South Of The Border

What can I say- I am a FOOL for South Of The Border on I95 in Dillon SC. My earliest memory of this wonderland starts when I was in grade school and some lucky kids would come back from vacation with South Of The Border bumperstickers proudly stuck to their notebooks. I never knew quite what it was, but I knew it was good. Jump ahead 40 years to our first roadtrip to Florida and as we drove down 95, the billboards started. Pedro is the campy resort mascot. He is on their 175 billboards. Billboards that delight and entertain with sayings like "you never sausage a place" written over a giant sausage link, or Pedro's weather forecast- "chili today and hot tamale". They are wonderful. When we pulled into South Of The Border for the first time it is sensory overload. There is a 9 story Pedro to greet you. An amusement park. Six restaurants. Drug store, Pantry, Mexico Sop East and Mexico Shop West. Rocket City and Fort Pedro. Gas stations, a truck stop, and the South Of The Border Motor Inn, under the Pleasure Dome which also covers their indoor pool. Statues of all sorts of fun animals, real and imaginary abound. Neon, neon and more neon. Did I mention that it is campy? :)

Over the years we have had the opportunity to stay at our beloved South Of The Border and the one thing I cannot resist is photo- oping the dogs here with the statues. As we now only have our wonderful Bear, and he is a recent family member, this past year he had his first trip to Florida and consequently to South Of The Border. He is far less enthused looking then he felt I am sure- I mean, who wouldnt be thrilled to have daddy stick them under a giant ape, or onto a dinosaur!

And by the way, there is geocaching to be done here, the rooms are reasonable and really nice, the Sombrero Restaurant had wonderful mexican food, the amusement park rides were fun and just browsing the ten plus stores was enough to keep you busy! We can't wait to get back to see Pedro. To visit the website: http://www.thesouthoftheborder.com/

A beautiful winter day to cache!

Saturday was just beautiful out - not cold and very sunny! We decided to try and get the house bound blues from our minds and go geocaching up at the state game lands in Tobyhanna. One cache in particular caught our attention because a gate that normally blocks the access road was now open (hunting season) and thus the hike much shorter so we bundled up and headed for Beeches of SGL127. ( Actually credit for knowing about the gate goes to our friend Allison).

We arrived at the parking area after a wonderful ride through the game lands. Paul drove very slow so the window could roll down and Bear could get some wind surfing in. This was his first winter hike to cache with us and I was afraid he may not enjoy it and insist on being carried but he was a trooper!

We arrived at GZ and spent awhile searching. This was our first snow cache and we did not know if it would be buried or if we could find it. After passing it by several times Paul spotted it. I really think that Bear should be able to help us a bit more- he could sniff them out? I don't understand why he will not cooperate on that but I can see that in the spring when we get out more that is something we will work on. So we signed the log, returned it to it's hide and headed back to the car. By this time Bear's feet had gotten cold and he gave Daddy the "up" sign ( he reaches up with both paws over his head) and Paul obliged with a ride.

Back at the car we decided it was just so nice out that we would stay on the game lands road and take it to Gouldsboro, then head for their state park.

At Gouldsboro we found ice fishermen! They looked to be having a good time, they were very far out on the lake though- to far to try and go chat with! It made us remember going through Minnesota in winter and up there the lakes freeze so hard that the ice fishermen actually put up structures with heat in them! As you drive along the lakes you see the smoke coming out of little chimneys! Not here though, and on we went, walking along the shoreline on the frozen lake just for the novelty of doing it.

Alas by now it was getting late and the sun goes down early so we three headed home. We had a good day however and dreamed of our next snowy cache!