Szuchie's Sense of Serenity...

At some point during work today I had the brilliant idea to go for a hike once I set free for the weekend.  Normally that's a standard occurrence - only this time this genius notion was accompanied by an agenda and everything.  I was surprised as anyone, because my ideas never come with an agenda attached.  It's like my brain just gave itself a gift or something...what a bizarre and strangely psychotic concept.

The back story on this idea and agenda (because most everything comes with a 25- page dissertation that could easily be boiled down to one or two sentences) was a combination of two things.  Both involved caches...shocking right?

Part numero uno of my plan was to head to a section Wyoming County public forest and re-find the final for The Tranquil Trickle of Trout Brook by Snowman257.  This is a cleverly done 5 park multi that requires you to bushwhack through a the woods alongside Trout Brook.  Some parts are a swampy mess with wall to wall thorns, prickers and other undesirables...but for all that, there is also nice open woods and other cools spots.  Chicky and I had found this cache back in 2010 when I was going through a non-logging phase.  So basically I had found the cache, but didn't bother to log my adventure online...which in turn meant that I had no clue when I actually had found this cache.  I could have made an educated guess (and probably would have been right on in hindsight), but instead decided to revisit the final to find out when I had originally logged in, so that I could log online since at this brief point in my life I've decided I'm happy doing that again.  My life is one big whim people, it's horrible! 

The section of WyCo forest is actually split into two parts by Hobday Road in the hamlet of Hermitage which is located in the Town of Wethersfield (I think...haha).  The side of the woods that Tranquil Trickle of Trout Brook is located on is not developed.  Of course that will change soon, as the County has decided to forest this side of the road...which is understandable, but also pretty lame.  But hey, in like 2 or 3 years there will be an access trail for people to place millions and millions of caches along (eye roll).  Anyway...to do anything over there requires your big boy pants and a pair of good muck boots.  It's swampy, and with all the rain we've gotten the will certainly come in uber handy.  I headed into the woods, and after crossing Trout Creek I made quick work of the cache.  I checked the log book...and well...you get the idea...

Clearly I was enamored with this one...haha.

With that stage of my trek under wraps, I began the second portion of my journey.  This would be to cross Hobday Road into the other side of WyCo woods.  Here there is a dandy trail - and along this trail is a three-part cache called Szuchie's Sense of Serenity by every one's favorite cache blogger - Me!  Since I hadn't paid a visit here in a little while, I deduced that it would be the perfect opportunity to enjoy this 2-mile round trip hike and in doing so run through part of this cache.  I wasn't 500 feet into my hike before I was greeted by the beautiful colors of spring.

Aww...pretty right?  Not long after this blossoming babe, I arrived at the first stage of my cache.  This was a letterbox stage that required you to follow a couple clues to find the first leg.  What I love about this spot, was that at some point in history someone planted a ton of spruce all lined in rows.  So you enter this patch of woods and it's very dark and spooky.  Really cool stuff though as you can see how all the trees line up almost perfectly with one another.  So of course it needed to be shown off - and hence the first stage of my hike.  From there it was a gradual uphill hike where this trail "T"'d with the snowmobile trail that ran west to east.  Just a short jaunt west and you'd arrive at a really unique spot, that if you weren't pay attention you'd probably not notice.

While it's hard to tell from just this picture...that is the foundation to an old log cabin structure.  I don't imagine that they ever built a house, however it's a really neat thing to find in the middle of the woods.  The second leg was within 10 feet of the "front door" as I couldn't help but show this strange phenomenon off to geo-visitors.  From there, I headed east to the last stage of my cache.  This was the longest portion of the hike - and the closer you got to the final, the more beautiful and open these woods became. 

I arrived near the final and made an unfortunate discovery.  Since the County plans on harvesting timber on the other side of the forest, they must have hired some surveyors or something to mark the boundaries of these woods.  When I first placed this cache, I believed the final was just on the right side of the boundary line...sadly I was off by about 75 feet or so...which meant that my final cache had to be moved.  It was a tough decision, because the final cache was in an awesome spot, and that particular section of open hardwoods and nearby creeks was stellar.  Plus, the hiding spot for the cache was an awesome old cherry tree - check this out!

Sigh...so after a few minutes of deliberation, I decided that instead of trying to make this work, I would just archive the cache.  The cache sort of came together and to modify it would just take away totally from what I was trying to accomplish - so it made sense to me.  It'd be like taking the Mona Lisa and removing her famous the smile.  Sure it would still be a good painting, but it just wouldn't be the same.  Now imagine that in the form of a crappy cache that da Vinci wouldn't touch with a 20 foot pole.  Haha.  With the cache dangling in my hand, I began the slow, somber hike back out.  One of the last picture I took before I left, was this...which I'm pretty sure is one of the reasons I always try and place caches like this.

I was grateful to have placed this cache, and moreso for the people who took the time to find it.  While I'm sad to see it go, maybe someone will place something that once again shows off this exceptional section of hardwoods.  What a wild and weird Friday night!