Dine and Cache
In January I moved away from State College and down to West Virginia. It has been absolutely wonderful to live under the same roof as my husband after three and a half years of living apart (besides trying to get all of the cats to agree with each other), but we do miss a few things about State College: the restaurants, the awesome public transit, and the stunning places to hike, bike, and soak in the beauty of nature. So we planned a weekend trip entirely focused on eating with a little bit of geocaching worked in to make good on some old DNFs and clean up at least a few of the lower terrain rated new geocaches.
Our first stop was Olde New York. Don’t let the name fool you, this restaurant has some of the finest German food you will find. The gem of the menu, in our opinion, is the jaegerschnitzel. The breaded cutlet is crisp on the outside and moist on the inside over a bed of pickled cabbage and my favorite spatzle, with an utterly divine gravy to top it all off. Impressed by the fact we drove three hours just to eat there, the proprietor offered us complementary dessert—that we just did not have any room for!
Our second stop was Brody’s Diner. State College has a lot of wonderful breakfast spots, the quintessential being the Waffle Shop. I cannot dispute the greatness of the Waffle Shop, but if you’re willing to drive just a little ways out of town, Brody’s Diner in Centre Hall will serve you the best French toast you will ever find (except maybe from your mama’s griddle). Made with their house-baked cinnamon swirl bread, the French toast is sweet, fluffy, and purely addictive. Alongside a hearty “Brody’s Breakfast” of bacon, eggs, toast, and perfect home fries it is fuel for a day of adventure!
After two enormous meals and a third one planned, we sought out some geocaches. Like in most places, after you’ve lived there a few months the low hanging fruit is mostly snapped up. But, with the benefit of a few months, we had some options (anything too strenuous may have meant losing my breakfast). The highlight of this new batch of caches was Combat Vet Cache, where after a pleasant walk in a field we came across the cache and met the cache owner and had a talk about the beautiful day, the beautiful location, and how great it was that caching can bring people together.
The other types of geocaches we sought were the past failures seeking redemption. In this category were two well-celebrated finds: At Witt’s End (appropriately titled) and (CYOA) First to Find.
At Witt’s End is in a picturesque area with easy parking, which came in handy after the five attempts it took to locate it. We sought this traditional cache during warm weather, during frigid weather (when the grass and weeds are down) and we were so sure we had looked everywhere within 100 feet of the coordinates. But apparently, after five rounds, there was one place we had not looked… and there it was. After ensuring there were no spiders present on the husband, high-fives abounded.
The other great victory was (CYOA) First to Find. This may be one of the most uniquely set up caches around. It is similar to the Create Your Own Adventure, CYOA, books you probably read or at least heard about in grade school where you’d read a chapter and at the end of the chapter you could choose one of multiple next chapters, and each choice would tell the story a little differently. Of course, with geocaching there can only be one final location so the trick here was the follow the clues until either you found the cache or found a dead-end. If you found a dead-end, you then had to figure out where you made your mistake. On a very cold day, we set out to complete this cache. However, on the day we tried, the very last clue that would send us to the final coordinates was missing! The wonderful and crafty CO was kind enough to offer us the final coordinates but until today, we were never able to “find” this cache and award it the favorite point it deserved.
But all of this caching did nothing but make us hungry. Last but not least, we returned to Centre Hall to fill up on some perfect prime rib at the Whistle Stop. The Whistle Stop is located in the old Centre Hall train station and, while the food is always delicious, on Saturday they serve prime rib and it is just the absolute best. It is so tender and flavorful that I have never needed to use steak or any other type of sauce on it. It pairs well with their garden salad topped with the house oil and garlic dressing (it is about as addicting as Brody’s French toast). The owner of this restaurant is also a native West Virginia and all around super lady. We never leave hungry or dissatisfied!
With tummies full and feet tired, we started on the long trip back home to West Virginia, though we were wishing we could just go on back to my old townhouse for a nap first. Life goes on, thankfully we can still return for great, local food!