Letchworth Park's "Murder Central!"

I desperately needed a four day weekend (because you can't take off an odd number of days consecutively...it just doesn't feel right...haha).  With the whole day to screw around, I grabbed Chicky and we headed to Letchworth.  I'm pretty sure in only a few measly months, I've spent more time there than I have in the last few years combined.  It's pretty damn cool if you ask me.

One of the itches I've been eagerly scratching lately is the desire to get into Letchworth and locate all the remaining unfound caches that inhabit the park.  I'm not sure what brought this about...but it seems like anything that motivates me and gets me outdoors is a good thing.

The apple in our adventurous pie today would be The Murder of Alfred Silverheels by Dehgewanus.  The cache concept is pretty cool, as it describes the true story surrounding the early 1900's murder of Alfred Silverheels.  The cache itself actually takes you to the foundation of the house that the murder took place.  Sort of spooky...but also extremely interesting!  I love historical caches in Letchworth, so this cache would be our goal today.

Of course we were fraught with problems from the get-go.  My GPS is becoming quite the cantankerous old geriatric.  That or it's reverted back to early puberty.  Either way it pisses me off!  Haha.  For most of the trip, we had marginal satellite reception, which makes looking for a needle in a haystack pretty challenging.  I'm not going to lie...there was some swearing on my part. 

This is what no reception looks like while standing in a parking lot.

Chicky remained calm and collected (because let's face it, I'm a whiny spazz), and through this unbalanced perseverance eventually each of the caches four legs presented themselves.  The bright side is that if you're going to be wandering around in circles without ever getting close to your destination, you might as well do it in a spectacular location.  And as always, Letchworth State Park delivers.  :-)

At several stops along this cache, we were treated to some epically huge hardwood trees. Oak, cherry and maple mostly.  They were gorgeous!  At the first three stages of the cache, you had to find a number that would ultimately aid you in opening the final cache.  At one leg in particular, Chicky retrieved the cache, and despite a few minutes of intense searching, couldn't find the number promised to us by the cache owner.  The following is my impression of Chicky looking for a number that is clearly very well hidden.  Hahaha.

Sometimes I'm so cute, I even amaze myself.

The next picture is the location of the old house foundation where the fateful murder occurred.  It's hard to make it out with all the greenery, but you can definitely tell there used to be a structure here.

Where the murder took place!

From there we had some choices on how to get to the final stage of the cache.  For some reason we expected there'd be a trail taking us there (because usually you have to keep the cache legs near trails).  This was a miscalculation on our part, but the resulting hike presented some really beautiful scenery, and also a couple spots I had not been in several years.

For getting ourselves lost, we sure did it in a really awesome area.  The only additional challenge to all of this was that we had to climb up a nice big hill to get to the final location of the cache.  It was all good though, because as we crested the hill we got to check out another hidden patch of behemoth trees just waiting to pay us a visit.  Much tree hugging and kiss-face-making was had.

The rest of the adventure was just as entertaining, only with considerably less uphill climbing.  And since it was getting much warmer out, this was a very agreeable aspect to the outing.  Haha.  I love these woods, and they are probably one my favorite spots in this section of Letchworth!