Caching in Fundy Wilderness

I have been thinking for quite a while of posting stories of our caching adventures over the summer but I never got around to it. So for now I will just have to post a Coles Note version of our caching in Fundy Park and in the Fundy wilderness. I may give  longer more boring versions later.  Sorry for the sloppy typing and all the mention of food.

I hear people say that geocaching is hiking with a purpose. That implies that you have a reason and a goal for hiking.  That relates to the motive for going out there.

That is not how I would describe it. I think geocaching is the adventures you create or that occur while you are out there.  If geocaching was simply putting on my hiking boots and walking down a trail and finding a cache and then returning, it would soon lose my interest. The fun of geocaching are the things that happen on the hunt or the things you have to do to get the cache or get to the cache.  Planning an attack on a cache in a remote place or planning a caching adventure is not the same as planning a hike.

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In May we camped in Fundy Park and hiked the 18 kms in one day to get the 5 new caches in the Park.  Of course we had a great meal at Parkland  in AlmaThe next day we drove into the Wilderness west of the park on Shepody road and did a number of Tetagouchers caches on the Catamount Trail. The sections of trail that we did are rarely used and is not maintained so it was more of a 5 hour bushwack.  While in the area we stopped at Adairs Wilderness Lodge, one of our favorite palces and had a great meal.

In July we camped in Fundy with our grandsons Jake & Ben. Of course we brought them to do the 5 caches there.

Three weekends ago, the Outdoor Enthusiasts club was going to be doing the Eye of the Needle in the Fundy wilderness. We had been down to Little Salmon River and Walton Glen Brook many times but had never been up the gorge far enough to claim the earthcaches so we decided to go.  We prepared for all eventualities by stuffing our camping stuff in the truck and showed up early at Adairs for breakfast and waited for the group.  It was then a 40 minute drive deeper into the area to get to our hiking spot.  The hike was a strenuous but fantastic 6 hour hike involving many river crossings and a slow climb all the way up to the top of the gorge.  We finished the day off with supper at Adairs.  We wanted to cache in the area on the following day but it would a long way to Fundy to camp and then drive back the next day.  So we set up our tent nearby and the next morning showed up at Adairs front door for breakfast at 7 am. We were greeted by Guy who opens the place up on Mondays and Tuesday.  He was the host, the cook and the waiter and made us up a fantatic breakfast. My French Toast consisted of 4 thick slices of their home made brown raisin bread and pan fries. WOW. We spent the day driving Shepody road and other narrow logging roads picking up AJLong’s caches, and hiking along other roads that I dared not drive.  It was a fantiastic day.  We ended up in Fundy to camp that evening and had another great meal at the Parkland.  The next day we did the series of caches on Shepody Road along the Nothern border of Fundy Park. Mostly driving but a few nice long hikes. We had 1 DNF in that area.

Two weekends ago, the Outdoor Enthusiasts were going to do the 5 caches in Fundy Park.  We had done it twice, but we liked the 18 km hike so we stuffed our camping stuff in the truck again and off we went.  The hikes and caching were fun but tiring.  We had dessert with our friends in Alma, then headed to do a few caches on Shepody road west of the park and finished the day with supper at the Parkland.  The park schedule indicated that Isaacs and Bluewett would be performing at the Park on Tuesday  so we decided to stay till Wednesday, But what would we do? Monday we headed west into the wilderness area again drove up to do the caches towards Londonderry in the wilderness.   An interesting day of caching in which we discovered two overgrown abandonned cemeteries and the church and cemetery which are all that remain of the former town of Londonderry.  We hid a cache there.

We then headed to Adairs where we had supper and then we went and hid 8 caches on the beautiful trail that Larry  Adair has created between the Wildernss Lodge and the Lodge at Walton Lake.  The return hike was 6 kms  but we enjoyed every minute of it.  The trail goes along a beautiful hardwood ridge. The next day we decided to try for the DNF on Shepody Road North of the Park. Ma figured we could walk there.  So we parked at Bennett Lake in the Park and hiked over 4 kms to Tracey lke. Then we took the park’s serviice trail which we knew winded its way to Shepody road (SHHHH!!!  its a secret trail).  When we got to the road we checked the distance to the cache. Another 5 kms.  Our track log indicated that we hiked 22.5 kms in the 35 degree. Fortunately the terrain was mostly flat and we found the darn bison tube cache.  We finished the day with supper at Parkland where we invited a lady tourist from Colorado to join us.  The concert that night was great. We left the park on Wednesday but wanted to do a hike before leaving. The tides seemed good, so we decided to do the Goose River trail. It was an 8km hike to the beach at Goose River.  I then took out my gps and headed 700 meters upstream along the muddy banks to our cache at the beginning of the Fundy Footpath. The cache was in bad shape so I removed it and placed another cache in a better location. I archived the old cache and created a new one. The 8 km hike back to our truck was interesting as we walked and chatted with 3 soldiers who had just completed a hike of the Fundy Footpath.

Last weekend the weather wasnt so great, so I hid some more Logic Puzzle caches near the Dieppe Airport and finallized the cache pages.  Yesterday we brought our friend Belladan to the Fundy Wilderness for his first visit.  We started with a big breakfast at adairs of course, and we did a long section of the Catamount trail picking up a dozen or so caches. The terrain is very rough and the caches are at least 500 meters apart.  We had the pleasure of showing Dan the beautiful Wallace Falls at the start of the hike.

On the return trip we stopped for a few caches including an earth cache and then hiked along the Sussex Bluffs for the 3 caches there, and enjoyed the spectacular views of  of the dairy farming area below us and the hills in the distance.

Like I said geocaching is an adventure