Independence Day - PPT re-revisited

Cloudy, 90-95°F. It was already the afternoon by the time I left home today, so I was surprised that of the three-day weekend, I found the most geocaches today. Having no better plan for the day, I went to Northeast Philadelphia to tackle to remainder of the Pennypack Trail (PPT) series of geocaches. First, I continued the lower PPT cache trail from where I stopped on Saturday. At "PPT lower half 19", I found something odd. Near the coordinates, I saw a Gladware container stuck in the base of a tree. I thought that was the cache, so I pulled it out and it turned out to be someone's ashes. (as in cremation remains) Yikes! In the Gladware container, there was a picture of the deceased and a smaller ornate box, which presumably contained the ashes. (I did not open it to check!) "RIP" was written in marker on the Gladware container. It didn't look like a well-thought-out burial job and I'd think they'd use a better container because as any seasoned geocacher will tell you, Gladware containers don't last long.

After getting to the end of the PPT lower half, I continued with the other PPT section. It was less eventful, except for the police notice I saw at "PPT 3" about the serial rapist/murderer. Boy, Northeast Philadelphia is a tough neighborhood! After doing PPT 2 and 3, I drove over to Verree Road to do PPT 14 thru 24. That was the longest walk of the day but I got all those geocaches relatively quickly. Even had time to examine some flowers on the vines. After PPT 24, I went around the neighborhood to pick up more easy geocaches. Finished the day (or so I thought) in the Elkins Park neighborhood, where Wall Park appears to be open even after dusk. (People were playing tennis in the lighted courts, so I suppose it's okay to find the geocache near the tennis courts too.)

Headed off to dinner pretty after that but stopped at Temple University along the way to try some geocaches since street parking was easy late at night. I was actually not sure about "Room with a view" since it is behind a one-way door that you have to prop open with something so it doesn't close and lock behind you. However, I was done with that cache quickly and parking garage security didn't come by. While I was in the Temple University area, I saw some horses tied outside a restaurant. I knew there were stables somewhere in the city but I thought horse-riding was done mostly in Fairmount Park, not on Broad Street in urban North Philadelphia?

And finally, dinner was at Banana Leaf in Philly Chinatown. I had the seafood scramble egg chow fun. This restaurant is open until 1am, which is handy for evenings when I can't stop geocaching. :)