24 September 2013 Ascutney and Vermont's Oldest

Our two plans for the day were to revisit Ascutney State Park for the other older cache in the park and to hike and find GC86, Vermont's oldest cache. I don't know how long the Lebanon Diner has been open off the town square. We didn't eat here at our last visit, but stopped by each day were in town this visit. It was a quiet place with standard breakfast items done well.

After breakfast, we walked the town square park and the outer ring of the town square to find the answers to a solve on site puzzle cache. The town square park is as clean and inviting as it was the last time we visited. We had to make a stop at the fire department for one of the answers. The fire department has an old fire alarm posted outside. These are getting rarer, and this one is in nice condition. Ali solved the coordinates for the final, but we held finding the cache back for another day.

It seemed as though we saw fewer covered bridges on this visit than our last visit. We stopped by this one for a cache find.

The Ascutney hide was a 4 1/2 terrain. The terrain may be that when there has been heavy rain, but this afternoon we quickly made it up the trail and across the falls to the hide. There was very little flow in the falls so we had an easy crossing near the cache. It was a fun journey and another old cache (2001) found.

The interesting gate below marked the entrance into a very old historic cemetery. There was a cache nearby outside the stone walls of the cemetery, but the cemetery was a place to visit.

I missed the turn for the parking area to take us to Vermont's oldest cache, and we drove to Manchester, Vermont. I usually don't form big, negative opinions of towns, but I left Manchester with no positive thoughts. The town appears to have been swallowed and turned into one big outlet strip. There are cookie-cutter outlet stores everywhere. The city streets are narrow and have the new terribly designed tiny roundabouts. If you add to that a multitude of cars looking for parking and wandering shoppers, you have a good impression of Manchester through my experience. We made two quick stops and met with crabby, unfriendly employees.

We were both cranky from our Manchester visit by the time we finally got back to the parking area for Vermont's oldest cache. It was a nice hike up to the cache with good views in the area. The cache is multiple-stage, offset multi. The stages of the multi are all in wooded areas and the cache was placed in 2000 with old gps technology so the offsets are not very accurate. We tried to find the cache using the offsets for each stage, but looked a long time with no luck. We were fairly certain of where the last offset ended so I finally went to that area and walked along the last heading. I checked four or five spots before spotting the ammo can.

23 September 2013 Caching Quebec

Neither of us had visited Quebec since we started geocaching. This trip offered a long drive to Canada, but was the best chance we could see in the near future. We left New Hampshire and made our way through Vermont. We stopped for a few Vermont finds on the way including one a relocated covered bridge in Groveton. The cache was at one end of the bridge, but I was drawn to the other end of the covered bridge and a really well kept Alco 0-4-0 steam switcher. The switcher was last used by the now closed Groveton Paper Company.

We also tacked on a rare first to find with a traditional cache near the border which had been unfound in over a week. The cache was at April's Maple and had us stumped for a bit since the posted coordinates were in the parking lot. We looked for a bit then saw the husband half of the farm business He stopped to talk with us and was soon joined by his wife. Neither remembered the exact location of the cache, but were certain it was closer to the road. Armed with that bit of knowledge, Ali soon had a nice hide in hand. We marked better coordinates before heading into the business and everything maple. We talked for a bit and found some great maple products before making our way to the border.

Unlike our entry and return from Ontario last year, no one at either crossing seemed even slightly aware of geocaching. Our first stop was a small rural cemetery with a nicely camouflaged containter at the gate to the cemetery. Ali had solved a few puzzles and we soon found ourselves at a roadside cache across from a number of moogles. We enjoyed the rural scenery before marking our way to Baldwin Mills.

After a stop at the local store for some snacks and a drink, we made our way to Harold Baldwin Park. Besides nice woods for hiking the park had a climb through a rock trail to a very nice overlook. We spotted our first benchmark in Quebec (as if the blue triangle weren't a big signal) but were unable to come up with the cache at this nice rock formation.

We made a second park visit at the grounds of a fish hatchery. The trail ran along the stream including a very old log dam. Neither of us had seen a dam constructed like this It had been breeched some time ago, but the remaining construction was interesting.

We both liked the fishing rod and reel arches at the door of the hatchery.

It was a long drive for a short visit, but we enjoyed a very rural slice of Quebec and two super walks in the park,

19 September 2008 Go Climb A Rock


















I remember that slogan from a friend's T-shirt many years ago. Today we got to end our fun doing just that. We started in New Hampshire. We had stayed in this little town called Lebanon. The evening before was the best food of the trip and a pleasant perfect stay. In the morning we went back to Lebanon for a little caching and waymarking. Our caching stop was at a small local park, Goodwin Park. Goodwin had a small ski hill and two ski jumps. Having never seen ski jumps in person, these were pretty scary. We were joined in our visit to the park by the local police officers. We said hello and headed into the woods. On our return back we were surprised to find a number of them in the water searching and using metal detectors. We quickly asked, "This is training, isn't it?" A negative reply gave us a somber moment. We headed back to our car and left them to their work. After a little waymarking in Lebanon, we made our way to Vermont with a desire to return to this scenic area.

After we left New Hampshire, we made our way to White River Junction, Vermont. This was a neat little town with a lot of waymarks and a scenic railroad. Too bad the railroad wasn't running on Friday. We did stop at an outstanding bakery and grab some items for lunch. Our stops in Vermont included a tandem covered bridge which spanned a section of the Connecticut River with the scariest dam I've ever seen. It was made of plywood and included warning signs about when to run for cover. This was our first stop on vacation where we got to see a lot of New England asters in New England. We stopped at the Connecticut River for a cache straddling the Vermont and New Hampshire borders.

After all this we made our way to Mt. Ascutney. We each had places we wanted to stop on vacation and this was at the top of Ali's list. She had been here in college and remembered it as a great place. Unlike so many places we go when we're younger and return to find changed or not quite as we remembered, I don't think Mt. Ascutney failed. It was gorgeous. We did an earthcache, played tourists, ate lunch, and then made our way to the main event. We took the summit trail to the top of the ridge and climbed the tower. When I was done soaking in the sights and taking pictures, I looked at Ali and said, "There's a cache nearby." She looked at me, looked at her gps, and gave me this look while saying, "It's .66 miles away and it's a 4 1/2 terrain." Ah who cares, come on let's go climb a rock. She shook her head, thought me nuts, and off we went. It was outstanding! It was stupendous! It was the way caching is meant to be! We got the cache and made our way to Sturbridge.