The great non-catered Pennsylvanian adventure...

I'm not exactly sure how we ended up in Northern Pennsylvania today...but for whatever reason, I feel like Cayuga and I were in search of a breakfast nook that accepted Mastercard.  Truth be told, we've traveled hundreds of miles for much less impressive reasons. 

Anyway, in a desperate search for bacon and eggs, we ended up screwing around Allegheny National Forest.  Located in Pennsylvania, and encompassing over 512,000 acres of territory (I just looked that up and might have pooped a little...WOW that is big).  There are many popular sections of ANF, but one of the more popular is the Kinzua Dam region.  The dam is considered one of the largest dams east of Mississippi River, and certainly an impressive sight to behold.  The dam in-turn created the Allegheny Reservoir.  The reservoir is 24 miles long and covers over 21,000 acres.  That's a whole lot of water folks.

What's that mean to this story?  Not much.  I'm just super fascinated by the stuff I just learned.  Haha.

Seriously though, our trek took us to the reservoir, and a spot called Rimrock Overlook.  This rocky bluff overlooks the reservoir, and boasts rock formations that are multiple stories in height.  Check out the link - because this is a most excellent spot (especially "the tunnel" and some of the caves in the area).  There's a couple ways to visit Rimrock Overlook.  The first being you can drive up the mountain and make the short walk to the cliffs.  The other is start down by the reservoir and hike the Rimrock Trail up.  Doing half of the latter was our plan of attack today - seeing as there were a couple new caches that we wanted to check out - one called Rimrock Trail Cache by Kcepenn being approximately halfway up the trail.

I know I know...I've bored you to death.  How about a picture?  Here's what the trailhead at the bottom looks like:

From there we started our journey by finding a pretty quick park-and grab, before finally sinking our teeth into a little "in the woods" hiking.  The trail was beautiful - and of course very much uphill.  Haha.  I didn't complain too much (which is normal hiking faire when uphill hiking becomes involved).  And because you're   been oh-so-amicable about reading this blahg, here are some more pictures to ogle over:

The start of the Rimrock trail before all that fun uphill stuff.

Cayuga doesn't only find caches...

The sun peeking through the ANF woodlot.

Aww...ain't he just the most precious thing.

More fun in the woods!

At the bottom looking toward a small portion of the reservoir.

Work it baby.

This venture out into ANF was exceptional, and from there we made a few other stops before slowly starting our way north.  There were a myriad of other new caches, but most of them were pretty unimpressive, unimaginative and unscrupulous.  All that junk aside, there was one particular spot that I loved.  It was located in Frewsburg, New York in a park called Erlandson Overview Park (and the aptly named Erlandson Overview Park Cache by the Carlsons).  How the hell we landed in Chautauqua County, New York is beyond me, but what we discovered was one of the highest points in the county, which if you looked nice and hard, you could see Chautauqua Lake off in the distance.  And in a Szuchie's Grand Escape first, we're going interactive!  Think of it as a much more interesting "Where's Waldo?"  See if you can find it in the picture below:

Trust me...Chatty Lake is in this pic somewhere...

The hills are alive with...breakfast I hope!

A great vantage point from Erlandson Overview Park.

Plenty to see here - and some nice trails to boot!

From there Cayuga and I slowly wrapped up our whirlwind adventure.  Ironically, after spending several hours driving all over Western New York and Northern Pennsylvania, we never did find a breakfast joint that would take credit cards!  We failed...but hey, we had fun in the process and saw some pretty sweet sights!

Letchworth Part II - C of Team CCC and CCC in LSP (follow all that?)

My cell phone buzzed indicating a new textual message.  It was an important announcement informing me that Cayuga Crew had just entered the northern end of Letchworth and was officially requesting my affable company in tackling CCC in LSP by Wolf Creek.  This cache is a multi-part adventure that highlights all the Civilian Conservation Corps (also known as CCC) locations in Letchworth.  The CCC was created during the Great Depression as a way to create jobs for the unemployed.  The CCC existed from 1933 to 1941, and in Letchworth alone over 3,000 men played a huge roll in developing the park and making it much more accessible for tourists and other exploration.  They built roads, buildings, fences and other structures that still stand in the park.  One of the most famous CCC accomplishments is the Stone Arch Bridge that spans the Genesee River below the Lower Falls.  It's the only spot inside Letchworth that you can cross from the eastern side of the park to the western side (legitimately of course...haha).

Anyway, this particular cache drove you around both sides of the park, showing you many informational kiosks, as well as remnants of CCC structures.  It was pretty cool actually, because it permitted me to visit many spots I haven't been to in quite some time, and also a spot that I had never known about before which made me all giggly and shat.  Haha. 

The twist to this cache, is that not only did you have to get certain information off the kiosks, but you also had to find a container with information that would help you decipher the final coordinates.  At first it was far too complicated a concept for Cayuga and me, but after some intense head and rear end scratching, we finally figured it out and started to quickly move between the legs.

The above stone lovely is all that's left of a CCC officers barracks.  It's hard to believe this is over 70 years old!  The kiosk beside this cool structure had an awesome picture that really resonated with me and so I'll share it:

I was amazed to see the same stone chimney I was currently loitering next to in this picture!  The notion of standing in the exact same spot where these two guys were sitting all those years ago was a mighty sweet slice of cool for me.  Alright so I'll stop drooling and get on with this post...haha.

As I said earlier, once we got the hand of what we were supposed to be doing, we did a pseudo decent job of working through the legs and getting the needed information.  The cache eventually took us to the east side of the park, and to a spot I had driven near before but did not know it existed until today!

Tucked away in a young grove of pine trees, was another old CCC chimney.  I would have looked to see if there was a similar picture to the one above, but as you can see here Cayuga's butt was in my way.  Haha.  This was a really great spot, and something I had never known about before.  See, I'm learning cool stuff all the time!  From here, we had all the necessary information and started the drive to the final cache location.  The final's location was at the northern most spot in the park that you can access from the Portageville East Side entrance.  The latter half of this road is a dirt road in every sense of the phrase, and is pretty remote considering the last couple miles there are no cabins, facilities, etc.  What you do get to discover is an awesome and probably rarely-visited overlook of the gorge.

Now that's a nice view into the gorge - not to mention it gives you a great perspective as to how steep these walls really are!  From this spot, it was a really short hike to the cache - where we found a juicy ammo can for us to crack open and log into.  All in all, this was a great day to be in Letchworth, and certainly a dandy day to hang out with my homeboy Cayuga Crew.  To finalize our adventure, we soaked in this vista, and cracked a couple of Yuenglings to celebrate.  It just don't get much better then that kiddies.