Mickey's Spit Bucket Traditional Geocache
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Difficulty:
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Size: 
(small)
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A Lock-n-Lock near Burgess Meredith Park in Pomona. Burgess Meredith (1907-1997) was well known to my generation for his latter movie roles, such as Rocky Balboa's manager Mickey, or for playing the villain The Penguin in the Batman TV series. He helped establish the Village of Pomona. His house can be seen from Camp Hill Rd. at N 41° 11.047 W 074° 03.226.
Welcome to my stomping grounds. This is my first cache placement and felt it would be a good idea to place it in the area of my childhood adventures. Back then, in the early 80's, this park was not yet referred to as Burgess Meredith Park. We just referred to it as the park at the bottom of the hill. Only a few things have changed since then.
Before this area became a park (including the surrounding development), I believe it was an Orchard. Partial evidence of this can bee seen on the MyTopo map image of this area. There are a few apple trees remaining up Trappers Way, not far from the old farm house (N 41° 11.869 W 074° 02.578) that is now surrounded by the houses of the development. Kinda cool that they left it intact when building up the neighborhood. The pond in the park used to be larger and there was a dam, perhaps for irrigation. Today, in place of the dam, is a nice bridge across the South Branch of the Minisceogo Creek.
The cache is just a little north of the village park. The Long Path (from the G.W. Bridge to Upstate NY) is very close. So if you are hiking up the Long Path, stop by and then hit Walkin Ed's caches further up in Cheesecote Park. If you are driving here for the cache alone, official parking is to the south at the end of the Brookside Drive Cul-de-sac (N 41° 11.678 W 074° 02.355). There is no access from Parkside Ct.
Just a piece of advice, the old path that goes into the woods toward the cache is often flooded by several inches or at least very muddy (thus the wading warning). It does this for about the first 100 yards or so north of the field. Unless it is very dry or frozen over, you might prefer to avoid this mess by first going to the waypoint of N 41° 11.890 W 074° 02.327 near the bridge, and then easily bushwacking back to the path further north where it is dry. It is another way around the fence but still east of the creek. Not sure why this fence is still here since it is basically separating one park from another.
In the cache is a new TB, a penguin, that has the mission of getting to Burgess Meredith's star on Hollywood Boulevard. I hope he appreciates the tribute.
This is also a tribute to the director of a new movie that involves Geocaching called Splinterheads. He was another one of the "bums from the neighborhood", to quote Rocky, who grew up near that farm house and enjoyed playing in this park. I'm still not over the fact that a childhood friend of mine has come out with a movie involving one of my favorite hobbies.
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