Naples Leather-man

With the approach of hunting season we decided to finish up our goal of 100 cache finds for the 2006 year this past weekend.

Rather than go into a blow by blow description of each of the finds I thought about listing my choices for the top 5 out of 100 finds for the year. These are the most memorable caches for me and the reasons why.

1. Number 1 on this list has to be The Spot GC39, the main reason is that it’s the oldest surviving cache East of the Mississippi. The hike was an old style hike, which means, if you want the find you are going to have to work for it. The greatest part of this cache was being followed down the trail, on the way out, by an eagle.
2. My second most favorite was Above Ground Railroad GCQEEF, there were 2 directions that you could approach this cache and I chose the one which required crossing an old and abandoned railroad tressel, scored a big point with that and then the hide was in plain site and it took some time to spot it.
3. High Tor Rabbit Trial GC11A8, another old cache placed in the old style which required lots of hiking. Bob Bowter has a bit of a wicked mind when it comes to his hides and this one is placed in the middle of a berry thicket. Very tough to get to and the last 50 feet can be painful, I loved it.
4. Canadice II GCC18, another of the older hides and another evil one by Bob Bowter. What made this one tough was the last 3/4 of a mile had to be done by bushwhacking up a very, very steep grade. It was the hardest hike in the first 100 finds, bar none.
5. Doin it Italian Style GC1F5A, I cant list my top choices without including this one. The reason I remember it over so many others was the location. It was placed about 1/4 of a mile off a circular trail and we hiked most of that trail before realizing what was going on and just broke into bushwhack mode to find the container. It was a good thing I marked the location of the car on the way in because we were so turned around up there it could have taken hours of hiking to even find the trail again.

Those top five will probably stick in my mind for awhile. We may have met our 100 goal, but we are not done for the year, heck, there’s 3 months left to hunt caches and I’m sure we will grab a few more before the year is over.

Just as we expected, it’s been a month since we found the time to go caching again.
With 19 caches left to meet our goal we chose to do another cache run to clean up an area north of us. We had 12 caches loaded in our GPSr and Palm and off we went.
We always take our camera along just in case there is a memorial shot we can take and this time we left it in the car. Of course, one of the finds was on the rails to trails system and we didn’t think to bring the camera for this one. It turned out to be one of the best caches I have found so far this year.
What made it special for me is that it was located on an old and abandoned rail road tressel that ran over a road below. I had to cross the tressel by staying close to one side as the timbers that used to support the rails were pretty rotten. The length of the crossing was only 150 feet but it was a challenge I had not expected. After reaching ground zero, I looked high and low. I climbed over the edge, looked under the frame work, looked all around the structure and was about to give up for the very first time. I finally pulled out the Palm Pilot and looked at the description and past logs of the cache. It was a 50 cal ammo can and it was on top of the tressel so I put the Palm away and decided to look one more time as a 50 cal box is pretty hard to miss. Just then I looked down and my right foot was only 6 inches away from the box. I must have stepped over it at least 5 times while I looked above and below.
I’ll remember that one for awhile
The rest of the 9 finds we had for the day were pretty normal. Now we are at 90 for the year with 10 more to go. With hunting season starting in less than a month, which will hamper caching in the woods, we are thinking of doing the last 10 before the end of September. Our busy season is about to hit and between that and hunting season there wont be much time to be out on the trail.
It looks like I’ll stay at 3 hides for the rest of the year. After  recalling the few out of 90 that are memorable for me I don’t want to hide any that wont be memorable for others. I also visit my own caches to keep them stocked and nice to find which is something most other don’t do. Having 100 hides may look good on the screen but if half or more are just plain simple with no redeeming qualities and are empty or wet then what’s the point. Oh Ya, I mentioned that last month, it’s all about the numbers.

When we started this hobby, it was to get exercise by hiking in remote areas. In order to push us to do it, we set a goal of 100 finds by the end of 2006. That number meant we only had to find a couple of caches a week. Sounds simple but our leather business picks up in sales around the end of August and gets down right crazy by November and December.

We knew we would have to push it during the summer and there were times when we were to busy to go hiking. Our solution was to go for caches that were simple hikes but to target 6 to 12 a day to make up the numbers we needed. We never hit 12 but did get 11 in one day. Our average day of hiking is around 6 miles but we did do 12 miles last month in a single day for only 4 caches.

This weekend we went caching both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we hiked 6 miles for 4 caches back in the area in this post, Geocaching: The Highs and Lows . On Sunday we had to make up some ground so we went to the town of Victor, NY where there are around 20 or caches pretty close together that don’t require miles of hiking. After finding a few caches on the rails to trails system like this:

We both got pretty bored with the terrain, the scenery, the cinder trail beds and the vegetation. Maybe you get to see a curve in the trail and once we even went over a bridge and a stream. Other than that is just straight trails with few or no points of interest. We have gone to less interesting places while geocaching in order to keep our find count up. With our 100 goal in site, we are now wondering what we will do to keep our interest up for 2007. We do get exercise by going for the easy caches, but none of the places we have been while doing them are inspiring enough to warrant a return visit. I guess we are spoiled by where we live and the trails we have here. Traveling farther to be able to just hunt these types of hides would be tricky because of our limited free time and the price of fuel.

With less than 20 caches to find by the end of the year and so little free time to get them I’m sure we will have to visit another cache dense area for at least one more numbers run. For next year we may drop back on the number of finds we set for our goal but add a number of hides to the list so we can still get our exercise but by placing them and maintenance runs to take care of them. I’ll keep you posted.

Last weekend 7/23/2006 we set out a course for a twelve mile hike. Six miles up and six back down.

This hike was for four caches, two going and two coming back. It was a day full and we took some friends that had never been caching. This weekend we also got to watch some eagles flying above this lake which was the down side of the hike:

A couple of the hides were pretty tough and when we looked them up, they were hidden by a cacher here that is known for tough hikes followed by tricky hides. We did another of his caches earlier this year and it was in the middle of a quarter acre of briars.

This was the view from the top of the hike:

It’s a long way down there and for some reason, it is even longer going back up

Now that I’m about caught up I should be posting more often as time permits. In the mean time, HAPPY CACHNG!!

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During the month of July we did some great caches in our area.

The oldest cache East of the Mississippi is only 8 miles from our house and is named “The Spot“. It was a great hike and reminded us what this whole activity was like when it first began. That is how we have set up our hides and will continue to do it the same way even if very few people want to put in the effort to find a cache and have an interesting experience along the way.

Here is a shot of the lookout about 100 feet above the cache site:

When we were leaving the area a young eagle began circling us and singing all the way back to the car. It continued to follow and circle us as we started for home. All in all, it was one great day.

It’s been a month or so since I have had the time to post.

Yesterday, I moved the blog from Blogger over to this domain and set it up with WordPress. So far, I like the way this system works but it took a little scripting to get it close to what I was looking for.

We did a few nice, long hikes and there are some images to go with them. I’ll get them listed here in the next day or so as time is tight while we get ready for the Park Ave. Art Festival next weekend in Rochester, NY.

Just in case I haven’t said this before, I love this hobby. I have had nothing but good things happen so far and this may be one of them but it will take awhile to see just why:-)

On June 11/2006 we hid our second and third caches. The last one was the best one I have seen to date. We where hiking into a trail about 1.25 miles up the trail I stepped off to look for a hiding place. I found a couple possibilities and as I was getting things ready for the chosen spot I turned to get my notebook and there it was, the perfect spot.
I grabbed my things from where I thought I was going to do the hiding and moved them to the new location. Here is an image of my GPSr laying right in top of the hiding place:

The image above is what you would see coming from the trail to ground zero where the GPSr is laying. Here is another shot of the hiding spot from another angle with the 30 caliber ammo can in place:  

The image above is what you would see coming from the trail to ground zero where the GPSr is laying. Here is another shot of the hiding spot from another angle with the 30 caliber ammo can in place: 

Here is the ammo can peaking out of it’s new home:

We came home and listed the 2 caches we hid and waited like kids on Christmas eve. I just couldn’t wait to hear what people would say about trying to find the one above. The next morning I got an email saying one was approved, but not this one so I waited some more. Finally, on Monday evening I get the email. It said my brand new, perfect hide had been archived because I was on the NY State High Tor Wildlife management area property.

I knew I was on state land but I was sure I was off of the WMA by at least 150 feet, so I drove down to the DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) offices to give them the GPS coordinates so they could check the location and give me permission. Well, it looks like they added a 200 foot strip to that edge of the WMA and I had placed the cache 100 feet inside of that area.

I felt my heart drop. I don’t remember feeling so down and out about anything since my dog died. I waited until the next day to make the hike and retrieve my container. When I did I looked around and found a couple of other places off of the WMA but nothing as good as I had above so I just packed it in and came home.

In my talks with the DEC they mentioned passing the “No Geocaching” rule a year or so ago. They wouldn’t say why but my guess is they are trying to work out a way to make some money on this hobby that’s taking off. Only time will tell. I am keeping all of the information on the hide above so if they do open it to caching, I’ll be back there the very next day.

Happy Caching!!!

I spent a lot of time hiking the hills and trails in this area trying to find a challenging and scenic place to hide our first cache. Here it is:

 

Here is a shot of just the view from the hiding area:
 

We ran into a small problem as we were hiding it though.
After picking the spot, filling the container with log book, swag and notes we made the 1.25 mile hike up the side of this mountain and looked for the perfect hiding place. I saw the spot and went to hide the ammo box and get the coordinates for the geocaching web site and low and behold….There was another ammo box there. I got out the log book and read every entry. It seems that it was the end stage of a puzzle cache and because of that it didn’t show up on our cache maps. After hauling all of our things up there I wasn’t about to call it quits so, we signed the log for the cache that we found and went up the trail the required 528 feet and we were just about to another, even better, location.
This location is the one in the images above. So instead of hiding one today, we found one and hid one and found an even nicer place to put our first one.

I started this hobby in the winter when there was little or no tree cover , no insects or snakes and getting a fix on the satellites was a breeze.
This weekend we hit a few deep woods caches like this one:

I just love the hiking in this kind of terrain but getting a good satellite connection was tough.
This image was taken around 12 noon on Memorial Day. We encountered a few snakes and deer on this hike but the deep green colors of the spring vegetation are what stands out in my mind.
You just have to love Up State NY in the spring. 

I may be rather new at this whole game, but after less than 40 finds I have all ready found my favorite kinds of caches to go for and the ones I just ignore.

I started this for the exercise and not to try and out find or out number the next guy. A nice hike in a rural wooded area is right up my ally while lifting a lamp post skirt in a mall parking lot to find a magnetic key holder is a waste of time for me. Yes, I have found a couple of the lamp post micro caches just to see what they were like.

I have also cached in a couple of suburban parks and found that to be an OK experience it doesn’t come close to my preference of the deep, wooded hike where the chances of even seeing another person are pretty slim.

Perhaps in another 10 years or so when it becomes tougher to make the harder terrain hikes I will have a different attitude but for now this is the kind of place I like to do my caching.

Here’s another hike I took my grand kids on: 

They just loved the moss on the roots of this large tree where very few people have walked in the last few years. That not something you can experience hunting down micro caches in a parking lot.