#6600 ASP Geobash

There's nothing like celebrating a milestone with a few friends...





We usually head into the woods for a cache on the hundreds. Today it just worked out that this milestone was at Allegany State Park at our favorite event. We spent the day caching with GeaugaGarmin, Chris K, and dbczarina. We had a super dinner with Jenn, Colin, Jon, and Ray. In between we visited with Dove, Kickin, Kachekat, TPrints, MommyTP, Snoop, Rev Mike, ODragon, kcepenn, geobeerer, Barbershop Dru, Mick EMT, Dr. Neal, Peak Baggers, 2Climb, Miss Daisy, Dr. Neal's dogs, and so many other cachers. It was a super, super time.


Even on a grey day, Allegany State Park is beautiful.





There's a reason why they call the area The Enchanted Mountains...

2000 Finds in PA

We were one cache away from 2000 finds in Pennsylvania when we started on the trail. We've been caching in the Coal Bed Road area before and expected a good walk. Hole in the rock cache delivered. The cache was rated as a 4/4. I think the cache owner expected finders to come from the base of the hill. Coming from the bottom up would have earned this cache a 4 terrain rating. Still, it was a 6 mile hike round trip. We had hoped to eventually have 3000-2000-1000 finds in OH-PA-NY. A new job has left us stalled 700-something in NY. It may end up being 4000-3000-1000, but someday. In the meantime, we'll enjoy the journey.


Taking photos with the dogs is often an experience. After five or six tries, we gave up. Eva never seemed to look in the direction of the camera while Gwen had decided to roll on her back on the log looking for rubs. At least they seemed happy.





It's a long way up (and down) going this way. The cache is at a nice rock formation. The view of Allegheny Reservoir was as good as it gets with all the tree cover.





Hmmmm... Ali looking for frogs. Never seen that before. :-)

St Mary's Sportsman Club

It's really hard to describe a day of caching at St Mary's Sportsman Club. First, it will be a day of caching. We have been here before, found nineteen caches on this visit and still left four or five caches unfound. Even if you make use of all the places you can move you geomobile and if you have awd, you will still be walking miles. We moved the Geo-Subie twice, and I had my longest walking day of the year.

Being here is a bit of strange, sensory mixes. Bubba Beernut likes to have fun with his caches so there's no ammo cans in the woods here. There's a mailbox tribute to his friend's 1000th cache, a fake birdbox, a "graveyard"... You can get the idea. I would worry about spoilers, but as long as you put in the work, if you can't find Bubba's caches, you need a new hobby (or they're not there).

In the mix of all the unique cache containers, the Club property is this strange mix of gas wells, timber cuts, roads for the drilling and logging operations offset with quiet old woods, super wildflowers, and a very nice trout stream mixed in. Be careful you don't fall in a gravel pit. Bring extra quarters so you can feed the palomino and rainbow trout. Be prepared to dodge the members doing anything from picnicing to shooting at the rifle range. Most of all be prepared for lots of smiley logs when your day is done.

The Cache No One Liked

Today we archived the cache most people hated. We were surprised at how upset cachers were about this cache. It was located in a wetlands area of a State Game Lands in Warren County. Stage one was an easy peanut butter jar in a tree crotch hide behind a bat habitat. Stage two was located on a high spot of the wetlands in a tree root. The logs got really ugly last summer when a cacher claimed the water was polluted and hazardous. Everyone said they got soaked. The funny thing was we didn't get soaked when we hid the cache, and I only got a wet foot when we retrieved the cache. It was one of those caches that could be found by going from point A to point B if you had no fear of getting wet. If you didn't want to get wet, you had to walk and work to find a dry path, but it was possible. It was also a cache where you could make it much easier by timing your find.

The game has changed a lot, mostly not for the best. The fun caches in places to explore have been buried by a flood of micros where you need to act like a shoplifter to retrieve the cache. Slinking around parking lots chasing micros may be fun one or two days a year when the temperature is 10 degrees, but for me the thrill is still being outside somewhere exploring new areas.

Geocoins

We've been geocaching for over five years now. We've accumulated a lot of geocoins. I say accumulated, because we haven't bought many. We've limited most of our purchases to groups in which we belong and events or places where we've attended or cached. The rest have come mostly from friends, a few from prizes at events we've attended, a couple found in caches, and a number from geocaching promotions and challenges. Last week I was activating a few coins to share with attendees at our event. I was searching in the geocaching forums to find a way to retrieve an activation code for one of the coins when I noticed a Tardis geocoin! If you've never watched Dr. Who, this portion of this post will be lost on you, but the Doctor, Daleks, the Companions, K-9, and the Tardis have been a favorite for me for a long time. I started watching this BBC series years ago when PBS showed it regularly. Now it has sadly slipped into the world of cable, and we are not that interested in television. Yes, it is a geeky show, but I am one of the few people to have my own Dr. Who BBC record album. You don't remember record albums? Maybe some other posting in one of my different blogs... :-)

Anyways, the arrival of the Tardis coin and activating a few for the event got me thinking about a few of the coins we have and where they come from. We have a small box of stuff we have traded from caches. Our coins stay in that box. The stuff is silly including small toys, signature items from the days when geocaching wasn't about the numbers and people left sig items in caches, and the coins. They are memories of the times we have spent together and with friends on the trail. Many coins have special memories.

The Year 1 Millennium Cell Coin came from a cache during a 2007 vacation to the Delaware Water Gap and Pine Creek Gorge. We cached in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We hiked the AT and visited Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. The coin isn't trackable, but it's a much different coin and part of a great memory.

Delaware Water Gap

Pine Creek Gorge


Eleven coins in our collection came from our adventures in the Allegheny Geotrail. The AGT spans ten counties with up to twenty caches in each county. All the coins are well done, but my favorite is the Warren coin. It is simple and elegent in its design. It is also a place we call home. From caching through Warren, McKean, Clarion, and Forest Counties with friends to caching together on a vacation in 2008 through Elk, Cameron, Jefferson, and Potter Counties, each AGT coin has its own memories.

Tanbark Trail... Warren County AGT


It was really a strange coincidence for us to find yet another edition of the Millennium Cell coin while vacationing for AGT caches. We made a trip from Potter County to Pine Creek Gorge and a few caches when we found this nice coin.

Leonard Harrison State Park



We have completed the five state park series in the Ohio State Parks each year caches have been placed. This year, the five park series was joined by a nineteen park series with 100 geocoins being awarded to those completing the series. It was a little pushed trying to visit more state parks than usual, but we had a great time.

Tinkers Creek State Park



We would probably have never completed the New Jersey County Challenge if Ali's sister had not gotten married this summer. We had a few counties near her sister's home from visits and a couple counties from our last trip to Delaware Water Gap, but it wasn't until the wedding date was set that we decided to make New Jersey a vacation spot this year. I was glad we did. It is a super state with amazing variety.

Monmouth County New Jersey


It was really strange to find yet another Millennium Cell coin during this trip. We don't cache eastern PA and New Jersey that often.

Sweet Arrow Lake Park


Soon the snow will be low enough to return to the woods and create more memories.

18 July 2007 #3200 Millions of Midges
The title doesn't exaggerate. The park for this milestone is a wetland area near the Chagrin River. After the find, we headed to this nearby location to enjoy a wonderful sunset.

27 June 2007 #3100 Rob's Invite





This nice cache is located along the Mount Tammany Trail located in Worthington State Forest. The cache is located fairly low on the trail, but the rest of the walk is well worth the climb.

9 June 2007 #3000 Dance Hall Hill



We expected a bit more from #3000 since it was a terrain three cache, but it was in Oil Creek State Park. It was a perfect day. We all had a good time including the dogs being silly around the cache site. The history of the area was interesting. It is always surprising to see traces of past lives that have come and gone. Not much beyond the old pole supports remained of this old dance hall.

2 June 2007 Spring Cache Fever (Medina Metroparks)

We traveled to the park with Geauga Garmin and teamed up with Cold One for the event. We weren't certain he would ever be the same and we had a new team name, Team Nature Nutz. Near the end of the Medina event, we met up with Lep and made our plans to meet Chris K for an afternoon of caching fun at Portage Lakes.

There were lots of laughs and lots of finds.

12 May 2007 #2900 Nightmare in the Woods

We actually went hunting back-to-back milestones with a friend. This time Goat Haunt joined us for a day of Medina caching. We wanted to find this legendary tough cache as our milestone. At a cache earlier in the day, we had also run into Geo Caver. We stopped to chat for a bit a mentioned that this cache was on our list for the day. As we pulled in the parking area for this cache, we saw Geo Caver's geomobile immediately. Got a tough cache to find for a milestone? No problem, just bring along Geo Caver. He found the tough stages of this multi in almost no time.

24 April 2007 Benchmark #100 Fairport Harbor Lighthouse

It was cold; really cold. We stopped to spend the late afternoon walking the beach. Since I had the gps with benchmarks, we looked for a few of those on the way. This one was #100. It's not a part of the game that many enjoy, but we have a good time finding these.

19 April 2007 #2800 Wildlife Woods Load

This was a different milestone for us since we had the pleasure of a friend joining us. GeaugaGarmin joined us for a pleasant walk through Hudson Woods. This was our second visit to this quiet park near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We had fun snagging this multi and spending the evening with our friend.