Barbie Lost Her Backpack

Barbie was hiking in the woods in New York and left behind her backpack complete with a logbook.

Cloud 9 Visit

 In the 1960's Cloud 9 was a small amusement park located on Mount Herman in Olean New York.  Dave w/o id has hidden fourteen caches on the land now owned by the city of Olean.  There is a 15th cache hidden in the area by another hider.

The caches are given high terrain ratings with a trail that takes about three hours to complete.

There are some great views

And some interesting old pieces of the Cloud 9 past.

If you're looking for yet another Fizzy grid, this series will fill a few.  There are a few interesting and creative hides mixed in.  Start your journey here.

3-D Printed Geocache Containers

On a stop at Harns Marsh, we enjoyed joining a pair of Canadian cachers for a few finds.  They were speaking positively of a cacher who was printing 3d geocache containers.  Ali took a look and spotted a hide that on out travel plan.  When we found stage 1, it was a 3d printed screw-top micro.  It was dry inside, but much of Florida is dry during early February.  April through fall will be a much better indicator.

I wasn't expecting the second one in a small, New York town on Lake Erie's southern shore.  It actually took me by surprise when I finally spotted the printing grooves.  There was a series of caches hidden for local students to find so they could explore geocaching.  These used to a good way to at least introduce youth to the game.  This would be even better if the nearby school had student participation with the design and printing of the container.  It was reasonably protected from harsh weather so it was hard to judge the inetgrity of the container.  I felt confident this would be water tight.

I've been curious about 3d containers since being told by a local cacher that Cuyahoga County Libraries now have 3d printers for use in their Innovation Centers.  They need to approve the design and the user needs to provide materials, but think of the creative options for containers.  I have no idea how many hours the containers above required to print or the cost of raw materials, but it could be a new twist on physical hides.

A Man's Gotta Know...

his limitations.

Yeah, this was not gonna happen.  I will take some risks geocaching, but there has to be some sort of reason, like an amazing view.  If you are interested in giving this one a try, it is in Almond, New York with an exit from I-86 nearby.  It seems to have been last actually found in July 2012.

Spring Awakening

Caches on the Finger Lakes Trail near Cortland, New York don't get visited often.  Two of the caches I found were 2007 hides so they have been in place for a long time.  The four caches have averaged  6.5 finds per year.  Besides being mostly in state forests with terrible roads, extreme snow, low temperatures, and short days in the winter make caching in for four to six months really challenging unless caching with snowshoes and a shovel.

This week I was in James Kennedy State Forest after work and stopped for four finds along the Finger Lakes Trail.  It was a spring awakening for the caches since half hadn't been found since July 2018 while the others had been last found in October.  The roads were as awful as ever since the state does near zero maintenance.  One was nearly impassable as someone was in the process of doing a lousy timber cut (good forest management practices actually promote forest health - this cut did not).  Still, it was an evening out hiking a section of the North Country Trail, known as the Finger Lakes Trail in New York.  It was mentally rewarding.

There was no smiley for the last log to sign. I always stop to sign trail registers.

So leave those parking lots behind and head out for a look in the woods.  Awaken an ammo can.  The pill bottles and key holders will wait.

Geocaching 2018 In Photos

Geocaching for us is about being together and enjoying the amazing world around us. 2018 was filled with finds at amazing places. These were bits of the most memorable from our year.

Before a late January visit to Florida, we made a late afternoon visit to Geneva State Park to give Liz and Phin a big walk before they headed to camp. This icy inlet was hosting a number of woodpeckers on a bright afternoon.

The dogs were at camp, and we were in Florida for adventure. From Lover's Key and Myakka State Parks to Fakahatchee Swamp, it was a memorable week as January rolled into February.

We came home and spent a spring-like afternoon with the dogs in a PA State Gamelands finding our 16,000th cache.

We ended March on Easter weekend with a super hike for some Hatch Run Acorn Series caches on Collins Pine property in Pennsylvania.

With time running short for the virtual reward deadline, we made an annual April visit to Sheldon Marsh and identified possible parts for our Virtual Reward cache. It's a favorite location for us and a great place for a virtual.

In May, I was on a trip to North Carolina when I was able to avenge a dnf from many years ago with a return visit to the falls at Fancy Gap and a find.

Back in New York, we spent a fun day with friends on the trail at the ASP Geobash.

June was a month of mostly business travel for me. I made one of my frequent Spokane trips during the month and used the long dats as an opportunity to visit Pend Oreille County for a long hike in the heat.

We took advantage of my return flights to complete the second Lorain County GeoTrail.

In July we made certain Liz and Phineas hit the trail in Elk for a nice, long gamelands hike and enjoyed a walk along the rail trail in Spartansburg before we dropped them at doggie camp and headed to SW Ohio to finish the last of the Ohio Great 880 Challenge.

Our July adventures set up a wet trip to Delaware County Ohio in August where we made a find on the lightly visited Ohio State Park Challenge.

For September, we finally returned to one of our longer dnf's as we completed the Trail of the Turtles. We also enjoyed a long hike on the Tanbark with Lizzie and Phin.

October was our big vacation for the year. We headed south to revisit favorite places and explore new ones.

Quebec Run

Swallow Falls

Ohiopyle State Park

On the way home we stopped at the virtual celebrating the Night of the Living Dead and the start of zombies in culture.

They're Coming to Get You Ali...

The Fall in Allegany State Park has given us some great memories. We made another visit in early November with Liz and Phin.

Novembers in Ohio can often be quite grey, but we were able to enjoy a bright blue afternoon caching in Bath Nature Preserve.

I revisited the Bath area on a more typical November day while Ali was visiting family and avenged a prior DNF at Camp Hilaka by a super waterfall cache.

Short December days often limit our caching options, but a few vacation days to spend gave us the opportunity to spend one last 2018 day at Allegany State Park with Liz and Phin.

Hopefully 2019 will give us new geocaching adventures as memorable as 2018.

Saying Good-Bye to 2016

We started our 12th year of geocaching at Hatch Run in Pennsylvania. Phineas the Geobeagle started the new year by slipping his leash at Hatch Run and sending us on a multi-mile chase through the woods and across icy cold streams.

Phin came home after a neighbor to Hatch Run called us about 2am. His condition was much less worse than his blood covered coat his kind rescuer found him wearing. Life is never boring, or quiet, with a beagle.

After Phin had time to rest and recover, we took advantage of a very mild winter to begin the Stark Parks GeoTour. It was relatively easy winter caching with plenty of trail time and finds.

The mild winter continued into February and allowed us the opportunity to visit some nice rock caches while I was burning a personal day I was about to lose at the office.

I made my first trip of the year to Spokane and was able to find a few Spokane GeoTour caches after work. The winter in Eastern Washington was also mild.

The March caching in Tulsa was easy with spring blossoms on the trees during my visit.

We found our 14,000th cache in Elk County Pennsylvania.

In April, we cached through some of the season's deepest snow in the ANF.

A few days later we were watching young eagles on the shores of Lake Erie.

I finished the Spokane GeoTour at the end of the month and made a first longer hike at Iller Rocks on a spring evening.

In May, we spent a very wet day with friends at the ASP GeoBash in New York.

We spent back-to-back days exploring Medina County as we completed the county's GeoTrail.

I took advantage of the latest sunsets of the year on a business trip to hike for an old cache at Keystone Lake near Tulsa.

We spent the 4th of July holiday time with visits to Sinnemahoning State Park and Shaggers Inn Pond where we were treated to seeing a nesting pair of ospreys on the water.

We spent a surprisingly enjoyable vacation exploring southern Ohio. Despite more than a little rain we enjoyed the sights and the areas and spotted our first five-lined skinks and their blue tales.

The trip was also filled with butterflies.

We also made a return visit to Mound City. It had been years since we last visited. This time there are geocaches there. :)

August was one of our most non-caching months ever as Ali spent the month managing the crews brought in to restore the exterior of our 1850 home. In car terms it was more of a resto-mod with some modern upgrades, but her efforts were well worth a nearly month-long hiatus from geocaching.

We were a little more active on the geocaching trails in September enjoying a late summer return to Hatch Run. Phineas stayed on his leash for this visit.

Sunsets were still late enough for me to hunt a few older Ranger Rick caches after work on my last business trip to Spokane.

Ali joined me in October for a business trip to Tulsa. We drove over the weekend through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and used my travel day to make the last of the journey through Kansas and into Oklahoma. Our return trip home included brief visits to Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

While in Missouri, we visited our third section of the Berlin Wall while geocaching.

Sunset was fading as we stopped by the Kansas homestead of the Ingalls family. Ali hoped for a return visit when the buildings were open, but they have limited days. Hopefully we can reverse the trip on another journey

We stopped for a cache and a visit to this attractive old mill in Arkansas.

Our last big stop was Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. It was a super way to top the trip.

We didn't really expect to make a trip to Arizona in November. I try to have a member of my team visit a safety conference for molten aluminum every other year since many of our employees are on site at these locations each year. This year's conference was in Phoenix so I made time to make the trip. Ali joined me.

Phoenix was hot which made me very happy. Two visits to South Mountain Park gave me the opportunity to warm my bones and prepare for the inevitable Great Lakes cold. We were lucky to be in the desert at South Mountain as the Super Moon rose for the evening.

As much as I enjoyed the heat and the hiking at South Mountain, our visit to the Grand Canyon was awesome. Words and pictures cannot describe the sights of three days on the trail.

Winter weather and short days returned to the Great Lakes in force by December. Our caching was restricted to quicker finds until we reached the holidays.

Since geocaching is now all about the numbers, souvenirs.... I guess this post should include a few of them as well. We were hoping for 15,000 finds by the end of the year. We won't make that goal. I have no idea of how many we will still need because I am still logging July finds, but it seems we are around 14,850. A few years ago we had decided we had seen enough light posts and guard rails and began restricting our micro hunts. It worked as we now have many more regulars than micros and will soon have more smalls.

Being more selective continues to boost our difficulty and terrain ratings. We are up to 1.82 for terrain. We missed our double fizzy this year with two open squares remaining. We have six spots remaining for a triple fizzy.

We are now at 37 states with caches found. Alaska and Hawaii are looming nearer. The good thing as we get closer to finds in 50 states is all the amazing states still waiting for visits. New Mexico, Utah, the Dakotas, and Colorado are still there for visits. Nevada brings the promise of maybe a trip to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon. Louisiana and Mississippi are waiting as possible birding adventures along the Gulf Coast. It's been years since I visited Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming. There's so much to see still and ever fewer years...

2017 will be a decision point for me as a reviewer. I'm in my tenth year of reviewing and starting to wish for the chance to garden again. My career is busier than ever and I find myself reviewing more and more geocaches which hold no interest for me as a reviewer. I also can't remember the last time we got out of the house on the weekend or a holiday or left the motel on a vacation day before noon or later when the reviewing was done. I've met all the reviewing goals I had with the exception of reviewing ten years. The next few months will see. If the end is near, I will mostly miss the reviewer panels and getting to know so many great people.

Go out and find a cache to toast the new year. They are out there waiting for you. Try turning off the micros and maybe even the smalls and go for a walk to hunt a nearby ammo can or tupperware. Better yet, head out with a snap lock or a clean peanut butter container and place a new hide for others to find.

Happy New Year! May your geocaching memories in the coming year be many and may your DNF's be few.