Delaware Games

Delaware - I don't know what to say about the Delaware Games except WOW! Sewsowbizzy did the most intensive, extensive, intricate, wonderful gathering I have ever attended. For me, it started on the Sunday before the games when Pink Panther, Sherry of Dogs with Wings and I headed to Kent County to do two of the northern series. The day started out rainy and since we were driving in the dark on unfamiliar roads on our way to meet Sherry in Smyrna at the site of the Northern Spy , it was a little depressing. We did manage to find this box in the dark and in the rain though so our spirits lifted that it would be a good day anyway. And it was....the clouds drifted away and the sun came out before too much longer. We worked our way through the first series Are You Feeling Lucky which took us to so many neat places. We visited Heritage Park, the historic section of Dover, which reminded me of being in Williamsburg. I never knew that a place like that existed in Dover. We went to Dover Downs and were able to resist the temptation to go in and place a few bets. We went to several parks, most really nice but one a little creepy. Brecknock Park reminded me of an area here in Reading where men go to find other men "friends". Laura and I innocently barged into this area in our quest to see the historic Mt. Penn tower shortly after we moved to Reading and we were told afterwards that it was not the best place to visit. Brecknock's parking lot looked just like the Mt. Penn Tower parking lot with men sitting in cars reading newspapers. Anyway, I was really happy that I hadn't done this one alone, there seemed to be safety in numbers. We were able to find eight of the nine boxes in this series, following behind Otis Friends in most of the log books.

We then headed to the next series, Kent Coastal Cruising which took us out closer to the shore. This was probably my favorite series of all of the Delaware Games. The weather was almost perfect when we did this one. We went to several historic areas, such as Barratt's Chapel, the John Dickinson Mansion and Dover Air Force base. We went to the beach and found a wonderful little box under a horseshoe crab shell. We were the unfortunate finders of the totally destroyed School Bus box at the site of an octagonal schoolhouse.We visited the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Preserve and were attacked by mosquitos. I pulled out my nice little mosquito netting hood to cover my face and head and although my hiking partners laughed at me, I escaped relatively unbitten. We were sad that we were not able to get the one box at Sambo's restaurant because they were closed on Sundays but I was really happy to be able to stop there on my way down to the games later in the week. I arrived at Sambos at 9 in the morning, though, and was not able to enjoy any of the delicious crabs that I heard so much about that week.One thing that is important to mention about all of the Games boxes which we found that day is that they all not only contained a wonderful stamp and provided a beautiful memory, but most of them also contained game pieces for the ingenious games that Sewsowbizzy had set up. There were bags full of tiny cards in sealed packages for the Show of Hands poker game and letters for the Scribble game, clues to find whodunit for the exCLUsion game on the lids of the containers, Monyloop values for the Monyloop games, Trail numbers to cross off of our bingo like Trail cards. There was so much going on that I have to admit that I was a bit overwhelmed and confused the first day that we boxed and I am sure that I missed out on some of the treasures.

We went home that night, tired and happy to have added seventeen new stamps to our collection.