I got an unexpected Wednesday off a few weeks back and had enough time to plan a trip to Cortland to do a day of caching. This spot we went to is one a few of us have been eying for a while, so it was nice to do it.
The premise of the setup is this: This is about a four-mile stretch along the Finger Lakes Trail and on it, there are many caches. The theme is, pretty much, Caddyshack. The “course” is set up with names from the movie, which made it fun. There are other caches along the trail as well, which made this one heck of a fun day.
The Finger Lakes Trail, for those that don’t know, is a trail system in New York that covers 562 miles. It’s a pretty night system and there are a bunch of caches out there!
The weather was excellent. Sunny, but not too hot. The bugs were out a little, but nothing a little bug spray couldn’t take care of. What is offered as a suggestion is a good idea — park one car at one end and another at the other. That way, after walking down the trail, you don’t have to flip around and walk four miles back!
I took off a little later than expected and then got tied up in Delaware County traffic:
We did a few caches along the way and parked Brent’s truck at the bottom of the trail. We then took the Jetta to the top. It was a little bumpy, but not too bad. The Jetta handled it fine.
These back roads to have their signs though:
Apparently I need an Earth mover to make it to Marathon!
Though none of the caches fully stick out, none of them were bad. They were all solid. We got to hit up one Golden Ammo can (given to someone when they hit their 1,000th find), which is always nice to do. The course itself was pretty wild.
How about this count though — from the time we dropped off Brent’s truck to when we got back to it: 26 caches. It took us several hours to complete this (if we had just been hiking, we probably could have done this clip in a little over an hour). I’ll have full totals at the end.
One thing that was cool was the leanto. This is a spot I could easily see people camping at. There’s a shelter, a place to have a fire and all sorts of other items. Inside the leanto was toilet paper, books, older newspapers — all sorts of things that could occupy you in a clip of bad weather or if you had to stay for the night. The log book for that portion of the trail was also there, so we each signed.
Images from the trail:
Brent with cache in hand (above)
The leanto (above).
Inside the leanto (above).
Just in case you need it (above).
Watch your head (above).
When we were done with the trail (and out of drinking water), we headed back up to get my car. We ran into this interesting fellow, who was just walking the road. Apparently he lived nearby. Anyway, his first question to me was if I went to church or not. What followed was about a 15-minute conversation about miracles, some girls he knows/knew and something about how he can feel pain if she’s hundreds of miles away. This went on for quite a while. I really am not sure what was said or what he meant, but it was obvious he felt blessed and the almighty gave him some powers. Maybe he did. Who knows. Either wait, it was a bit bizarre and we soon had to make our way out of there.
After a quick brake-check (Brent had left his cell phone on top of his truck and it flew off going down the hill), we were off to Cortland to hit a few more caches.
One included a second 5-star terrain cache. The reason it’s five-star is because you needed something else to make the grab on this one. My suggestion? Bring a tall friend.
In the end, a stop at A&W was also in order, so that was a delicious dinner.
Overall, one heck of a fun day on an unexpected afternoon off.
Final count: 37 (30 traditional, 3 mystery/puzzle, 1 Earthcache, 1 virtual, 1 multi, 1 letterbox).
If you’ll note, we found six different types of caches in one day, which makes us eligible to go find the One Busy, Well-Rounded Day in NY cache in Syracuse (GC1P1MZ). I’m hoping to go get this one as well as a bunch of others in Syracuse soon. That trip will also get us close enough where I’ll want to head up toward Oswego to grab the one DeLorme square that sits all by itself. I’m hoping to go do all of this soon, so we’ll see what happens.
More later!
