I had to return to New York on Tuesday so rather than continuing to abuse my body, I planned to stay in PA for the return trip. Ali and I took the dogs to the Tanbark Trail to finish a cache series placed by our friends Liz and Wes. We were a little concerned since our trip here to do the first 2/3 of the series sparked the cow dogs (aka Eva and Gwen) into eating every blade of grass on the trail. Eva has been sick lately, and after the last trip I spent two days wondering if she had gotten into something really bad.
Both dogs behaved today, and we had a great visit to the Tanbark. We finished the series at their puzzle cache and were able to swap the red Jeep Gryff had given me for a new red Jeep. :-) The even better news was that we left enough caches to return for two more hikes later this year.
Once Ali headed for Ohio, I was given two assignments. The first was to head to a letterbox that we had prepared but never listed on the letterbox site and turn it into a worthy geocache. That was an easy task. My second task was not so easy. I was to travel out to the night cache and get it ready for listing on the web page.
This night cache was placed so long ago that we wore snow shoes to place it. It had so much promise including a great walk, a neat in-the-air hide, and about 30 yards of swamp crossing to get to the final. The in-the-air hide died on that first fateful four-hour day of trying to place this cache in snowshoes. I thought Lep was going to kill us after trying to beta test this in the dark in a driving rain with Little Lep. We've been back twice since and had no luck at getting it finished. We had agreed to up the terrain to 4 1/2. This afternoon I was ready. I had new boots and a will to get this monster birthed. I spent two fruitless hours trying to correct the night markers. I found the cache. It was in great shape, but the trails leading to the cache were overgrown., There were other paths. I tried to incorporate those into the cache. In the end, out of frustration and the fear of needing to hike four miles out to fix this thing constantly, I removed all traces of the cache from the swamp, took the ammo can and said good-bye. I guess sometimes the best caches are the bad ones that don't get placed. Sniff... sniff... RIP Irvine Two Flats. You had so much promise.
No comments:
Post a Comment