Geocaching Leather-man

Last year we started this hobby by finding large caches on the scenic trails in and around the Finger Lakes of NY. The views of the gorges, overlooks and trails were just what I needed each week to give me a re-charge knowing nature in it’s glory was still in charge. We did visit some suburban caches on some local trails and even picked up some lamp post micros. That prompted me to set up a filter to delete all micros.

This year, I added the micros back into the pocket queries and removed multi caches and puzzles. Our goal was for exercise and chasing down leaky film canisters 50 feet from the car wasn’t getting it. Spending time entering coordinates for multis and solving puzzles doesn’t fit into the exercise equation either. Since adding back the micros we have found 3 of the tiny nano caches smaller than a dime. The first one was neat.

In order to get the walking in that we wanted, and needed, we have started increasing the amount of caches we go after. Last year 4 caches on the deep woods trails was a days work and usually a 7 mile hike. Last weekend we mixed it up and between the micros and short hikes we grabbed 18 caches in one day and only walked 7 miles. Most of them were in towns and out of the 18 there was one “Rails to Trails” Kodak moment.

With only 23 caches left before we meet our yearly goal the plan is to grab them up early and then go back to the long wooded hikes away from populated areas and take our time enjoying what got us into this hobby to begin with.

I should really be writing about more of what we do besides geocaching as that hobby has taken a back seat to our craft work this year.

That said, we did take this past weekend to do some catch up caching. On 6/9 Saturday morning we were behind our goal of reaching another 100 caches for 2007 by 16 caches. I dug around on GASK and came up with a couple of spots that we could go to find larger numbers with less hiking. We ended up finding 11 on Saturday and another 8 on Sunday to get us back up to speed. On Saturday we worked our way around Keuka lake and picked up some interesting caches including one of those tiny micros the size of a large pencil eraser in the town of Hammondsport.

At the top of that same lake we were hiking on a wide trail along the lake to grab one of Rocky’s caches. As were turned a curve on the trail Bambi was there to great us. He must have been less than a week old based on how wobbly he was as we approached him. I grabbed a quick shot as he moved away. It’s not as clear as I would have liked but we were both moving when I got the camera ready.

Now that we are caught up we plan another outing involving some longer hikes in Sampson state park were the large white deer herd is located. Maybe I’ll be able to get some better shots.