Jersey Shore Work All Wawas

I wanted to go to Wawa and so I did. Three of them: in Brick, Toms River, and Lacey Township. There's a story leading to that Lacey Township one, which I will get to. In amateur radio, there is something known as "work all states", where the amateur radio operator's goal is to collect QSL cards from all 50 states. (At least, that's how it was explained to me once by a Where's Georger.) So I'm wondering if I'm anywhere near visiting all Wawa stores, or at least the ones in New Jersey. When that happens, I'd have worked all Wawas. Obviously then, I'd have to keep better records of the ones I've been to.

The trip started by cutting across Northern NJ because there were a bunch that were too far for weekday caching that I wanted to get to. There was also another "After Work" cache in the same park as the first one. I didn't do the second one yesterday evening because it hadn't been approved at the time. It's also rather confusing that both caches have the same name, but I digress.

Towards the evening, I was in Lacey Township looking for a geocache. I saw a police car go by on the road. Then I saw the same police car coming back slowly to where I was. Uh oh, I thought. But it turns out the police officer was just curious about the game. I showed him the cache info and he pretty much figured out what it was about from the printout. From what he said, he sounded like he'd run into geocachers before so I asked if he'd seen anyone else at that spot looking for the cache. No, he hadn't. But the next thing he told me was rather illuminating: He said that looking around in the woods wasn't an unusual activity, but it's usually a scavenger hunt. Then he said have fun and best of luck. See? That's the difference between Lacey Township and Ocean City. In Lacey Township, the police officer knew that the activity is harmless and that not every outsider hanging around is a terrorist. In Ocean City, on the other hand, the police drove up onto the boardwalk and told me to leave. So which town will I favor with my tourism dollars? Anyway, I was suitably impressed by this encounter, so I changed my plans slightly to have dinner in Lacey Township. Since I didn't know very many places there, I just went to Wawa on their main road. And so that's one of the three Wawa stores I visited today.