And a Happy New Year

As school was cancelled today due to the death of the beloved principal of Sutton Elementary School, Mrs. Simonian, I thought I would take Snidy and BenMac out on a caching trip to Milford, MA. The first stop of the day was at the newly placed Old Stone Bridge Cache (GC100ZY) where we met Milford4+ while heading to the cache location. It turns out that she actually knows the hidder, seekerjay, and was the one to introduce him to the sport. He has since passed her by many caches. After a great hike, quickly finding the cache and chatting with Milford4+, we parted with our new friend and hiked to the nearby cache, Field of Ferns (GC7044), which actually sugested other parking cords, but ended up only being an average cache hike along very nice trails. This was a just quick find and log and we were headed to the car to get over to the Cameltoe Cache (GCMXK3). Cameltoe ended up being a traditional high tension power line cache, but when we find the container and opened it up, we found that it only had one pen that had dried up months ago and we hiked out to it unprepared. As proof of our find, all I could do was leave one of my new 2007 BomberJjr signature cards. As we got back to the car, the team was feeling a bit hungry so with the new 60CS, I was able to track down a closeby Wendy's and navigate ourselves to it, passing the parking area for our next find, the Frontier Cache (GC456A). After filling our stomachs and loading up with calories, we needed this one last cache to help us burn off some energy. The cache was one placed nearly five years ago in a municipal park with a great bike path. We followed the bike path for quite a ways and realized we were not getting closer but were really circling the cache, so when we spotted an unmarked trail off to the side we went into the woods to get to our destination. Once there we over-estimated the hide job and over shot the easy spot that we later found it in. It was great to see such an old cache still up and running, although it probably could use a removal of some of the junk inside. We found our way back to the bike trail by continuing on the trail rather than turning back, got to the car and then had to get back home for BenMac, so he could go to work.

Merry Christmas...

This Christmas began with a trip out to Leominster to stay with my dad, BomberJohn, on Christmas Eve night. The next day I unwrapped four great new 2006 Massachusetts geocoins (a collectors set and an extra nickel version for logging). I was also able to log many new geocoins that my dad had recently received thrrough trading with his friend frf. He even gave me a Travel Bug dogtag that he had received from the previous SNEG monthly event. After a couple days of celebrating the holiday, we figured it was time to get out and hunt down a few caches across the border of New Hampshire.

Before actually making our way across the northern border, we decided to try for two caches in our home state of Massachusetts in Ashburham. The caches were Mike's Midstate Movie Madness (GC5281) and Mt. What da heck? (GCH0HQ) in Ashburham State Forest. Mt. What da heck? actually ended up being a climb to the top of the 1800', Mt. Watatic, which may have had some of the coolest trail I've seen while geocaching. Once at the top, BomberJohn and I could see for quite a way. After finding these caches, we hiked back out to the car and drove north to the Granite State.

The first cache that we found in the state was Conversville Cache (GCMA22), which was an average cache hike along the edge of a pond just off of Rt. 119. Once at the cache, we were suprised to open it up and find one of frf's signature plastic corkscrews. The next cache was the Stearns Lamont Forest Cache (GCVJVN), which was just up the highway. The hike in was about a quarter of mile. At the cache site we were almost stumped for a minute, until I happened to stumble opon the container. We both left with GPSrs in hand and headed over to the pizza reastaurant just 100 yards down the street from the trail entrance and as we left for a few more before calling it a day, I thought, "where is my GPSr?" After searching the road, the trail, and the restaurant thoroughly, results came back negative and so I was forced to say good by to my good old Garmin Legend. Still, neither geocachers or the restaurant have contacted me with any information. After the experience of losing my Legend, we continued on with BomberJohn's 60CS at the Wheeler Trail cache (GCTP1J), which was a very cleverly camoflagued cache in an area of very bad receiption. After carefully searching for about fifteen minutes, BomberJohn spotted it, we quickly logged the find, and we hopped back into the car to find What A Birch Of A Cache (GCKYJB ). This was an even more clever hide created by the owner of the previous cache, with better coverage and a better hint. Again it was BomberJohn who was able to picked this one out and after logging it and hiking to the car, we drove to the parking for Apocalypse of The Well School (GCWFRQ) as the sun began sinking low. We dashed through the woods along the hilly trail, to the cache area, it took nearly fifteen minutes to find, but we were successful and did our usual log sign. The trails were only slightly lighted by the twilight and by the time we were back in the car, the were almost completely in the darkness of night.

Over the next few days, BomberJohn and I looked at a situations of getting me a new GPSr and we settled on the idea that I would buy his for a cheap price and he would buy the upgraded 60CSx. I also decided to purchase a years Premium Membership to Geocaching.com, as I had postponed doing so for too long. When I got home, I had to try out my new GPSr on a newly available member's cache, Historic MA RR Station Series-#10 Uxbridge (GCR6BR), which was in the center of the nearby town of Uxbridge. When I first walked in the door from my stay at my dad's I was happy to see that the gpsfun Volunteer Geocoin (TBP631) I had won was sitting right on my dinner table. Also, with new cache notifications, I received an e-mail on Saturday morning that Stanley's Backyard (GC102C1) been placed. I raced out the door, only to find four previous finders' logs, as I was later than most because I had had to work early that morning.