PA Weekend with Jeffie - Sunday Edition (Morning Part I) - Stone Valley n' Duct Tape

With a lot of hiking crammed into Saturday, Jeff and I were a little tired.  That doesn't mean we weren't up for more wilderness adventures...we just needed to pace ourselves a little.  Getting old is a bitch FYI.  Haha.  Yesterday we had found The Enchanted Forest, which had spent just over a year hanging out in the woods all alone without anyone to come and find it.  In the geo-community that's called a "lonesome" cache - which can be a shame, especially if it's a good cache.  Well, there just so happened to be another lonesome cache in CPA that had caught our eye - and that was Duct Tape by the REST Seekers.  This particular cache had not been found since September of 2009! 

*Insert shocked face here*

Part of what might have been causing this cache's bitter loneliness, was the fact that it's a puzzle cache.  So basically you had to solve a puzzle in order to figure out what the coordinates were.  As fate would have it, Jeff and I are apparently awful at puzzles.  Put us together and our best efforts to crack the simplest of code could be described as abysmal, horrid, and outrageously putrid.  Yeah...we suck that hard.

For the better part of the weekend we had stared at this cache trying to figure out what the puzzle was, and how we could solve it.  We eventually took pity on ourselves, and reached out to another cacher for a hint.  The hint only made things worse...so we asked for another.  That didn't help either.  At some point we were ready to plead for an 8 x 10 glossy of the coordinates to save the continued suffering of innocent grey matter.

It was Jeff who finally cracked the code.  Under normal circumstances, I'm pretty sure a distracted 10-year old probably could have figured it out, but for whatever reason we just didn't see it.  Regardless...the cache coordinates were in our hands and we were off into the morning sun to be the first finders on this cache in 1.5 years!!!  Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.


Jeff shows off the antique logbook - first finders
in 1.5 years.  Let the geeking-out begin!


The cache was hidden in Stone Valley Recreational Area.  This 700 acre chunk of change is owned and operated by Penn State University which pretty much owns everything in Central PA.  I was going to make a joke about them owning more land than Robert Redford, but I can't find a good link to further my point...so I'm scrapping the joke.  Moving on...!



We headed to the coordinates, and there we found a container with another set of coordinates that took us deep into the woods.  As we are all aware, this is the kind of caching I love the most.  I don't remember how long a hike it was (maybe less than a half-mile), but the scenery was really pretty.  There was plenty of hemlock and hardwoods to keep us company - and after covering the distance - we arrived at the cache location.  After doing a few somersaults to accommodate Jeff's possessed GPS, we found the cache!  The ancient prophesies proved true, because we were indeed the first visitors since 2009.  That's a really cool feeling.

For a little bit we pawed through the goodies, and eventually we packed up everything and made sure we rehid the cache good because who knows when it will see any love again.  All in all we were pleased with ourselves - two caches in two days that had not been logged as found in over a year. 

From there, Jeff wanted to continue on down the trail, and make the loop back to where we entered the woods.  So we did.  Apparently, I had hiked here before and didn't realize it.  Haha.  It was nice getting back here though - as Stone Valley is extremely scenic (just like most everything in PA I guess...haha).


Jeff shaking his bum along the loop in Stone Valley.

This was a great way to start our morning...but it was only the start.  There was much more adventurin' still yet to accomplish!