27 July 2014 12,000 Finds and Beyond

Milestones are a significant event for most geocachers. We count every 1,000 finds as one of those milestones. Since we find about 1200 caches each year, milestones happen usually just once per year. This year, we were hoping to celebrate our 12,000th find near our tenth anniversary of geocaching. There's few rules for our milestone finds. They have all been in Pennsylvania. They have all been with the dogs. They are a cache hidden in a higher difficulty scenic location. Today our goal was to visit the Parrish Rocks area for our milestone find.

We started the day hunting a few caches along Fourmile Run. Besides a visit to the attractive Fourmile Run, we were treated to a number of butterflies at blooming lilies.

We didn't find the cache on the nearby bridge, but enjoyed the view.

We've seen a number of bearing trees, but I always find them interesting. This one was roadside not far from the stream.

Before making our way to Parrish Rocks, we made stops at the Tionesta for a streamside walk to a cache and we stopped by the location of the first CCC tree planting in the US in 1933. While we were there, we both spotted the first flower below. It appeared to be very happy growing in the wet area surrounding a spring. On the way to Parrish Rocks we spotted some nice stands of monarda along the side of the forest road.

The hike and the rocks were awesome! Our last find was a little dicey as we worked to get off the rocks as thunder and lightning from a storm rolled in. We made it back safely to finish off a big day. Ali made a great choice for this milestone adventure.

Our 12000th find