Valley Girl Views: Geocaching Road Trip

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Today we had a few hours free today, and it's too muddy to get much done on the farm yet, so I planned a day of geocaching in the Hartleton/Laurelton area. We've already found all the caches between Watsontown and Mifflinburg, and everything in Mifflinburg. So my list for today started with Campers In Training, at Camp Mt Luther. It included 23 caches, several being short hikes in the gamelands, but several also being cache and dash urban caches. And of course, several cemetery caches were mixed in. (The full original list is at the bottom of this post)

We ended up only making it about half way through, but that was a choice. As Datruck said, "lets not get so caught up in the goal that we miss the experiencre.". It was a GORGEOUS day on the mountain, we enjoyed a few nice walks in the woods, and then we had a really nice time exploring the Union County Sportsmans club, where we saw the animals, walked to the geocache, and then decided to stay for dinner. They had prime rib on special.

This means we'll have to go back to get the rest - and that's a plan we are VERY happy with!

We started out following this interesting old motorcycle, with a sidecar, around the beautiful country roads leading us to Camp Mt Luther.

The cache at the camp was hidden by a class of 5th graders from Middleburg Elementary school. Quick and easy, I love to hear that school children are learning about geocaching!

Next we headed up the mountain to Hobo Vista. We had packed a variety of shoes, and extra clothes for the day, expecting to get muddy on some of our hikes. We really hadn't even thought about there still being snow on the mountain. It was absolutely stunning up here. Pictures don't come close to capturing the beauty we saw today! On the way up to this vista, and I am kicking myself for not taking photos, there is a beautiful little pond, with a creek flowing and and out of it, down the mountain. This whole area is full of picnic areas and trails, and is absolutely gorgeous. There should be more geocaches here!

It was a really short easy walk to the cache. It took us longer than it should have to find it - it's nicely camoflauged, and the snow helped with the hide. Beautiful view, and an ammo can in the woods. LOVED this cache.

From there we headed to another cache on the mountain, at another overlook.

In typical us fashion, we drove past the parking coordinates and parked at the vista. Had we parked where we should have, we'd have been right beside the trail head. Since we didn't, we bushwhacked to the cache... which wasn't really difficult since it is winter, but still, the trail was nice, and it's a shame we didn't just walk in on it!

Next we drove down the mountain and headed to the SGL 317 #3 cache. Be sure to navigate to the parking coords, or the gps will take you to a private road.

There was no snow at the bottom of the mountain. This was a nice, wide, flat path. Before the app dinged to tell us we were close, we both commented that that looked like a good spot for a cache, checked the app, and sure enough, we left the trail to head in this direction. A quick find, and a really nice short walk in the woods.

The next two caches, Moellenkampi, and Weikert rd cache and dash, were both DNF's for us. :-( Moellenkampi was beside a parking area, filled with 18 wheelers. We were uncomfortable searching with them sitting there watching us, but we had Molly so we walked around searching for a bit.. with no luck. This should have been super easy, so it's possible it's missing. Or possible that we were just blind today. The Cache & Dash was a guardrail. We couldn't find that either.

Going to the chapel was a cemetry cache! As was Union County Cemetery #3. Dan found the caches while I looked for find a grave requests. They were quick finds.

Next up was a really cute cache on a country road with a small pull off.

From here we headed to the Union County Sportsmans Club for Going Fishing #4. Molly had to stay in the car here, no dogs are allowed into the wildlife area, which is perfectly reasonable. I loved seeing the bobcat, and racoon, and various birds and deer.. and then it was a really nice little walk down by penns creek to find the cache.

Walking back to the car, we could smell the food cooking inside, and we made the decision to scrap the rest of our planned trip and stay for dinner. :-) They had a prime rib special, and it was good! Nice little restaurant, very family friendly, very cheap! The buffet had 3 kinds of meat, and was all you can eat for $14.99. The prime rib special came with a potato, the soup & salad bar, and the desert bar, for $18. We'll definitely go back here, it's a great place! We had planned to stop at Chilly Willy's in Hartleton for dinner, but that can be a stop on another trip.