French Creek and Some Mysteries Solved!

What a great day this turned out to be! As most people know, I am not particularly fond of French Creek State Park, which is extremely unfortunate because it is almost in my back yard. This park is very, very rocky and I have a lot of difficulty walking the trails. After one nasty episode of trying to find ShredMTBs Southeast and Southwest, my feet were so bruised that I swore I would never walk in this park again. I also think that the park knows that I don't like it and hides its boxes more securely from me than from others. Well, today, Hikers 'n Hounds, Miss Moon, Sheba and the sneaky, sneaky Cyclonic joined me in conquering the boxes in this park and then moving on to solve a couple of mystery boxes in the area also.

Sheba met me early in the day and we were able to conquer the two Zodiac series Snake, Dragon and Rooster and Horse, Sheep and Ox. I had previously found the first two boxes in each series but in both cases, I was unable to find the third and final boxes. Two heads proved to be better than one today and Sheba and I were able to log six more finds from these two series. Then we moved on to find the Southeast and Southwest portions of The Stamp Collection . This was also a very rewarding experience because the walk to find these was at least two miles over very rough trails. But the best part for me was that after finding these eight boxes, my feet were still holding up just fine, thanks to a new pair of hiking boots that cushioned my feet from the nasty French Creek rocks.

By this time, we joined Miss Moon, who had traveled to Reading from New York City, and Hikers 'n Hounds who were waiting for us at the beginning of the two mile round trip walk to Lightnin' Bug's Math Test . A truly miraculous thing happened - we actually found the box! As we were stamping in, Sheba and I were becoming delerious with fatigue and when Miss Moon spotted this lovely penis, ooops, brontosaurus tree, we totally lost our composure. But not Miss Moon who knew exactly what to do with a tree of this magnificance - give it a big hug!

As we made our way back to our cars, who should appear but the devious Cyclonic who had visited the Math Test before we got there and added some new mystery clues to the box. After some debate, we decided that his interesting looking box would have to wait for another day because walking a few more miles was just not going to happen today. We did do a bit of driving to the location for Nathalie's Journal, a box which I had already found a few weeks ago and the rest of the gang searched for it while I ran a few errands in the area. We all met up back at the parking lot for this picture. For those of you who don't know us, back row is Miss Moon, Sheba and Cyclonic. Front row is me and Hikers 'n Hounds and faithful companion and champion letterboxer, Dude who is actually staring hungrily at his dinner bowl which we had pulled him away from for this picture. The day was mostly dark and dreary with occasional spots of light rain but I had a totally wonderful time with a group of totally wonderful people.