POTPOURRI--

Ohio Geocaching friend Bill Neihoff (known as the Lighthouse Nut in geocaching circles) takes a leisurely approach to shooting a group photo of the rest of our caching platoon at an Audubon Society facility in Polk County FL recently.

He and his bride Diane were spending some time in the area and we, along with other Ohio caching friends Greg and Leslie, were their guests for a four-day romp in the area generally between Tampa and Orlando.

Our featured caching effort involved the many preserved, natural areas of Polk County each with one geocache designed to attract cachers to visit where scenes like the above were commonplace.

We wound up our caching at the Bok Tower in Lake Wales where their visitor's center proudly displays their adopted name, America's Taj Mahal.  Click here and take a closer peek.  That's Roger (Zip) an in-law the the Neihoff's with his back to the camera, with Greg, Diane, Sue, Leslie and Bill shown in clockwise order.

The following weekend found us at the NY Mets baseball, Spring training facility for their home opener of the pre-season at Port St. Lucie, FL.

We were treated to a nail-biting contest which finished 9 innings with the teams tied 4 to 4--whereupon, rather than moving into extra innings, everyone grabbed up their gear and disappeared from the field.  Evidently Spring training games don't feature baseball's equivalent of overtime.

That's our Syracuse, NY friend Dick Weeks with the blue ball cap in the right foreground.  His sister-in-law Wendy Smart is the gal in the light green top with her hubby Brad behind her peering toward the camera.  Her mom and step-dad are to her left where we were enjoying terrific seats looking down on the third base line near home plate.

Over 7,000 fans nearly filled their very modern stadium, Tradition Field.