19 September 2017 Traveling to the Falls

I was headed to the Niagara Falls area for business. I wanted to stop a couple times to enjoy a great fall day. My first stop was at Headwaters Conservation Park east of Erie. This location has been on my to do list for a while so it was nice to be able to make a stop in the late afternoon. The wildflowers were a little past prime, but the trails were peaceful.

I accidentally found my first Quest here while looking for a geocache. The ammo can holding the quest was about 80 feet from the coordinates of the geocache and hanging from a tree by a chain. It was hard to miss. It was also amusing to see the names of cachers who had signed the log book. The nearby cache was actually on the other side of the stream and not easy to reach.

The Quest included laminated photos from a 1915 flood of Millcreek. The images were a great piece of local history. I enjoyed the "find".

I enjoyed the Quest find and the nearby cache hide despite four unplanned stream crossings. With those behind me, I was back on the trail and enjoying the sites. I wasn't aware enough to grab a shot of an unexpected great blue along the stream shore, but found a few stands of remaining new england asters near the water (they don't move ;)).

I went deeper in the woods and eventually found the cache I was seeking which is a 2003 multi. The old cache hadn't been found since spring and was sitting wide open six feet from any possible hiding area, but all was well with the container. The walk back to the cache included a couple more stream crossings.

There was a time when I could see Lake Erie sunsets all the time and had a seemingly infinite number of them left. I traveled back and forth to the Falls for years. Now those trips are infrequent and the number of sunsets left are dwindling. I stopped for one more at Gratiot Park in Dunkirk. There were clouds in the way, but standing at water's edge as the day faded away was still awesome.

I've also made frequent stops at the Thruway rest area over the years. This evening was another late stop on my way east. I was surprised to see there was a 2004 geocache in the eastbound parking area which I hadn't found. I was even more surprised to see my Subaru was within a few feet of it when I parked. I found the cache and made that all too familiar walk across the deserted pedestrian overpass before completing the last piece of the day's drive.