I recently entered the "
Tell me your stories, win a prize" contest over on
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picked.
Head over to the contest page to read some of the other great submissions.
My story was about my trip with PaddleAway in my first year of caching to finish the Great Lakes Seaway Trail. Below you will find my entry.
Hey this is OBXGeek here from northern Virginia outside the DC metro area.
One of the most fun adventures with caching was in November of 2010. My Mom PaddleAway and I decided to complete the Great Lakes Seaway Trail. I took off Friday and Monday and headed north to meet her in Northern Pennsylvania about half way between my house and the eastern tip of the trail. On Friday morning we got up early and drove to start the trail and had our first find at about 9 in the morning. That first find though was an accidental letterbox in the same park as the trail cache. After locating the proper container we continued the day in and out of rain storms for most of the time. By the time day light was falling we had finished one of the 5 regions and were started in on the next. Some driving in the dark and 10 more ammo cans had us finishing the night with two regions under our belt and headed to the third. That first day found us in state parks, visitors centers and some of the prettiest locations that the area has to offer.
Saturday morning we got on the road early again and were headed towards Rochester NY. This region was one of the hardest with longer walks to get to each of the caches and harder road navigation between sites to find the best places to park. We moved on into the Buffalo Niagara Falls region at the end of Saturday and spend the night near the falls so that we could visit them Sunday morning. We were able to take in most of the tourist spots and completed a few earth caches while we were there. Then back on the road to finish up the region and leaving us with just one region to go. We worked our way through the Lake Erie region doing lots of research work on the way to make sure that we were going to be able to find the caches as there were a few disabled in the region and we had to get atleast 10 to earn our coin. We opted for some multis with more walking over a puzzle that had stumped many people sending them back to the first spot to redo their math. We ended up racing the sun to one of the hides at a winery where they didn't allow night caching so we had to hurry. We pulled in and managed to find the cache just before the sun dipped below the horizon. Then off to visit a lighthouse in Erie PA to pick up the last cache in the region.
All told we found 50 caches in the trail with another handful of earth caches and nontrail caches along the way. The trip racked up nearly 1400 miles from the time I met up with my mom and just shy of 2000 total for me. They were 5 of the hardest earned coins I have and resulted in my favorite caching memory.
