There was a mascot gig today in Connecticut, but I chose instead to go to the Covered Bridge Park Fall Picnic at Covered Bridge Park in Allentown, PA. In the end, that proved to be a good choice. I didn't know how good it was until later in the day.
Made an earlier-than-usual start although I still wasn't early enough to make the actual start time for the event. I did 4 geocaches in New Jersey along the way before heading over to the Lehigh Valley. Got some Wawa food and continued onwards to another quick geocache and then the picnic. Had a good time at the picnic. But here's where the problem happened: During the event, I went for Just Log It...BYOP, a geocache that had been placed within the same park for the event. It was then when I saw that my GPS had started malfunctioning. I was on top of the cache site but the GPS was still reading 160 feet. Previously, although the GPS had been broken or flaky, it still at least gave readings that were good enough. Now, it was broken, flaky, and inaccurate. I had a spare GPS receiver, so I started setting it up. But then CinderBankers came along, so I joined them for this cache and two others before heading back to the picnic.
Back at the picnic, the Chinese auction and raffle had begun. I only had a ticket in the raffle, which was for a new eTrex Legend HCx GPS. Every attendee got a free ticket in that raffle. Listened in on the auction, although I wasn't really paying attention. When Linda of the Caching Nuts called the raffle number, I thought it sounded close to my number. So I checked and it WAS my number! I won the new GPS! And it was just in time to replace my malfunctioning eTrex Legend, so that was an amazing bit of luck!
Of course, I had to take the new GPS out for a spin. So I took it out of the box and put in some batteries. Did 11 more geocaches. (4 of those were after dark.) The color display was very nice. The Legend HCx also got satellite lock amazingly quickly every time and had solid GPS reception even under trees and near buildings. All in all, it's a great upgrade to the eTrex Legend.
Jersey City Water Works (New Jersey)
Money Shot (New Jersey)
En Garde! (New Jersey)
Downtown/Main Street USA: New Vernon, NJ (New Jersey)
RESIST (Pennsylvania)
Covered Bridge Park Fall Picnic 2007 (Pennsylvania)
Just Log It...BYOP (Pennsylvania)
"E" Drives me Batty (Pennsylvania)
Covered Bridge Park Cache (Pennsylvania)
Levans micro (Pennsylvania)
Independence micro (Pennsylvania)
Tired? (Pennsylvania)
Geo-Coins on the Move (Pennsylvania)
Neffs Dinosaur (Pennsylvania)
Something Fishy with Baby #19 (Pennsylvania)
The Happy Halloween Cache - Take 2 (Pennsylvania)
Between the Cracks (Pennsylvania)
Shopping for a Micro (Pennsylvania)
Right On (Pennsylvania)
Woo Woo! (Pennsylvania)