We were told about this by a friend from college who lives in Rhinebeck and went out with her five year old daughter on a Geocacheing hunt in the area and said it was loads of fun. Boy was she right. We may be a bit late in jumping on the bandwagon here as Geocaching has been around since 2000 when the removal of "Selective Availability" on GPS made errors less likely (originally to confound guided missiles!). Since then the GPS craze has most of us with one in our car and many of us (with older cars) with a portable one. When military technology hits the general public watch what happens (see alkaline battery and food preservation), hence the advent of this awesome "treasure" hunt called Geocaching. You can read all about it on Wikipedia, I just want to recap a bit of our adventure.
We had been looking for the right day for this and when the temps hit 50F on a Sunday we jumped on the computer, put in our zip, and headed to the first location. We printed out three "seekers pages" which are the GPS coordinates and the clues and instructions to find the canister.
Our first Cache was supposedly in the Lenoir Nature Preserve off Rt 9 (North Broadway). We knew the area well as the kids had gone to camp there so knowing we were heading in that direction we grabbed the out of date gallon of milk I had bought at the news stand that morning and planned on returning (note to self: don't buy milk at a newstand) and headed off. The kids had packed snacks (kashi bars, jello, juice boxes) as we told them we were going on a hike, that was also a treasure hunt, just to confuse them, though we really did not know what to expect either.
We read that each cache has a log book and some little "treasures" upping the kid appeal and your supposed to take something and replace it with something of your own So the kids grabbed some little trinket toys of which we have seventeen thousand and added them to their travel bag along with the Moleskine log book and snacks. First thing we noticed upon getting in the car was that the kid packed Jello had spilled in the ladybug bag with the Geocache paperwork but the sun was out, it was a mild fifty five and the driveway was thawing nicely.
When we arrived at Lenoir which is a located on Dudley Street in Yonkers (914-968-5851) there was one other car in the lot and an older man with a even older dog who said we should be careful of the icy conditions. According to westchester.gov:
"Lenoir Preserve is a 40-acre nature preserve comprising woodlands and field habitats. It is situated near the Hastings-Yonkers border, adjacent to the Old Croton Aqueduct on slopes overlooking the Hudson River. The property formerly home to two Hudson River estates, features magnificent copper beeches from Europe, as well as native sugar maples, red oaks, hemlocks, pines and tulip trees. Many kinds of wildlife, including woodpeckers, owls and bats, find shelter at Lenoir."
Our GPS was low on batteries as I had just updated it at garmin.com and forgot to plug it back in to the lighter so I was in no rush to get out of the car. I asked my wife to read me the coordianates which are listed at the top of each seekers page. You MUST sign up to get this information so don's skimp on the free membership and be stuck out there without your location.
We put in the numbers which to my surprise were very close to the numbers of our current location. This made sense I soon realized the GPS tells you where you are by using the latitude and longitudinal spherical coordinate system and we were close to our target in a relative sense considering the size of the earth. Again check wikipedia for details on this but what struck me was the realization that everywhere I stood on earth was represented by a number coordinate. It was a bit big brother for me but it was really fun to try and explain it all to two six year olds.
The GPS took the numbers, I hit "go" and we began to follow the yellow arrow. We walked up the path on the right which is not the way we normally would go to camp but it seemed the device was taking us in that direction. We were wrong and it seemed that the GPS was just getting it's bearings and it took us back to the left. According to our instructions there was supposed to be a bench involved somewhere (to rest) but we didn't see it. We headed up past the Nature Center and up a hill and then off the path which felt a little wierd. The guides always mention going "off the path" and remaining somewhat secretive when on a hunt. They even mention Muggles as in innocent bystanders I guess or the uninitiated. The whole thing felt very Harry Potter or like the quest for the Illuminati's Lair.
When we reached the top of a clearing a beautiful old Locust tree stood with arrows on it pointing in different directions. These were trail markers but the kids mistook them as part of our quest so we followed them a little. The GPS was pulling me east but the wife and kids thought otherwise and we headed over to the south back down the hill. I was afraid the GPS would die so i turned it off for a while while the instincts of the others led the way. We could see Rt. 9 from where we were (as well as a large posse of Whitetailed deer) and the clues mentioned some old ruins made of brick. We were definitely in the wrong spot so I turned the device back on, agreed to the terms of service that say you shouldn't mess with it while you are driving (yea right) and called in the troops.
"I think we should trust the GPS" I stated.
"Just don't walk up ahead and leave me behind!" Lil' G yelled at me.
"He does that to me too" my wife said.
"I'm sorry but I'm just really excited to find this thing."
I slowed down and we held out the GPS and began walking toward the arrow. My wife suggested we try zooming in the map to get abetter idea of where we were. It worked and the map said to walk south east five hundred feet to the location. We hurried through the woods and started to see bricks and the remains of an old foundation. We were close! But where could this canister be? On the guide they have keys that tell u the direction, difficulty level, the terrain, and the size of the cache from "virtual" which could be a monument or building I guess to Micro which would be easy to hide say in an urban area (there are caches in NYC) to small, medium, large and even multiples. I failed to look on the seekers page so i was not sure what to look for and I didn't un-encrypt the hint that said "Among the roots of a large tree, concealed with sticks." I was not feeling optimistic.
We staggered around for a while looking under leaves, up in trees and on the ground and I began to get a bit more frustrated, (we were right on the arrow!) when a large tree caught my attention having grown directly in front of where I was standing. I circled the trunk and saw there was a stick somewhat purposefully placed in one of the above ground roots where there was an opening. Under the stick I saw a black box and some writing. Suddenly I had the most wholesome feeling of accomplishment and a real delight in having made this discovery. I called over the gang and we looked down. The pictures tell the rest of the story as we signed the log book (first to sign in a year!), took some cute items (stickers, a clip for a notebook in the shape of a bee) and replaced them with our own things (a toy horse, a toy car) carefully closed the lid and put it back exactly where we found it.
No comments:
Post a Comment