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!

Alma Pond and the canoe that could!

It was Memorial Day - a day to celebrate, reflect, give thanks and subsequently paddle my ass across open bodies of water to fulfil zero day obligations.  And as it would be on this beautiful sunny Memorial Day, I would also be able to test out my Szuchie Mark I canoe rack system by driving down to Alma Pond near Wellsville, New York.  So with our floatable steed Starseed thrown atop the Suvie, Chicky and I headed out nice and early to try and beat the heat before temperatures creeped into the 90's as predicted (WTF - this is springtime in NY, that's way too damn hot!).

I was a little leery about my hodge-podge canoe rack, but I'll be danged...the thing worked perfectly!  I was so proud...I might have to market them and make trillions.  T.S. Thule and Yakima, there's a new cowboy in town!  Ironically, as we were heading south driving through Belfast, a pickup truck passed us going the opposite direction with three canoes/kayaks on the hood - - all supported by a pair of two-by-fours.  So clearly I'm not the only person on Earth who isn't content in spending $300 on two slivers of Swedish-fabricated plastic.

The highlight of our pre-paddling day was stopping in Wellsville for breakfast.  There's a little place on South Main Street called The Modern Diner.  This was a "greasy spoon" in every sense of the word - highlighted by the novel fact that above the counter there was a sign that indicated the distance of just about every legitimate town in New York State.  So as I sat there nibbling on my omelet, I found solace in knowing Arcade was only 43 miles away.  Haha.

At around 9am we hit the shores of Alma Pond.  According to the DEC, this is an 86-arce artificial impoundment located on the headwaters of Honeoye Creek.  Up until a week ago, I didn't even know it existed - but once I noticed there was a canoe cache here called The Far Side of Alma Pond by Brownout, I knew I had to pay a visit ASAP.  And boy I was glad that we did.  Within moments of detatching Starseed from the sultry grip of my Szuchie Mark I's (the shameless plugs probably won't end anytime soon), we were preparing to cast off from the hand launch.  With the exception of one fisherman we ran into as he was packing up and heading out, there wasn't a soul to be found anywhere around Alma pond.  That = hecka awesome.

Chicky's butt...er...the pond I mean...after casting off!

The pond was extremely peaceful, and almost entirely surrounded by woods.  It was an amazing setting.  The two things that I found odd though, were the extreme abundance of huge swarming flies (eww...gross), and the fact that the lake was really cloudy.  Reading the DEC website now, I realize why that was:

Despite being a very shallow pond, aquatic vegetation is lacking due to the lack of transparency of the water generally caused by algae blooms and turbidity due to the feeding activity of the bullhead and carp.

That would explain the pea-soup thing Alma had going on:

That's some hardcore turbidity going on there.

The cache from the hand launch was a little under a third of a mile, so it wasn't going to be a very long paddle before arriving at our first stop.  Of course, as we got out into the center of the pond, we got a better perspective as to the beauty of this spot.

As we closed the last 400 feet to the cache we picked a point along the shore in a little cove to dock our dinghy and hike into the woods to find the prize.  This was a superbly secluded spot, and once we mastered the art of parallel parking a canoe, we exited the boat safely and prepared the 150 foot trek to the cache.  Here's a couple shots from our cove-away-from-cove:

The woods surrounding the pond were as stunning as the pond itself.  Lush vegitation, little babbling runoffs and plenty of big happy hardwoods.  I was excited as I approached the zero, because this cache had not been found since August 2010 and being the first-finder in nine months was a neat bonus to all this nonsense.  Sure enough, there was the cache ready to be found.  There's not much else I like more than finding a big old 50-caliber ammobox waiting for me!

There was some celebratory whooping-and-hollering to be heard as we cracked the can and did our admin duties.  We made sure to rehid it nice and good for the next fortunate finder, and returned to our cove to decide what we would do next.  According to the GPS, there was another cache called Alma Pond a half-mile away that was located right along the shore.  Sure you could park within 100 feet of it, but we came all this way and had to squeeze every second out of our paddle time here.  So it was decided to cross back to the other side of the lake to find this cache.  Safely into the canoe, we pushed off from shore and started northeast to our next destination.

It was gorgeous on the lake, and I really enjoyed every minute we spent floating about.  A half-mile in a canoe is extremely short, and in no time we rolled up near the cache site.  We saw a parking spot, so we pulled up and unloaded.  It seemed that every time we got close to the shore, the flies would become a swarming obnoxious mess.  There must have been 100 huge flies buzzing all over the place here.  It was surreal, and yes...a teeny-bit gross.  Haha.  Once we left the shore, it was mostly bug free, and after the GPS got done screwing around, it gave us a bead on the cache, and once again I was signing into an ammo can that I had paddled too.

Our parking spot for the Alma Pond cache.

Seemingly confidant in our unblemished canoe-wrangling skills, we attempted to re-enter Starseed and continue our sojourn at Alma Pond.  For whatever reason (be it the swarming flies, the sweltering heat, or the general euphoria one feels from geo-yachting), I sort of lost sight of the prize...and by that I mean the ability to maintain my balance while keeping Starseed afloat.  One second I was watching Chicky stabalize the canoe from shore while I hopped on and tried to keep her sturdy...the next moment I'm cannonballing into green water...

SPLASHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...

Now that I was sufficiently wet from the neck down, I assessed the situation (while trying to ignore the fact that I smelled like week old fish).  Thankfully Chicky was high-and-dry on land with the electronics, so the only real harm done was that we had to dump a dozen gallons or so of pond water out of Starseed.  This was done pretty quick, and "Boarding Part II" went much more smoothly.  Here's what I look like after being B's D. in P.W.

By the time we arrived back at the launch, I had started to dry off.  Also, the pond had attracted quite a few visitors who gathered along the shore to fish, sun bathe and enjoy the amazing Memorial Day weather.  This was a great start to the canoeing season - here's hoping there are many more!

Necessity meets stupidity (AKA: How I changed the world with $10.62).

There have been many inspiring artists, inventors and thinkers throughout the annals of history.  These Renaissance men created beautiful images and items of untold use with their own hands.  They looked at the world around them and sought answers for the questions surrounding mankind.  Their brilliance had no end, and when they seamlessly mastered one vocation, they would explore another to the benefit and awe of all humanity.  You have heard their names as examples of the most ingenious minds of all time...Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, Issac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Colonel Harland Sanders....the list goes on and on.  They were innovators, and their contributions still amaze us today.

This story is not about such a scenario, individual or circumstance.  Not even close.

You see...a couple of years ago, Chicky procured a canoe.  It's pretty.  Here's a picture of what it looks like floating on grass:

It's named Starseed (because all sea-faring crafts need a name).  The name of this particular vessel was derived from a Canadian rock group named Our Lady Peace and their song Starseed.  The story goes that, as we were trying to decide what to name the canoe, this jaunty tune came on the radio.  Being one of our personal fav's, we had to try it out...and the name stuck.  Inconsequential history is fun right?

Since that time, we've had to haul Starseed around using my parent's pickup as it was the only vehicle we had available to us that could carry around a 150-pound yacht.  Of course using the truck came with a slew of strings attached, including a hefty gas bills.  The negotiation process alone was traumatic!

Anyway, this past winter that all changed .  I purchased my Suvie, and now had something that could transport our dear Starseed from one location to another.  The hitch in this well designed plan, was that while my Suvie had roof rails (the rails that run parallel to the sides of the vehicle), it didn't come with crossbars that ran from one rail to another.  When I asked the nice people at the Nissan dealership how much installing two cheaply made slats of plastic totalling seven feet would run me, they smiled and said, "$300 dollars, with about $75 to install."  After I finished laughing in their faces and inquiring if they realized how ridiculous they sounded saying that out loud with a straight face, I decided to do some research of my own.

Apparently crossbars for a Nissan Suvie are forged in the fires of Mordor and varnished with the tears of angels because well known roof rack distributors like Thule and Yackima wanted well over $300 for their product.  So I was reduces to skulking around discount rack places.  It was there I learned that my Nissan has the largest damn roof rails on earth.  It would take you a three day trip just to circumvent around their girth.  I like my Suvie, but WTF Nissan!?!?

Nation.....I'm not a tightwad, but to pay $300+ for something I'll use a handful of times a year seems excessive and dumb.  Especially for something that is just glorified PVC pipe clamped to my roof!

And then it hit me....eat your heart out Da Vinci:

Yes folks, handcrafted from the tawdry isles of Value Home Center - I give you the Szuchie Mark I roof crossbars.  They are sleek, aerodynamic, can handle 200 pounds of cargo, and are designed with Sharpie block lettering.  All this and more can be yours for the affordable price of $10.62. 

What's that you say, how can such a high-quality peice of American craftsmanship be so affordable? 

Believe it or not, eight feet of PVC pipe is unlawfully cheap.  That alone was $8.  Throw in four caps for the ends, and a dozen zip ties...and you have yourself the most ghetto damn roof rack system on the face of the planet.  As this particular blahg entry has most unequivocally illustrated, I'm a total idiot.  But I'm not such an idiot that I won't run some field trials of this extravagant system.

So my plan will be to attached these to my Suvie, and spend the day doing what I would normally do.  If they don't fly off and impale any unexpected passersby, I'm golden baby.  This weekend I could be canoeing!!!

Serenity in Beaver Meadow

Even though I had logged beaucoup miles yesterday in Allegany State Park, I really wanted to get outside today and hike a few more.  I figured it would be good to stretch my tired legs, and if I could find the right spot, I could minimize the climbing of any mountains!

One of the nearby multi caches that caught my eye was Serenity at Beaver Meadow by Nature Noggins.  Normally a cache like this wouldn't remain unfound for very long, but the truth of the matter was that I had actually found it already.  It was originally placed on an alternative geocaching website called Terracaching.com.  There are a few other "alternative" caching websites outside of Geocaching.com which is far and away the most popular and mainstream source for caching goodness.

Anyway, after it was removed from Terracaching, it found a new home (and a much larger audience) on Geocaching.com.  Since that transition, I just haven't found it officially so that I could finally log it properly.  So, knowing the layout of the cache, I figured I would enjoy this long hiking cache, check on all the legs and enjoy the beautiful scenery at Beaver Meadow Audubon Center.  Beaver Meadow is operated by the Buffalo Audubon Society - which is a non-for-profit organization that according to their website promotes appreciation and enjoyment of the natural world through education and stewardship.  They have a number of nature preserves and centers throughout the Western New York.  They do some pretty cool stuff there too - as I've been involved with bird banding, nature hikes, festivals, geocaching activities and the Enchanted Forest (which is a magnificent event).

Long story short - Beaver Meadow is 384 acres of diverse and extraordinary landscape that encompasses hardwood forests, conifer lots, swamps, kettle ponds and much more.  Oh yeah, and it ain't that hilly!  So this was the perfect spot to take a long hike without abusing my body any more than I already have.  :-)  I made a call out to Chicky to see if she would like to accompany me, and soon we were heading towards our destination.  Since we knew the direction this cache was taking us, we parked "in the middle" and hiked out to leg one.  Here you'll find an long winding boardwalk that gets you up close and personal with one of the swampy areas in the Meadow.

We found the first leg after a little searching.  Honestly I had to brush the dust off the brain a little, so I can imagine the added challenge for people who haven't found this before.  But after a little head scratching, I some looking, we found what we needed and started our way towards leg two.  One of the things I love about Beaver Meadow is all the little kettle ponds in the woods, and the second leg took us a pretty remote one actually.  There we found the second leg and enjoyed ourselves a little R&R as we soaked in the sights.

From there we continued on our merry way, exploring more spots in Beaver Meadow that we hadn't visited in quite some time.  Even though the skies were overcast and it was a little chilly out, the hiking was pretty good as the trails weren't too sloppy.  With the exception of one 2-minute moment, the rain was nonexistant.  It was a good morning to hike!  Leg 3 gave us our biggest wildlife sighting for the day - a bunny!

What a cute little bugger right?  We would see a baltimore oriole later in the day, but that was driving home and not on this hike (but it was still pretty damn cool!)  From leg 3 to 4 was the longest hike between legs for the day.  It also provided us with my favorite portion of this cache - the open hardwood forest!  Here we made a ton of wonderful discoveries including wild flowers, leaks, skunk cabbage, mayapples and Chicky's favorite - trilliums!  So needless to say, the hiking was slow as we endeavored to capture every morsel we could get our hands on. 

All in all, hiking in Beaver Meadow was fantastic.  Interestingly enough, before finding the final, we noticed a small sapling had very recently been cut down along the trail and someone took the lower trunk but left the rest.  It was perfect for a hiking stick...so now I have it sitting in my apartment drying. While I don't condone cutting down stuff in a nature preserve, I do subscribe to mindset that "no good hiking stick goes to waste!"  In total, Chicky and I probably hiked around two miles and a little change.  While my knees were noticeably sore on some of the inclines, it was a great adventure and I'm so totally glad we hit the trail today...because within an hour or two after it started to pour...which sucked.  The rain has to stop eventually right!?!

The Great Letchworth Adventure!

Last weekend I finished my cache (AKA: The Hike) in Letchworth State Park - and once it was all set in place I decided to let it cure until the following Friday.  I was really happy when it went live.  It's been a while coming, but it was finally out in the cosmos for mass consumption.  So knowing that there might be people looking to find this shiny new adventure, Chicky and I decided to spend the day caching/hiking in the park.  There are a few caches I wanted to work on, and at the same time I thought it would be neat to loiter in the area and see who might be brave enough to tackle this one. 

The morning started off a little precarious, as WNY was getting hammered with monsoon like rains.  Reports indicated that the storms would move out of the area by mid-morning, so we decided to start the morning off by snagging a little breakfast at the Eagle Inn, located in the cow-filled metropolis of Eagle, New York.  Haha.  From there we watched the rain pour and pour, but it must have been Mother Nature's last hurrah, because after that the hardest of the rain let up.

From there we were free to travel to Letchworth under cloudy and mostly dry skies.  The first stop was to cruise by the parking locations for my cache.  The Hike recommends parking in two different locations, one to start your journey and one to end your journey (there's about 2.5 miles of road between the start and end points of the cache).  Anyway, there were a few cars littered about on this side of the park - in what would turn out to be hunters actually (I have no clue what season is open right now...probably something bizarre). 

None of the vehicles looked familiar, so we headed into the park to start a cache called 20,000 Meters Under the Cache by MysterySolvers6.  I wish I could tell you what that means...but all I can figure is it's a play on words, from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by french novelist Jules Verne (who in his Wiki picture looks like a happy fella).  As far as I know, whales are not indigenous to mainland Western New York, and I'm pretty sure park management would be awful sore if you went tearing along the Genesee River in a submarine.  Not that I wouldn't consider it.  But I digress...

The cache is a 5-part multi, so it takes you to many different spots on your way to your final destination.  With the sun started to finally peek through the clouds, we parked near the first stage at Inspiration Point and started our journey.  While Chicky looked for the cache, I took pictures. 
 

Pretty sweet huh?

From there we made several other stops in order to complete the necessary requirements and find the final cache.  Because I don't want to give all the fun away, I will just shut up and post a few pictures for you to oooh and aww over.

The flowers are starting to bloom - yay!

The Lower Falls were raging really hard today.

Heading back down the trail.

No worries, there's like 18 more miles to go.  Haha.

In the end we got in a few miles of beautiful trail and scenery - in many places I haven't visited in years.  The longer we hiked, the nicer the day got.  By early afternoon, the sun was out and there were beautiful blue skies. This was the perfect day to be in Letchworth! 

At some point in the morning, while in between legs, we got a call from Paleoman and Butterflyguy.  They were working on my new cache!  I was pretty excited to hear from them, until they told me they had made a wrong turn somewhere.  After trying to figure out where exactly they were, we determined they had overshot a turn in the trail and were going to have to backtrack.  To provide a little guidance, Chicky and I headed over to the other side of the park and quickly made our way down the Bear Meadow access trail to where it met with the Finger Lakes Trail.  Just as we were approaching, I saw them crossing a gully just ahead.  I shouted out to them, and soon we were chatting about their already thrilling morning adventure!  After making sure they had all the necessary information, we parted ways - us back to the truck and them on to the rest of my cache.  I was pretty excited that there were people tackling it, even on a day as wet and muddy as this. 

Please someone might very well find the cache today, Chicky and I returned to our own caching adventure.  On our way back to conclude 20,000 Meters Under the Cache we made a pit stop at the Parade Grounds in Letchworth to find another cache I had started previously called Civil War Connections in LSP by Dehgewanus.  This is a puzzle/multi that explores the wealth of Civil War-related history that is present in the park.  Again, I don't want to give too much away - so here we go with a few pictures!!!

A biggun under the blue skies!

Chicky holding up the prize loud and proud!

Heading down the FLT under the sun - that's the way we rolllllllll.

After we were done playing on this particular section of FLT we went on to complete the rest of our geo-adventures - which actually required us to take a circuitous route to one leg where we ran into more cachers!  This time Howie and Jan were driving down the park road on the east side of the park - and happened to see us returning back to our truck.  It was really nice seeing them, and after chatting for a bit about the "geo-scene" we went our separate ways.  

Chicky and I eventually ended our day in Letchworth.  We had a blast playing in the park today, especially with the added bonus of seeing so many familiar friendly faces.  To celebrate the great hikes, good caches and fun times, we hit Carneys Market in Castile, NY for pizza slices and drinks.  It was delicious - and the perfect way to round out this Saturday outside.  In total, I ended up driving well over 100 miles in and around Letchworth - seeing so many beautiful sights.  I love this place - and I can't wait to return!

My name is mud (and I love it).

Today was a good day full of frolicking in muddy snowless woods!  The plan was to chase after a couple ammobox caches with Chicky and Huck.  Clearly they get pretty excited about this stuff:



The first cache on our hastily and poorly Szuchie-planned docket was Old Shep by everybody's favorite retired cacher H-to-Das-Beeeeezuhle.  Most of the snow had been replaced by standing water and slop, but just seeing dirt and mud again was enough to make me about the most excited person on earth.  On top of it, there were tons of little mini-icebergs all strewn about along the creek and into the nearby woods.  Check 'em out!



All in all it was a really nice quarter-mile hike in the woods - and at the end of the trek there was a nice 50 cal ammo box.  It was a great way to start the day - and even though the weather was a little crappy (cold and some snow), I was pretty pleased with the hike.  So we made our way back and eventually made our way to Hero’s Quest: The Five Deadly Venoms by SwineSyndicate.  This is a "newer" caching family that has really impressed with creative/unique hides in the woods away from all the park and grab stuff most newbies get started with an then hopelessly emulate.  Lucky for me the Syndicate has a great knack for the kind of caches I like.  This cache is located in Mill Road Park in West Seneca.  This a super sweet place as it follows right along Cazenovia Creek.  They did a really good job with this one - and all in all it was about a mile or two hike in the mud.  It was heaven!  Haha. 

At the end of all things, I was a little tired as this was the first major hiking I had done in a while.  But it felt really good and is helping for me to prep for bigger and better things!  (*Hint*Hint*)  They are calling for 50-degree weather this coming week...die snow, die!!!  Yay!