A Change of Scene
This morning I decided to get moving early so that I could get some fun stuff in before a possible call-in. I had a professional reason to visit the Palm Beach Zoo today, so I picked the nearby Lake Trail for my morning walk. This is the opposite of the unstructured native landscaping of Jonathan Dickinson State Park. The Lake Trail is a very nice paved bike path along the Intracoastal waterway dissecting the multi-million dollar homes along Palm Beach Island. The gardens are manicured and perfectly structured, and the path is dotted with wealthy joggers and housekeepers walking dogs.
I will usually ride my bicycle from the Society for the Four Arts to the Pier which is about a 9-mile round trip. When I do that, I don’t really take pictures since it is not as easy to stop frequently. Today, I chose to walk so that I could snap some pictures and have the opportunity to hunt some geocaches.
Within about a mile, you hit the Flagler Museum, the Sea Gull Cottage (Palm Beach’s oldest house), and the amazing giant kapok tree.
My first geocache was found near the square hedges. It was a little challenging since it was so tiny, but I got it! It was too small to put anything in, so I left our footprint nearby.
This is my first day really finding it a challenge to look carefully for geocaches. Usually there aren’t many people around so I can duck and prod and lift stuff. Today, I had a bunch of Nosy Nancies watching my every move and looking at me with suspicion. At one point a guy with his dog just stood there staring at me, so that I just went to nonchalantly sit on the edge of the water until they got bored and left.
I still had to give up on that one because there were just too many people coming by and I knew I looked strange nosing around in the bushes. So I went on the the next one down the trail. I expected this one to be elsewhere considering what it was named, but I ended up finding it after all in a place I nearly missed because I wouldn’t have thought to open it!
This was also a nice place to sit and contemplate the clouds rolling in.
I decided to turn around after this one since it was nearly time for the sculpture gardens to open and I had a date with the Zoo team soon. On my way back, I failed on finding the two toughies since there were just too many people around – I’ll have to come out early some morning to try again. I got the last one right before I got back to the car – just hidden for the first time a couple of days ago!
___
By now, the Sculture Garden at the Society of the Four Arts was open, so I looked around a little bit before moving on to my errands.
I headed out to the zoo with dreams of an afternoon spent at the Mounts Botanical Garden. Alas, as I was walking out back to my car after the zoo, I had the text from work calling me in. The Garden will be another day (lucky you….no more pictures of flowers to have to look at!)
Tags: Geocaching, Palm Beach, West Palm Beach