The crew from Maywood was late because we were waiting for Andrew's friend Lauren to arrive from Connecticut. No harm done, but it did make for a rushed morning. I arrived at the Anthony Wayne parking area to find Jay and Paul looking perplexed with the status of Paul's GPS. Lori, Jay, and I had met the previous afternoon to load all the caches to each GPS and to hit some local caches to 'train' Jay since no one on their team had ever been caching before. It seems all of the caches we loaded were gone (though a few from Bergen County remained, very odd). As a last ditch effort to save the event, Jay and Paul manually entered the lat/long for ten caches as waypoints. In the meantime we finalized teams, distributed scoresheets, and reviewed the rules.
My team consisted of myself, George, and Neal. Cachetastrophy included Lori, Andrew, Lauren, and Laura. Finally, Getti joined Paul and Jay to form an as of yet unnamed team. On the trail they decided to adopt anything related to "LOST" based on the state of their progress.
I had planned out a strategy for the GZH ahead of time-- We'd head to Silvermine where there was a large concentration of caches in a small area first, With time remaining we'd head to the finish line so we'd be close by when the end time was drawing near. There were a few more caches right there in the parking lot we would look for with time remaining.
Once the starting bell rang, we were off! --but in the wrong direction. Neal then directed us to turn around so we could get on the Pal Parkway North. We quickly arrived at Silvermine and took off south on Menomine towards William Brien Shelter. On the trail I began to explain more about caching, the GPS, and trackables to my team. Neal had found a geocache once on a trip with us, earning him the Treasure Hunter homework assignment. When we arrived at the first GZ it was George who quickly found the first cache under a boulder. We dropped off a geocoin and he earned the Treasure Hunter.
Next we made our one major error for the day. We debated whether to continue around the lake to get two caches on Silvermine Ski Road or to head back to the parking lot and in the direction of Stockbridge where there were a few more caches. First we opted to continue, then we opted to take the tiny remnants of the incomplete ski road to try and cut out the triangle of Menomine and AT that goes to William Brien. It worked well for a few hundred yards. Then Neal realized he had dropped a two-way radio. Again we debated turning back, but Neal was satisfied with forging ahead. Soon we found ourselves chest-high in rhododendron and mountain laurel; our progress slowed to a crawl. By now we were committed because it seemed like only a short distance left and a waste to turn back and go all the way around. We made it out with cuts and scrapes and about 20 minutes of lost time.
We finally got to the ski road. Neal found the next cache a few tenths of a mile into the woods. We turned north and I found my first cache of the day by the southern shore of the lake. We caught a major break next-- The water in the lake was low enough for us to walk across the dam and take a shortcut back to the parking lot, rather than walk the ski road to its terminus and hike Seven Lakes Drive all thew way back. We hopped in the car with three caches under our belts and headed back to Anthony Wayne.
We quickly made a break for what seemed to be the closest cache. We tried to go straight to it, but the wall of barberry between the picnic area and Beechy Bottom Road stopped us and we had to go the long way around. We headed first for a cache called Ye Old Bike Trail, which as it turns out, all three of the teams stopped at and eventually found. It took us a while, but we found it with the help of the clues we were getting from the geocaching.com app on my Droid. Phone service in the area was terrible, but we got just enough. After that cache we headed North were we got a mini-cache (film canister) in a log. It would have been very hard without the hints, but the clue made it easy. Once I read it, I saw the cache immediately.
I was wondering if five caches would be enough to win. Really I expected Lori's team to have six or seven based on the fact that we had wasted time bushwhacking and the fact that I deduced from questions she asked me about the map that her strategy was to get caches near the road. We started walking to the next closest cache, just across the Pal Parkway. We were almost out of time. Once we got onto the bridge over the highway we could see that the GZ was at least 1000 feet of walking through trail-less woods. With only seven minutes left to get to the GZ, find the cache, and walk back we decided it was just not enough time and it would be better to go home with five caches than get DQ'd. Our team was dragging a bit too. I didn't know it yet, but we had walked almost five and a half miles (which ended up being the longest of the three teams).
We had all agreed a certain dumpster was the finish line and the finish time was 1:00PM. As we walked to the dumpster, I was surprised no one else was there. With about 4 minutes left we saw Darma/LOST coming out of the woods. With only two minutes left we all stood at the dumpster watching Paul's watch. Where was the last team? Paul was adamant that we hold the time limit to the very second, and rightly so. He was especially concerned because he thought his only way of coming in second was if the third team was DQ'd. One o'clock passed with no sign of Cachetastrophy. At about one minute after we saw Lori get in her car on the far side of the parking lot and a few people pile in. When they arrived at the dumpster it was one minute and forty seconds past 1:00PM. Paul's team made sure everyone knew who was late.
My team finished the day with five caches, as did Cachetastrophy. Paul's team ended with three. GZH was the only team with no DNFs. Our name held true, we got the job done at every GZ we stopped at. In the end it was enough for an unexpected win! I was pretty happy that everyone on my team found at least one cache and Neal and George both had a great time. From what I could tell, it seemed all of the rookie cachers had fun, especially Paul who has already said he is hooked. The Harrimaniacs also dropped a total of ten trackable items off in the park.
We wrapped it all up with a great BBQ as everyone shared stories from the day about caches found and missed, anecdotes from the trail, and other interesting events from the day. Cache Me If You Can was a wild success and a bunch of people specifically asked when the next one would be. With this kind of response we'll shoot for the next one in the fall before it gets too cold. More on that later, but for now I am just enjoying the success of this whole thing.
--Dan
