The first five (long)

[Guest jruggiero]

we would continue to play the game.

 

My girls were not feeling up to a hike in the woods the next weekend, so I decided to go hunting on my own. On Saturday, I went after Lynn Woods (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=219) because it was placed by my friends. I know this area from mountain biking so the find was pretty easy.

 

On Sunday, I drove to my old stomping grounds from my childhood, Breakheart Reservation, and picked the first preprogrammed waypoint on the list for a cache. It was Breakheart Redux (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=6549). Of course, This was the one furthest from the car but I didn't care.

 

When I was about 1/2 mile from the cache, I decided it was time to take that trail the arrow was pointing to. After a few twists and turns, I found myself on the shore of a pond with the little arrow pointing straight across the water! I followed the shore until I ran out of trail and bushwhacked back to the main paths. I was now about 1/4 mile from the cache.

 

After walking the doubletrack for a bit, the arrow pointed down another perfect trail that ended on the shore of yet another pond! I didn't come this far to give up, so back to the main trails I went. I kept walking until the distance numbers started to go up and I found the real trail to the cache. The find was pretty easy but the real payoff was the view from the coordinates left in the cache.

 

While looking at the map page on the gps, I realized that Eric's Adventure (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=333) and X700 (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=955) were on the way back to the car.

 

I will be forever grateful to the person who suggested that I drop a waypoint at the car.

 

Eric's Adventure was a lot of fun. I stayed on the trails this time and found myself next to a cliff when the GPS said I was there. So I climbed the cliff. Walking around on the ridge, I kept saying to myself "I've got to be right on top of it." The cache was hidden half way up the cliff, so I was!

 

X700 required decrypting the hint. I was worried that the cache was gone but it was just very well hidden. Some of the comments about it said that the coordinates were off but my gps read 17 ft accuracy and said I was 10 feet away. That's well within tolerances.

 

I walked out of Breakheart to find a Fall Festival going on. I was very hungry after a four and a half hour hike without lunch and had the best sausage, pepper and onion sub I've ever tasted in the parking lot.

 

If anyone ever told me walking through the woods looking for boxes of toys while following an arrow on a little box of electronics would be so much fun I would have wondered what planet they were from

 

I gave and took from each cache and have decided to place a cache in Ferry Beach State Park near Saco, Maine this weekend during my church retreat. It should be almost as much fun reading about people finding my cache as it is finding yours.

 

Thanks to all of you for this game. My family and I have something to do outdoors we all enjoy.

 

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-john

[Guest Latitude11]

 

That's a great story, John.. thanks for sharing!