Buffalo Geocaching; Treasure Hunting in WNY

     My place of employment has a surprisingly high population of geocachers on board.  Most of them got into caching because of another geocacher on staff, but there's a couple of us, myself being one, who got into this hobby on our own.  The resulting ratio of geocachers has resulted in some rather interesting lunchroom discussions, and geocache puzzle sessions after the work day is done.  

     One of our past roundtables resulted in six geocachers gathered around a large computer display screen, picking apart a piece of digital animation for numbers.  It took us about a half hour to get most of what we needed, and ended up being as much fun as the cache itself.  That was for "Badger, Badger".

     Another such session took place today.  I was typing away on my keyboard when Groo walked into my room, cache pages in hand.  He had a yen to find "At East Meets West", one that I had conviently been ignoring for some time.  Although I can do work my way through most beginning algebra problems, they really aren't "my thing".  I had taken a couple brief looks at the page in the past, and then just forgot about it.  When I saw the false posted coordinates on my GPSr screen, I slapped my forehead for not sitting down long enough to solve it...and then I'd put it on the back burner for another month.

     It didn't take long before the two of us were hunkered down with scraps of paper, working on solving the puzzle.  The alignment of the math was curious on the cache page, and quite honestly, it caused us to miss the obvious for some time.  Finally figuring that it looked that way because it wasn't written in HTML, I took another look at the addition portion as we would in a standard math class.  THAT was when the obvious came to light.

     Looking at the paperwork that I knew I HAD to finish this afternoon, I contemplated our going after this cache right away.  Groo really wanted to get this one done, so we decided to keep it quick, and headed off to GZ.  Both legs were dead-on, quick finds.  

     Upon my return, it took just over a half hour to finish up my tasks.  I felt a bit more focused, perhaps because I had a chance to get out for a bit with a friend.  Unlike a double-shot at the coffee drive-thru, a caching break doesn't leave one with the jitters.  Good stuff!

One of the nice things about living in Western NY, is that on any given weekend, you can head East, West, or South to a "caching mecca" worthy of an entire day of geocaching.  To the East, there's Rochester and Auburn; to the West, there's Ontario.  Yes, you can head North, but eventually you will fall into Lake Ontario.  To the South, now that's a nirvana known as Pennsylvania.  

Pennsylvania has always been a draw since I first experienced North-West PA.  Erie, Warren, and McKean counties are home to some very active and dedicated cachers.  They like to seek hides, AND they like to place them.  Now we add in the Allegheny GeoTrail, a group of ten PA counties, which are offering special AGT hides.  Each one contains a unique stamp.  Stamp your "passport" at each of these caches.  Collect six from a county, and you earn a geocoin.  Collect six AGT finds from all ten counties, and you earn a special coin from that task as well.

So far, I have earned four of the ten county geocoins, although I haven't turned in my passport for the coins yet.  There are also two counties that I've started but haven't finished yet.  Most of the hides take you to unique places, near waterfalls, public lands, state parks, and historic areas.  There are a few which are easy, almost to the point of handicapped accessible, but these are certainly not the norm.  Each trip includes at least one foray down a dirt or low-maintenance road (some of which have made the hairs rise up on the back of my neck!).  Venango County, we've found, is in a class by itself.  Each hide we've found has proved to be a bit of a challenge, with the exception of a couple.

This Saturday saw us group-caching in McKean County.  We went after mostly AGT caches, but occasionally there was a cache right by the road that we couldn't resist stopping for.  It's so hard to restrict oneself to AGT hides, but otherwise, we'd never finish even one county.

Here's to the start of yet another caching year.   My resolution is better health, to get back into running.  Santa must have predicted this for me, as he brought me a Garmin Forerunner 305.  Whew!  I thought that the Garmin GPSmap 60CSx had a lot of bells and whistles.  There are functions that this one offers that I know I won't touch for a long time.  There's even a "virtual running partner" to help with one's running pace.  Yeah, I can imagine bumping into a friend along the footpath (runners and geocachers all love bike trails), and saying, "Oh, I'd like you to meet my virtual running partner.  Yes, he's invisible, but don't worry; he's just shy."  One of the bennies of playing with it is that I discovered I can download waypoints onto it.  No maps...but yes to waypoints, so the question remains: Can it find a geocache?  I'm going to find out today on my run along the Niawanda Bikepath.  

We added a new state to our geocaching maps, just after Christmas.  I had an opportunity to go to Pittsfield, MA.  Let me tell you, it reminded me of Ellicottville, NY.  Downtown, as well as the ski slopes, was a madhouse; it's a good thing I don't downhill ski.  The trails, however, were deserted for the most part.  Snow made them tough and slow.  There was one trail up Mount Greylock to a lookout that boasted of quite the change in elevation, but we couldn't finish it due to lack of daylight hours.  We turned back, which was a good thing, as the melting snow became slick, icy snow after the cold night temperatures set in.  We went back to Greylock the following day (which is how I knew it froze over) to hike the Bradley Farm Loop.  This one we did finish, finding two of the three geocaches located along there.  The first find was quite the adventure in retrieval.  If you want the scoop, you'll have to read it here: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=2b3f9e27-1840-4fa4-9ea9-444f4d2560b0  

That's it for now.  Happy 2008, everybody!

The Cockroach and I met up this Saturday to finish off one of The Blue Quasar's geocache series.  This one was his set of Monopoly Caches, which will be going "bye bye" in two days.  We have been picking off a few of these here and there over the past year, enjoying the time doing so.  On more than one occasion, we ended up explaining to a "muggle" what we were up to (doesn't everybody go out on a walking trail with a headlamp after dark?).  Since we were missing just the last three, it made sense to go after those before the snow started flying...which it did, eventually, here North of Buffalo.  Cockroach and I hunted snow free, and I didn't start to see the flakes coming down from the sky until I pulled into parking at home.

By the way, fellow cachers might not have a chance to find The Monopoly Series before their archival date of December 21st, but I can heartily recommend many of the Ontario caches throughout Welland, Thorold, and St. Catherines.  Blue Quasar, Wild Willy, Rock Harder, and many others set out really enjoyable hides, many of them steeped in the history of Ontario's "wild side".  They're worth the trip over the border!

Congratulations to Dave w/o ID, who celebrated his 10,000th cache find this Sunday.  Apparently Chaffee has its' own micro-climate, as the snow held off long enough for attendees to arrive.  Given the logs I've read, the snow didn't start to get serious until AFTER most people were home safe.  I can't say that I would have been in the same situation, as the snow was pretty serious in my neck of the woods all day long on Sunday.  However, I'm glad that others were able to laugh at the forecast and make their way out to raise a glass.

Happy holidays to all!  I hope that Santa brings you that new Garmin that you asked for! 

Well, at least there's no bugs.  That's what I keep telling myself, now that winter has officially settled into Western NY.  Today's snowfall was the most significant that we've seen this season, but this weekend promises to put what we got today to shame.  Dress warm, folks; stay dry.  It's possible to do both as you're hiking through the snow.  And for those of us who are not "snow bunnies", there are always cache-n-grabs that pop up at this time of year.  Isn't it time for a new "Double Double" cache somewhere in this town?

 While you're perusing the net over a cup of hot chocolate, wondering whether Santa will bring you that new Delorme on your Christmas list, give some thought to a post-holiday geo-get-together.  January is begging for a pub night or coffee chat of some sort.  Stay tuned...I'll come up with something.

In the meantime, GG and I had a chance to get up to Toronto for the Titanic exhibit and some geocaching.  I can't say enough about the exhibit at the Science Center...go while you have a chance.  As for the caching, the severe lack of daylight hours left to us had us looking for cache and grabs.  Too bad that we have already found most of the virtuals in downtown Toronto.  If you don't mind the icy wind that blows down Yonge St., Toronto can be a great place to geocache in the winter after hours.

There's a 10,000 party taking place this Sunday in Chaffee for those folks who are up to it and not snowed in.  Read more about it here: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=8f7e4489-f0c3-428c-af04-c58c52639dbe&log=y&decrypt=.  

Okay, so just what IS "geocaching?"  

In a nutshell, geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt.  One uses a Global Positioning Satellite Receiver (a GPSr, for short) to navigate to a given latitude and latitude.  There one usually finds a container with a logbook, and sometimes some other items, depending on the size of the container.  It starts out with the posted geocache listings on www.geocaching.com, progresses to the search for the cache using the GPSr, and ends with the finder reporting their find on the geocaching website.  Simple, huh?

Okay, that didn't answer ALL of your questions, but hopefully it got you thinking.  Want to meet a few of the geocachers in the Buffalo, NY area?  Plan to attend WWFM at Losson Park, http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=0ec99e2a-9bc7-4f1d-a6bd-5a92988f7714.
I promise you, this gathering will only take 15 minutes of your time, and will give you the chance to connect with local geocache fanatics.  This will take place on Saturday, November 10th, from noon until 12:15.  Yeah, it's a SHORT meet and greet.

Still have questions?  I will be representing local geocaching at the Eastern Mountain Sports that same day from 2:00 until at least 6:00pm.  If you have an interest, stop by their Niagara Falls Blvd. location in Amherst, NY.  I'll take you to search for your first geocache find and help you to register with the New York Geocaching Organization, otherwise known as NYGO.