Exercise Update: Fall Hiking Finale

Yesterday I posted my geocaching blog entry. Telling my story left me itching for more. Plus, the cold weather is starting to discourage me going outside for exercise. And I needed to tire out Shula before leaving for my physics final.

So everything came together for a fall hiking finale. Fourthly, I wanted to time myself on the Outer Loop before my girlfriend and I attempted it in the snow. The Outer Loop at Breakheart (Pine Tops Road to Hemlock Road) is just 3 miles. It took Shula and me 53 minutes.

When I ended the walk, I used the geocaching.com app to find the nearest cache. “X700” was just up the road on the pond side of Pine Tops Road.

The cache’s hint, which I’m still enough of a newbie to read, said to “look under the huge rock near the top of the ridge.” This was misleading because there were several large boulders at the very top that would have made great hiding places. But I didn’t see anything underneath any of them.

Remembering some recent rookie advice, I put away my phone and started looking under every rock and ledge in the area. I still came up empty and grew frustrated.

Then I read some of the recent logs and thought maybe I was too high up. So I started heading back down, looking underneath the boulders as I descended. Peaking out from a covering of foliage was a bright yellow disc. I took a photo and then investigated further. Sure enough, it was the top to a plastic cache. My second geocache find! I signed the log book and left behind the comic book I had carried in my pack since September.