Most people who have ever boxed with me know that I am an early morning person and amazingly, I don't usually get any resistance from my friends when I name a time for starting my boxing day. That is why we were able to watch the sunrise over the Susquehanna at Highpoint a week ago and why we were able to observe the full moon setting and a sunrise at Cheslen Preserve this time out.
Neither Dogs with Wings and I had never been at this Chester County park before so we were not sure what to expect. One thing we didn't expect was a tree like the one below. It was totally covered in poison ivy, much like kudzu covers the trees in the south. So the start of our walk gave us a really icky feeling.
First stop on our hike was at the Stargazers Stone. This was one of the original stones placed by Mason and Dixon to define the boundaries between Pennsylvania and Maryland. This rather neat looking stone wall surrounded the actual stone.
The actual 300 year old marker has been worn down to a little nibbly piece of rock.
Box found and on to the second of the three boxes in this park. We passed by this Potters Field which is also the burial place for Indian Hannah, the last native Indian to die in Chester County.
This little cairn was hidden in the brush along the side of the trail. If I didn't know that Black Swan was currently hiking the Appalachian Trail, I would have thought that he had taken this hike recently.
One of the other boxes that we planned on finding almost didn't get found. Although it isn't really obvious in this picture, the grasses in this field were waist high and it had been raining for about three days before. We had to wade through about 30 feet of them to reach the tree line at field's edge. We debated doing this and almost gave up but then, being true letterboxers, we plunged into the mucky mess. As I placed each left foot down I could only think of the snakes that were slithering around me. As I placed each right foot down I could only think of the ticks that I would be taking out with me. Once we got to the tree line, the way into the box was so full of brambles and prickers that again, we thought of giving up. But knowing that we would never want to walk through that muck again, we once more proved our determination and plunged into this new mess. We were rewarded with the box, I think that both of us had really worried that we would have gone through all of this and the box would be missing. Back out to the trail and we congratulated ourselves at being so bold and daring and only then we both mentioned out loud that snakes and ticks had been prominent in both of our minds.
After leaving Cheslen we did a couple more boxes at a really boring "soccer mom" park and then, since we weren't yet ready to call it a day, we headed for Nottingham Park and a couple of boxes there. We were not successful at finding the first of the boxes. It was listed as a 1-2 mile hike and we ended up walking about 4 miles and not finding the landmarks in the clue. Fortunately for us, our way out took us past this little unexpected monument in the middle of the woods which was also the home of another box, which this time was there.
We sat on a little bridge which spanned this creek and stamped in, longing to take our boots off and soak our feet which had just carried us over nine miles. But we were so close to being finished for the day that we decided to keep our boots on and head back to the cars. Unfortunately, Dogs with Wings backpack rebelled and decided to take a quick dip in the creek. My friend was a bit uncomfortable heading back to the car with sore feet and a wet backpack but we both were happy with the boxes that we had found and already dreaming about our next trip out.
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