Science Fun

Boo! That is the name of this past week’s cache adventure and it was a fitting name for the cache was located on a trail adjacent to a cemetery in Concord, NH.

It was an easy find once we located the trail leading out of the cemetery – many wandering roads and due to poison ivy, it was not advised to go bushwacking your way through. Once the trail was located, it was short walk and then a quick find. The area had many old foundations and it looked like it might have been a ‘staging’ area for quarry workers in the nearby quarries.

Another significant thing about this area is this cemetery is where Christa McAuliffe, America’s Teacher in Space that lost her life in the tragic shuttle accident, is buried. She has a nice monument and even today, has many visitors that will stop by to read her memorial plaque and her statement of why she wanted to venture into space.

The caching activity for this past week has been a struggle to round up due to inclement weather and conflicts at work with the regular routine that I run on Tuesday. I did manage to squeak out one on Friday of last week.

The cache for the week was another in the continuing ‘Rail Trail’ series. In the good old days of yesteryear, New Hampshire was blessed with an abundance of rail road activity, after all there were not many cars on the road and one of the main mechanisms for commerce was to move goods from community to community by rail.

The cache was about a 15 minute drive from work (had to go the long way due to road construction). Upon arrival at the parking area, it was time to set out on the trek – almost ½ mile walk to the cache. Now, this particular rail trail – the rails were still in place even though no active train traffic traveled on this track. It is known that there are small carts that will travel along this particular rail.

It was gorgeous early Fall day with a crisp feeling in the air and just a tinge of color in the trees as the foliage is just starting to change. The cache was easy to find once we arrived at ‘ground zero’ and I am glad that it was not too far off from the trail as the property that boarders the trail is state prison property and it has the big signs ‘no trespassing – violaters may be shot’!

My cache adventures for this week were two caches in the same neigborhood, just up the street from where I work. With these urban caches, half the battle of locating them is finding out what street or park they are located on and then trying to navigate around the city looking for them, and finding a place to park. School started up this week, thus there was extra traffic due to the kids getting out at noon.

The two caches were named after the Star Wars Trilogy and were themed accordingly with the tradeable contents, at least one of the caches, the other was just a log book. The first cache to locate after finding parking was a ‘gas saver’ cache, which was located in a guard rail on the entrance to the park – the trick here is try to grab it discretly. I just sat on the guard rail post and prentended to tie my shoe while reaching up and grabbing the little monster from its hidey hole. Then I dropped my pen and reached down to pick the pen while slipping the cache back into its hole – off to the next.

The second cache was just a short walk down the path from the ‘gas saver’ cache. The trick here is, and the warning was issued in the web site listing, was that the GPS was useless once you you got near it – the GPS was not able to receive a good quality signal and you had to use your ‘geocaching sense’ and search the area. There were muggles in the nearby play area and so we had to search and be ‘quiet’ so as to not get the ‘muggles’ restless and have them coming into the woods to seek out what was going on. After criss crossing the forest in the general area outlined by the GPS, it finally became a ‘find’!
Geocaching is full of fun and excitement as you figure out how to find the caches and how to keep the ‘muggles’ at bay while doing the search. Happy Geocaching!

Every now and then in the geocaching routine, I come across one of those caches where it is multiple puzzles and steps to complete the thing, as well as multiple visits to hunt the thing at the final location.

Capital Commons was one of these multi-adventure caches that started about a month ago. The first part of the cache required a visit to the New Hampshire State House campus (the seat of NH government). Just the immense granite structure was impressive and worth the visit. This is one of the oldest state houses in the country where the government still meets and performs its daily tasks.

The cache required visiting different monuments and placards around the campus to get numbers to make up the coordinates. This state is rich in history and there is quite a lesson of history by reading each of the monuments and placards. This part of the cache took two visits.

Upon rounding up the numbers at the State House campus and assembling the coordinates – it was off for the drive across town to the cache location – a park. This little park in a residential neighborhood was busy when we arrived, so we just did a casual walk around to get our bearings as to where the cache might be. That was it for the day and it was back to work.

The following week, we returned to continue our search. After multiple searches and dodging the eyes of the muggles, we were finally able to locate what we thought was the cache – it however, ended up not being the cache. Time ran out and it was back to work. We were determined the next time and when we returned a week later with a ‘hint’ in our hands (and an empty park), we set about the task to capture this cache and complete this adventure.

I much prefer the caches that are out in the woods – you don’t have to worry so much about the muggle activity and what folks might think when they see you prowling around looking for the cache. The first part of the cache was great – a good history lesson, they could have found a better place to hide the final cache in an area that had less traffic – let’s see how long this cache will remain.

The geocache adventures this week were somewhat impacted by the extreme heat and humidity of the week.  My Sunday cache was a short hike and I thought it might have been a refreshing cache when I reached ground zero.  White Dot is the name of a trail in the Mount Monadnock trail system. 

I pulled off into the parking area and headed on up the trail, it was a warm and steamy afternoon and there were not many hikers out - the parking lot was practically empty - I know why, heat, hiking, and humidity do not mix - it is not enjoyable.  I thought that with this cache and being that White Dot was one of the easier trails, that this would be good find and that it would be cooler when I reached the cache.

The cache was an easy find, however, it was not very high up the mountain, it was well below tree line and what I thought would be a cool refreshing breeze from above tree line, well, I never made it up that high.  The trek was just under 2 miles round trip.  There are other caches with in the Mount Monadnock trail system and I will save those caches for other days - in the fall when the leaves change.

Tuesday is my normal day that I escape from the office to do a mid-week cache, however, with the heat and humidity still extremely high, I decided to forego the escape from the office and stay in the air conditioned environment and resume cacheing when the temperature went down.  Us New Englanders are not used to the high heat and humidity that our southern friends enjoy.

This week has been a good week in the geocaching department!  The weather was very cooperative and I was able to round up several caches.  The first cache, which was done last weekend was a ‘hike’ and fun searching for the little thing.

Iowa Cache is one of the “United States” challenge caches that was left over from a contest that was run where you had a certain amount of time to find the ’states’ and turn in your report that you had found all of them.  It was educational in that you had to find the cache as well as a ‘historical’ fact about the state.  The contest is no longer in progress, however the caches are still in place for folks to enjoy.  The trek was 1.5 miles down an old rail road bed, upon arriving at ground zero, you had to search for a black film canister that contained the log sheet.  A collection of old rail road ties awaited your search, however, after I did a lot of searching through the pile, it was not there - it was wedged in the fork of a tree behind the pile.  They were sneaky as they knew that everybody would come and search through the pile, not find it, and then move on to the next…

The other two caches I did this week were ‘urban’ caches all located with in 15 minutes of where I work.  These were of the park-n-grab variety, magnatized containers attached to parking signs in community parks.  The challenge with these is to do them without being noticed by the muggles (muggle = an individual that is not participating in the geocaching game).  Well, that is all this week - lets see, what will I find this week.