Happy Halloween!

Yep, we ran out of candy again. This time we must have had like 150 kids come to the door... at least that's about how many pieces of candy we thought we had.

This year we had big purple wizard guy answering the door. Most of the kids thought he was funny, but some thought he was scary. A Grim Reaper chick also answered the door, but she was too scary so we didn't let her open the door too often.

After running out of candy, big purple wizard guy was spotted playing karaoke!

We also found a little Musubi kitty hanging out with a green glowy pumpkin. :)

Um, and I just thought these were silly Crate & Barrel decorations...

So what the heck are these green things? We found them on the ground next to the trailhead located at the Iron Hill Museum in Delaware. We were out hunting a letterbox of course.

Anyway, I've seen the artificial likeness of these strange fruits... we sold them at Crate & Barrel as decorative things to put inside a centerpiece bowl. I always thought they were tremendously ugly. I also always thought they were made-up fruits. But I guess they are real. Either that or the folks at the Iron Hill Museum in Delaware like to shop at Crate & Barrel.

Breakfast!

This was breakfast this morning. It's a large quarter slice of a huge baked apple pancake. Yum!

China Shipping Line

After wandering around the shops in Chesapeake City, and watching the little fire department parade, Kenji and I went letterboxing. I mentioned before that there are six bridges that cross the Delaware & Chesapeake Canal. Well, there are also six letterboxes planted alongside the canal, each carved in the image of one of the bridges. Two are hidden on the north side of the canal, and four on the south.


We took this picture of the China Shipping Line ship from the north side of the canal. We also saw several other large cargo ships pass by today. We found all six bridge boxes, as well as another box hidden at Lum's Pond, which is also on the north side of the canal.

Volunteer Fire Department Parade

So our stay in Chesapeake City happened to coincide with the little volunteer fire department parade they were having for the area towns. Here are some of the vehicles that were in the parade.

Chesapeake City, Take II

Kenji's been away for several weeks at a training in Virginia. He's been driving home every weekend, except for this one. Instead, I made arrangements for us to stay in Chesapeake City again, about the halfway point between his training and home in NJ. This is our second time staying in Chesapeake City. We did try to stay someplace different, maybe in Fredericksburg or Alexandria, but all the places I called were already booked. So we stayed in the same B&B as the last time, even the same room. :)

It's Friday, and I arrived in Chesapeake City several hours before Kenji, so I took a nice walk. That's the Chesapeake City Bridge, one of six that crosses the Delaware & Chesapeake Canal.

Worky

This is where our new offices are. The building looks much prettier than it used when we first began considering the place.

Hitchhiker!

Shoechanger Joe is going on vacation for a couple weeks - to France and Scotland!

Now that I've gotten him into Letterboxing, I've made my first "hitchhiker" letterbox. Joe will plant it alongside a regular letterbox that he will find in either France or Scotland. Then the next person to find the letterbox that my hitchhiker is hidden with, that person will take my box and re-hide it alongside the next letterbox he or she finds. Once my letterbox's logbook is all filled up with stamp impressions, I will make arrangements to have it sent back to me.

At least that's the plan. Of course it could always get lost somewhere along the way. That's why I thought I should take a picture of it now. I got the pink button on top from my grandma's button collection. The kitty cat bead is something I bought a few years ago when I was making little containers out of beads. I became bored with making those containers before
I ever got around to using the kitty cat bead.

An Irish Blessing

After finishing the hike with Jason and his friends, I drove a little further into town to find a place to eat. My plan was to go find the letterbox hidden at Ringwood Manor, and I thought perhaps I should grab a bite to eat before hand. So first I went to the little New York town of Tuxedo, where I ate at a busy diner where they had good French toast. Looking out the window of the diner, I learned that gasoline in New York is at least $0.50 more than it is in New Jersey.

Anyway, after lunch I found my way to Ringwood Manor, which is just a few miles back over the border on the Jersey side. I should have read the clues for An Irish Blessing more carefully before I got started. For some reason I was under the impression that this would be a quick find. I didn't even change back into my hiking boots, which would have been nice since was tromping around in the woods wearing my sandals.

The hike was really nice though. The manor grounds are pretty with interesting things to look at, like a reflecting pool and sculptures of creepy looking beasty chicks.

There's a little lake, next to which is a graveyard I guess for the people who used to live in the manor way back in way-back times. For some reason I like graveyards, especially when you can see water from them.

Since it's been so warm so far this fall, there has been very little change in leaf color. So here's one of the few examples of fall foliage I found - the picture doesn't convey the color as well as it looked in person, and I can't quite get it right in Photoshop, but it's pretty close. Oh well.

So the hike and the hunt ended up taking about an hour and a half altogether. I could have done it more quickly but I was having fun poking around the graveyard, and then when I was just about ready to find the letterbox, I had to sit real quiet for several minutes while waiting for other hikers to pass by. Sera and Doobie carved a real pretty stamp, so yeah, other people should go find it. :)

Harriman Hike (Again)

Two springs ago Kenji and I went on a hike just over the line in New York's Harriman State Park with our friend Jason and the group of hikers he organizes on a monthly basis. We hiked the 7 Hills trail. Today I went on another hike with Jason and a couple of his friends, again at Harriman, but this time a different trail.

This time instead of the 7 hills, we hiked near the 7 lakes. Well, I don't know how close to any lakes we were, but we at least had to drive down Seven Lakes Drive to get to the trailhead. I liked this hike a lot because there were lots of cool rock formations along the trail, and those are interesting to look at. And this rock formation was extra cool because it was like a comfy chair. See how comfy I look?

We also found a bunch of cool acorn caps like this one. I don't know what breed of oak trees produces this kind of acorn cap, but I had never seen one of this shape before. Like the regular acorn caps I'm used to seeing, this one made a very good whistle. :)

Hello Stuffed Lobster

Last night I went to dinner with Tiffknee and her mommy and daddy and
some of their friends. I thought the sign out front was funny.