Another weekend, more caching. I can’t complain.
The weather couldn’t have been better for the Labor Day weekend. Though Saturday morning had some dark skies and we went through one little shower in the early afternoon, it turned out to be very nice that day.
An event led the day off as two of us were helping Beth with a “Geocaching 101″ type class at Glimmerglass Park. It was a good turnout and hopefully we’ll have recruited more cachers to the hobby. Beth had placed three temporary caches and we had several GPS units we had to let people use them. The feedback was strong and it seemed like everyone had fun with the lesson and the searching. Glimmerglass proved to be a great host, too.
Once the event was over, I went caching with Beth and Tom. We were planning on heading a bit north toward Amsterdam (which we eventually reached, but the caching on the way kind of slowed us down so I’d like to get back to Amsterdam at some point to cache in the town a bit more!)
The day took us to some interesting places — from Tepee Pete’s to the Erie Canal. I have some photos and some stories I plan on mixing together for this blog entry. Hope you all enjoy!
After the event, we opened with an easy one at a rest area. There was a couple of vans there and people were having some sort of a gathering. No problem, we went about our business and made a quick find on the cache. One down.
We headed to the Tepee in Cherry Valley. This is a spot I would encourage anyone to check out if you are up this way. There’s a huge tepee that’s a gift store. Next to it is Tepee Pete’s, a grub shack for good eats. Hot dogs, burgers, wraps — homemade corn chips — and chili. You can even get a free “hot shot”
The hot shot is basically Tepee Pete’s seven-pepper chili or something like that. Now I don’t mind hot things, but I knew this one was going to be a little too much. I have a very sensitive tongue, so there was no way I was going to be doing this one. Add to it that you had to sign a notebook — his medical waiver — to be able to have the hot shot. Yikes!
Beth signs the “waiver” book:
Now, you got this chili in a plastic shot glass. Beth used a spoon (as I did with the mild chili). Tom? Well, let’s just say he dove right in.
After having lunch, off we went. After one quick find when we hit Canajoharie, we went downtown to the cache “dummy light,” which is near one only three dummy lights apparently left in the US. We got some bad info, so Tom and Beth, well, they went searching the dummy light for this cache.
Needless to say, the cache wasn’t there. But it was in a nearby park, which we eventually found.
Off we went again and picked up a few others before arriving at mystery cache — basically meaning you have to log something other than you found it in the online log. With this one, you had to take the “found it” sheet in the cache and take a goofy photo with it — such as the following:
More came after that one, eventually taken us to Sweet smell of spring — a cache located near Lock 12 of the Erie Canal. After finding the cache, we got chatting with the guy on the lock, who eventually took us on a nice little tour of the lock so I could get some great shots. I brought out the tripod and took some images (I need to e-mail him a couple, too!) and I have already had one over at my photo blog and will have others soon. I am putting one here, but will be doing my normal photo processing and such on the photo blog ones.
We did a few more caches, including a couple of Earthcaches, which was really cool. We saw a great sunset on the way home, too, and arrived back earlier than normal — which I like. In all, it was a day of 17 caches (including the event). Also, we can hope we recruited a few people for geocaching.
Hides and finds
I’ve been trying to download “my finds” pocket query at geocaching.com so I can update my profile stats on the site. However, seems like something is wrong and with it being Labor Day weekend, I’m sure Groundspeak isn’t fully staffed. So, it’ll have to wait another day, which is too bad, considering I have a lot of new finds and, hopefully, a few new counties added to my list. It finally came, days later.
I had off Tuesday and went on a caching day. I also did a few Sunday of Labor Day weekend and will be telling those tales together in the next day or two.
Today, a couple of us were looking to start early and get back by 1:30-2, as we both have places we need to be by 3:30. I have planned a pretty solid route, could get a new county or two as well as two more blocks with the New York DeLorme Challenge. Alas, I overslept and my alarm didn’t go off. So that planned trip is put on hold for now. Dah!
More later!
