooms in Degenstein. We wandered over there and it was just us and 3 students. All the other alum had already headed for home. Bwah? So we hung out for a little while, ate the costly, but scant breakfast food, and left.
Time for a Geocaching adventure!
First, we headed to a park on the west side of the river, up on the mountain that has Chief Shikellemey's profile. The gate was still closed for winter and we weren't going to wait for me to walk the road and back.
So, we returned to Sunbury to do the Historic Society graveyard. Cache found!
Next, we went to do the multi-cache. Church had just gotten out, so the streets were filled with people. My GPS took me to the river-end of the parky place, instead of the side it had me on the day before. I thought I had the cache location spotted, but there were entirely too many people on the streets to grab it. I noted down the date I needed and headed back to the truck to do some math.
The Waypoint put it on the otherside of the flood wall. With it so nice outside, we figured it would be crowded, and opted to try some other caches instead. We had already seen a father and son climb the steps with fishing gear. We'll try this next time...
So I sent us in the direction of Shamokin. There were 2 caches there. Both of them I found with little problem. I took a picture of kiddo at the coal cart. I'd ridden through Shamokin before with Andy, but never stopped to look at anything.
Rather than heading straight back to Sunbury, we headed for Elysburg and Danville. On the way we asked kiddo what he wanted for lunch, he said Burger King, dissing the McD's we were passing. We found a Burger King in Danville, so we stopped for lunch. There was a cache nearby, so we went to look for it afterwards. The cache is a micro around a tank at the American Legion. Try as we might, we could not find it. I could not get as up close and personal to the tank as I would have liked to look as there were bees hovering around.
We next headed for I-80W. There's a cache at the rest stop. Which we couldn't find. I did find out from the janitor-type guy that the eastbound rest area was going to be closed for a few days for teh filming of a movie...
rest stop serial killer, or something like that.
We headed for two more Nory caches. First stop was an octogonal school house. Unfortunately the roof had caved and it had a tarp on it. It appeared that previously people could go in and look. Found the cache with little problem and signed the log. Next stop was a nearby covered bridge.
This bridge was teh oldest in the US. Built in 1830. WOW. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the cache. I looked, Jer looked. A flashlight would have helped. A honey-bee was taking an interest in the truck, so we opted to motor on... but something stung me as we left. Damnit!
I sent Jer down 147 and we hopped on 11. Picked up 15 and headed south. I was quite discouraged, so I read a book for a bit. As we got farther down 11/15, I suggested that we stop at another rest-area for a cache hidden there. Only... it was on the northbound side. So we turned around and stopped.
The Rest Area was nice for a primitive one. Just a parking area and lots of grass to sit on. There were about 6 cars in the lot, but I didn't see many people, just one guy pacing beside the lot. Coming around the outcropping I encountered 2 men standing there, I passed them thinking they may be other geocachers since they where close to the right spot, but my GPS was bouncing around. I sat down not too far away to wait it out and one of the old men came around to me and asked me if I "liked to fool around". O.O He apologized and left, rather embarrased, and I got up and found the cache. One was keeping tabs on me, so I sat so they couldn't see what I was doing and quickly signed the log. When he moved away I replaced it, covering it up so that it couldn't be seen at all in case they came to muggle it.
Gave them a wide berth on the way back around, but the guy who propositioned me was already leaving. Other guy was sitting in his car.
Jer pointed out that there were 5 other cars in the parking lot, all with single men sitting in them. And they'd been staring at him. We left quickly at that point, and headed for home.
Found out later that there were previous logs about this type of thing, I just didn't have them in my PDA. It's a trysting spot for men.
Overall it was an OK weekend. I'd like to go back and check out those bridges again for their caches. ;)
