My Saturday Tour of Catt County

I woke up early this morning - and south into Cattaraugus County I went!  When May rolls around, that means it's time for the Allegany Geo-Bash, a huge caching event which is held in Allegany State Park.  This is an annual event, which first started in 2006.  At the time, it was a tiny local affair (with under 100 attendees).  Over the years, it's grown into a mega-event, with approximately 500 people visiting from all over the country, with even some people flying in internationally to attend.  It the largest annual event of it's kind in New York and Pennsylvania (but I have no real research to back that up...haha).

I'm not really the 'event attending' type (at least not as much these days...which I think probably needs some amending), but I did want to pop in and pick up some event swag and say "hi" to one of the organizers, a gentleman that goes by the handle of HeadMJ.  He's been responsible for placing some of my favorite caches in the park (which I have probably discuss ad nauseum in other posts...haha), so I thought it would be cool to meet him in person for the first time.  Anyhoo, checking out the event and meeting him was the first part of my plan.  The second was to work on the Enchanted Mountains GeoTrail (EMGT).

The EMGT's are a series of 32 caches in Cattaraugus County - one per each of the 32 townships.  The object is to visit each town, find the cache, write down the keyword, and upon completing all 32, you turn in all the keywords to get a coin or a tractor or some damn thing.  Hahaha.  Aside from handing out free stuff, the series was devised by the Catt County Tourism Department to bolster the regional economy.  If geocaching has taught me anything, it's that people will travel to complete challenges, series, and other unique caches.  So why not exploit that in the form of "tourist" dollars to support the local economy.  It's a pretty cool idea, which has been utilized in some form or another in other areas of the country.  The most notable one within striking distance from WNY is the Allegheny GeoTrail in North Eastern Pennsylvania.

Bored yet?  Yeah yeah...I'm starting to bore myself too.  Anyway...the purpose of all that rambling was to convey the following:  Eric + Catt County = plenty of nerdy caching.  Incidentally, that also means a lot of driving.  I visited the vast majority of south/southwest Catt County today.  All of the caches were relatively quick finds, so I won't blah-blah about them individually, but instead show you photos of everything I saw!  How "yay" is that kiddies!?!

The Main Admin Building overlooking Redhouse Lake in ASP.

The trailhead (and cutsie bridge) in ASP along the
North Country Trail (NCT).

Just 18 miles?  Nahhhhhhhhhhh...

Larch along the NCT in ASP.

Carrollton has the cutest critters EVER!

Looking at the babbling splendor of Rice Brook in Carrollton.

Onoville Marina...totally awesome!

An old cemetery in Conewango...the last stop on my
whirlwind tour of Cattaraugus County!

In total I probably put like 12,000 miles on my car and spent a small fortune on gas, but the end result was a great day outside exploring many places I had never visited before.  My only regret was that I didn't have more time, as I'm sure there were many quality caches that I passed which would have taken me to additional spots.  I guess it will have to wait until my next motorcar tour around the County.

Only 5 more townships left...then I'm done!