22 November 2019 Sad Trip

The Niagara Falls area has been a work travel destination for over half my life.  This was not a trip I wanted to make.  Early in my career, I turned down a chance to relocate here.  After that, a really talented person was hired for the position I had passed by.  Through years of working together, he was also a friend.  He retired not long ago.  Today I joined his family, friends, and other colleagues to pay my respects.  Sometimes life isn't fair.  I am not here often anymore.  On the way back home, I stopped for a walk before my drive.

11 April 2019 Visiting Alethea's

I don't travel to the Niagara Falls area often anymore.  These days I crave a little of the stability of the past as the days race forward.  This evening, I satisfied that craving with a visit to Alethea's.  Time is flying...

20 September 2017 Dann Road Park

I stopped after work for a cache at Dann Road Park. The killdeer had taken over the ball field near the woods where the cache was hidden.

I didn't find the cache, but I did spot a baseball slowly returning back to nature. We've found a lot of stray baseballs while geocaching. The numbers don't compare to the ubiquitous golf balls which seem to appear near so many caches, but they are still quite common. I usually throw the ones with some life near the field for a future visitor, but this one had seen its last ball game.

There was no cache find, but the sunset at the park more than made up for that.

1 March 2017 Along Lake Erie

My drive back to Ohio started with gentle weather and a stop at the Lake Erie Seaway Trail Center on Route 5 and a view of Buffalo. On my last visit there were no turbines. Now they stretch along the shore heading west from the edge of Buffalo.

By the time I visited Super Freeze for an early season cone the blue skies were gone for the day, and dark clouds had rolled in.

I was undaunted and made my way on to Sturgeon Point and a few caches by the park and nature trail near the marina.

No Boats Today

My luck held out until I reached Wendt Beach Park and the rain arrived. My caching afternoon was over with a rain filled drive awaiting me.

4 April 2016 Another Place Revisited

The trip seemed to be a time to visit a few old caching locations. After I left the office I wanted to hunt for a few caches, but it was still very cold. I headed toward the hotel finally deciding to stop for a walk along the Erie Canal.

Like Stiglmeier Park from the afternoon before, this location is greatly changed from my first visit in spring 2005. When I stopped then, we had just recently started caching. I was up early one morning and decided to stop for an early walk to look for a cache called My Name Is Mud. I had no idea what this trail was like. About 45 minutes later I dragged my completely muddy, scratched-up self back to my car with no find. My trip to the office waited a bit while I drove back to the hotel and had a nice, long shower to shed all the mud. Almost a year later in the spring of 2006, I returned to the same location to successfully avenge a dnf.

This evening I returned to a changed area. The pool-sized mud puddles are gone. They have been replaced by a wonderful, paved all-purpose trail. The bumpy, gravel parking lot is now a nicely paved lot. It is a great place to walk for an easy cache or two. I stopped for a couple and decided to move on.

3 April 2016 8 1/2 Years

It had been a long time since my last visit to Stiglmeier Park. I had great adventures here over a three year period. It was a place where deer would walk up as you were signing a cache. They would never get close, but were often watching. Then my career changed. My travel patterns changed. Stiglmeier slipped away. I was traveling on this Sunday, hoping for amazing spring weather, and looking for a park to visit for some serious walking. It was cold. It started raining... a lot. I found a few caches and decided to leave.

The park has changed a lot in 8 1/2 years. The slightly overgrown paths are now clearly marked. The wet areas are covered in boardwalks. Many of the paths are now gravel. For lack of a better term, it is a gentrified park.

23 May 2013 Boston Forest

I was on my way from Sanborn to the PA home. I had part of an afternoon to cache before heading to Allegany State Park to meet Ali and the dogs for some hiking. It has been a while since my last visit to Boston Forest. Boston Forest is an undeveloped Erie County park with some nice trails almost no visitors. Today my only companion was a salamander I found on the trail. Since it had been so long since my last visit, there were not also unfound caches. I found a number of caches before the rain closed in and finished the afternoon's caching. With the rain we passed on a visit to ASP.

22 May 2013 Cambria Nature Trail

I was tired after a day at the office and not in the mood for caching, but I wanted to go for a walk. I had been to the Cambria Nature Trail for the puzzle cache hidden there and missed some of the information. This evening, the park was all I did. I had a tour around the trails and took my time gathering the information. This time I didn't miss the coordinates for the cache. The container was in an interesting spot where I was surrounded by song birds. No photos, but it was great.

27 March 2013 Niagara Falls in Spring

I was traveling for the week with a team member. We decided to make a visit to the Falls and enjoy the evening. I was surprised at how many tourists were already in town to see the falls. The day was sunny, but the ever-present wind and cool, spring temperatures made for a chilly visit.

I've always enjoyed a walk along the Niagara River as much as a visit to the Falls. The raw power of the river is awesome. I was hoping there may be some big ice blocks still floating down the river, but the only ice left was at the base of the Falls. After a stop at the Falls, we took a long walk down the river to hunt a geocache. Sunset and hot chocolate capped a super evening.

26 September 2012 Town of Cambria Nature Trail

25 September 2012 Around the Falls

Hoover's is a new ice cream/food stand within minutes of my office. I stopped by at lunch today with a colleague. They have very good shakes.

It has been such a hectic year that I hadn't bothered to stop at a car cruise during the entire summer. I was driving to Alethea's to buy chocolates for Ali and saw there was a late cruise at Pautler's Drive In in Clarence. It's not my favorite place to eat, but it was fun to stop and walk through the cars.

My favorite Camaro. Make it dark green and get rid of the vinyl roof, and I would have been in love. It's not a year that most like, but I liked the simple fun of the early Camaro. If I ever had one old car, this would have been it. This one was a beauty.

15 September 2012 Last Day on the Seaway Trail GeoTrail

All vacations end. Today this one was going to end. It was going to be a different day for us. Instead of visiting places we hadn't seen in ages, we were going to cache in an area where we were both familiar. We planned to start in Wilson which is one of the nicest places in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls area. We were going to then head to Tonawanda which is not far from my office in the area, but not a place I visit often for caching. A couple stops in Buffalo and a visit to a state park would allow us to get our last coin. We were going to celebrate the final coin by hiking the gorge trail and heading west and home along the lake shore.

The plan was perfect. The reality wasn't. Our day started off wonderfully. We stopped at Wilson Harbor and hunted endlessly for a tough multi which we eventually found. We were treated to a fleet of sailboats headed out for probably their last race of the season.

I found from reading the logs on the cache page that these old industrial tanks were used to store natural gas at a manufacturing plant. The center section was actually a bladder that filled and contracted as gas was stored and removed. They are an oddity today standing at the edge of a parking lot at a marina.

Cache Guardian

Our day turned when we got to the Buffalo area. The first cache was a well done puzzle placed by a friend using information near historical signs at the museum. After the cache, we enjoyed a visit to the Japanese Gardens and got a few images that look like the scenes belong on old time tinted postcards.

The day came apart at the next cache. Buffalo Botanical Gardens is a wonderful place. We enjoyed a fun visit here before, and I was excited for a return. I hoped we had a few minutes to stop and visit the indoor area after we found the cache. We found the cache and signed the log. Ali was returning the container to its hiding spot when she got stung the first time. The stings continued. We weren't far into the woods, but getting her out of the woods was tough because she was so upset and everytime I got near her they came after me.

Even when we cleared the woods, they were still around and in her clothes. They got in the geomobile. It was horrendous. She didn't have her epi pen. Thankfully, I still had a box of benadryl from earlier this year in the glove box so she could get some relief. Once her pulse dropped, I stopped searching my phone for the nearest hospital. She slept for a while as I finished the geotrail.

We made our first visit to Beaver Island State Park. It looked like a great park, but Ali was at best groggy from the meds. I searched for the one Seaway GeoTrail cache here and we moved on leaving the other caches in the park for a better day.

We had all our required finds for the last coin on the trail. We stopped in downtown Niagara Falls to claim the find. This was the only visitor center that was really disappointing. The employee at the counter showed indifference to us being there. She gave us the coins without asking for paperwork or checking our passports. This was the fourth visitor center on our journey. The other three had friendly, engaged staff and made for a fun visit.

Ali insisted she was up for a gorge hike so off we went. We were hiking for a cache I have wanted to find for years. We got very close once years ago, but ran out of time. Today was the day to finally mark this one as found. The weather was perfect. The Niagara was roaring. The trail was closed!!!!! We were within a couple hundred feet of the cache when we came upon the trail closed sign. Curses, foiled again. :-( Maybe someday the Big Kahunas will be found by us.

The last of the day's sun casts a bright light on the Buffalo skyline from the shore west of the city. It was a real scare with Ali's stings, but we came back whole.