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September events at Genesee County Park & Forest and DeWitt, preregister

By Billie Owens

There are several adventures offered next month at Genesee County Park & Forest and DeWitt Recreation Area. These September recreational opportunities include: a Full Moon Hike; Orienteering with the Rochester Orienteering Club; Geocaching at DeWitt; and Learning About Wild Turkeys.

Here are the details:

Orienteering at the Genesee County Park & Forest with Rochester Orienteering Club

Come explore the active and adventurous sport of Orienteering at the Genesee County Park & Forest with Rochester Orienteering Club from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 14th. Beginner class and basic training takes place from 9 to 10 a.m. Orienteering start is open 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. All courses close at 1:30 pm.

Learn how to find your way without batteries or a cell phone signal – by using a map and compass. All material provided no experience necessary.

Orienteering is a family friendly sport for people of all ages and ability levels. Perfect for individuals and families who love the outdoors. Please preregister online here; or by calling 585-344-8508, ext. 3701, and leaving your name, phone number, and number of participants.

Harvest Moon Night Hike at the Genesee County Park & Forest

Come join us on a night hike through a moonlit forest with our Harvest Moon Night Hike at the Genesee County Park & Forest from 7:30 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 14th.

Look and listen for nocturnal animals that can’t be seen or heard during the day! Hear tales of the full moon that comes at the beginning of fall, and learn the origins of its name.

Cost is $5/person, $10/family. Preregistration required, call 585-344-8508, ext. 3701, and leave your name, phone number, and number of participants to reserve your spot.

Geocaching at DeWitt Recreation Area

Get out and try a high-tech scavenger hunt with our Geocaching at DeWitt Recreation Area program from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 21st.

Geocaching is a worldwide treasure hunt game that can be played anytime and anywhere. Create a personal alias or team name to let others know you were here. Sign up as a group or by yourself. No prior geocaching experience is necessary, a lesson and GPS unit is provided.

Dress for the weather and be ready for adventure! Meet at Pavilion 3 at DeWitt Recreation Area.

Cost is $5/person, $10/family. Preregistration is required. Call 585-344-8508, ext. 3701, and leave your name, phone number, and number of participants to register.

Wild Turkeys at the Genesee County Park & Forest

Did you know that wild turkeys can swim? Or that they can fly 55 miles per hour? Join the National Wild Turkey Federation and Women in the Outdoors for Wild Turkeys at the Genesee County Park & Forest Interpretive Nature Center from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 28th to learn more cool facts and find out how turkeys survive in the wild.

Then head out to the forest and fields to practice turkey calls and see where they can live! This program is FREE! Recommended for ages 8 and up. Preregistration required. Reserve your spot by calling 585-344-8508, ext. 3701, and leaving your name, phone number, and number of participants.

For more information visit the park & forest website here, or contact the park office at 585-344-8508.

Genesee County Park and Forest is located at 11095 Bethany Center Road, East Bethany.

DeWitt Recreation Area is located at 115 Cedar St. in the City of Batavia.

Geocaching fun set for Saturday morning at DeWitt Recreation Area, must preregister

By Billie Owens

Press release:

Get out and try a hi-tech scavenger hunt! Join us for Geocaching at DeWitt Recreation Area from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Saturday, June 10th.

Create a personal alias or team name to let others know you were here. Sign up as a group or by yourself. Never geocached before? No problem! No prior geocaching experience is necessary. A tutorial will be provided, along with GPS units.

Dress for the weather and be ready for adventure.You never know what you’ll find in a geocache. Meet at Pavilion #2 at DeWitt Recreation Area, location at 115 Cedar St. in Batavia.

Cost is $5/person, $10/family. Preregistration is required. Call 585-344-1122 to register and reserve your spot.

For more information visit our website at http://www.co.genesee.ny.us/departments/parks/, or contact Shannon Morley at Shannon.Morley@co.genesee.ny.us or (585) 344-1122.

Don't Miss It! Geocaching 101 at GCC's The BEST Center

By Elizabeth Downie

 

Join us for Geocaching 101 at The BEST Center at Genesee Community College!  Everyone is welcome!

Today, more than 1.75 million geocaches have been hidden, and found by more than 5 million people worldwide.

Want to learn more about geocaching?

Don’t just hear about it - EXPERIENCE it! 

Register NOW and get your cache on!

Bring the family - Geocaching is a family-oriented hobby/sport!

GPS units will be provided (or bring your own!) and each person will get a free geocaching swag item!


Geocaching 101

DON'T MISS IT!!  THIS IS THE LAST SESSION OF THE SEASON!!

Wednesday, May 23 • 6:00PM - 9:00PM • Batavia Campus

Geocaching. Geo-what?? Jee-oh-kash-ing. In this course, you will learn what this high-tech treasure hunt is all about and its history. By the end of this introductory course, you will have created a Geocaching profile, gone out and made your first geocache find, and successfully log it on Geocaching.com. If you want to learn how to use a GPSr, love the outdoors and enjoy a challenge, Geocaching is for you! GPSr units will be provided, but please feel free to bring your own unit, whether it be hand-held, dash, or an app on your phone! Dress appropriately, as geocaching is an outdoor adventure! So, join us - and let's go Geocaching!

Presented by Elizabeth Downie (Geocaching ID: authorized users)

3 Hours / 1 Session
Fee: $15


GCC offers geocaching classes for high-tech treasure hunting

By Billie Owens

Press release:

Old-fashioned treasure hunting goes high-tech with geocaching! Adventure seekers of all ages are welcome to test their skills, learn how to use high-tech tools to search for clues, and enjoy the outdoors while on a treasure hunt with Genesee Community College's Geocaching Program.

Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunt using hand-held GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of latitude and longitude coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache container hidden at that location. Containers store items such as a log book, and usually a surprise or two to make the challenge more exciting.

GCC is offering two beginner classes for those looking to start this stimulating hobby, and an advanced class for those who've already experienced the thrill of the hunt.

Geocaching 101 will be offered from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, April 14, and again from 6 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, May 15.

The half-day introductory program will start with a brief overview of what geocaching is and how it works, and then participants will use GPS units to find a geocache hidden on the grounds of the Batavia campus. Participants should wear clothing and footwear suitable for a walk in the woods.

Registration for these introductory classes can be done online: http://www.genesee.edu/best/courses/getCourseInfo/?CourseID=575. Each class is $15 and includes the use of a GPS unit (or you can bring your own!).

Advanced "cachers" can register for the 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. class on Saturday, July 14, by visiting this website: http://www.genesee.edu/best/courses/getCourseInfo/?CourseID=576. The cost for the advanced class is $18.

Experienced cachers who register for the advanced class will learn about management tools, queries, the relatives of geocaching and then take part in a field trip to a local park to hunt for various types of caches. They will be joined by other veteran geocachers, including Elizabeth Downie, from GCC's Math, Science and Career Education division, who teaches the geocaching classes.

Downie, who uses the ID 'authorized users', and other veterans -- Sabrefan7, ElbaPatch, HFJohn and BarbershopDru -- will share their secrets and caching insights with participants. Well-known local cacher GadgetCHC, who has logged more than 16,000 finds, will also be attending the field trip!

"Geocaching is more than just running into the woods to find a container," Downie said. "Geocaching involves knowledge, skill, planning, research, challenges and persistence. You need to employ your brain and five senses while searching and you have to be respectful of your surroundings."

The classes are among those offered through The BEST Center's Leisure Learning Program. For further information or to register, call The BEST Center at 345-6868 or visit: www.bestcenter.org.

Geocaching 101 and Advanced Geocaching Courses at The BEST Center at Genesee Community College

By Elizabeth Downie

Join us for the Geocaching 101 and Advanced Geocaching Courses at The BEST Center at Genesee Community College!  Everyone is welcome!

Today, more than 1.6 million geocaches have been hidden, and found by more than 5 million people worldwide. On this past Leap Day alone, over 79,450 people logged a cache or an event, which is more than double the amount from four years ago!

Want to learn more about geocaching?

Don’t just hear about it - EXPERIENCE it! 

Register NOW and get your cache on!

GPS units will be provided (or bring your own!) and each person will get a free geocaching swag item!


Geocaching 101

Saturday, April 14 • 9:00AM - 12:00PM • Batavia Campus

Wednesday, May 23 • 6:00PM - 9:00PM • Batavia Campus

Geocaching. Geo-what?? Jee-oh-kash-ing. In this course, you will learn what this high-tech treasure hunt is all about and its history. By the end of this introductory course, you will have created a Geocaching profile, gone out and made your first geocache find, and successfully log it on Geocaching.com. If you want to learn how to use a GPSr, love the outdoors and enjoy a challenge, Geocaching is for you! GPSr units will be provided, but please feel free to bring your own unit, whether it be hand-held, dash, or an app on your phone! Dress appropriately, as geocaching is an outdoor adventure! So, join us - and let's go Geocaching!

Presented by Elizabeth Downie (Geocaching ID: authorized users)

3 Hours / 1 Session
Fee: $15


Advanced Geocaching

Saturday, July 14 • 10:00AM - 3:00PM • Batavia Campus/Genesee County Park

Go beyond the basics of Geocaching! Are you a Premium Member at Geocaching.com? Have you experienced the fascinating world of Pocket Queries, statistics, and maps! Do you know how to manage your finds with tools like GSAK? Would you like to be introduced to the relatives of geocaching: Waypointing, Benchmarking, Letterboxing, Wherigo, and CITO? In this course, we will explore all of these topics, prepare our equipment and then go out caching with some of the local geocaching greats, like Sabrefan7, BarbershopDru, ElbaPatch, HFJohn, Cski and more! So, bring your GPSr and get your cache on!

Presented by Elizabeth Downie (Geocaching ID: authorized users)

4 Hours / 1 Session
Fee: $18
 

GC39DCC - LEAP....MEET....and RIDE!

By Elizabeth Downie

 

 

JOIN US FOR A WINTER GEOCACHING LEAP DAY EVENT !!

 

Event:  GC39DCC - LEAP....MEET....and RIDE! (http://coord.info/GC39DCC)

What:  A geocaching event celebrating the third Leap Day in geocaching history and promoting the Herschell Carrousel Museum

When:  Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Time:  5:30pm - 7:30pm

Event Date and Time
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Love Geocaching? Follow us on Twitter!

By Elizabeth Downie

The seasons in Western New York are not always cooperative, so you really need to be able to accept all four of them – when you can get them.  Because of this, I have a wide variety of hobbies that keep me busy throughout the year.  During the winter, I enjoy watching the Sabres play hockey and getting outdoors to go sledding on a steep hill, snowshoeing through a local park or even start the occasional snowball fight with my soon-to-be 5 year old niece.  In the fall, I enjoy taking long walks on leaf-covered country roads, taking a trip to the local orchard to pick a peck of apples or that perfectly round pumpkin, and watching Buffalo Bills football.  The spring brings out the kite-flyer in me and allows me to start up my two-mile a night walks around the block with my husband, preparing me for the upcoming warmer weather.  I like to do a lot of camping in the summer, aerobie tossing with friends and my casual 20 miles rides along the Erie Canal on my recumbent bicycle.  However, there is only one hobby that I can do year round, and it is one that I am very passionate about.  That hobby is geocaching.

I’m sure most of you have heard of geocaching, but you may not know what it is.  Geocaching is an outdoor, high-tech treasure hunt.  You go out into the world with a hand-held Global Positioning Satellite receiver, or GPSr for short, and find hidden containers called caches.  Once found, you make a trade of a small trinket and then log your find.  So, I would like to share with you some of my geocaching experiences.

I started caching in late July 2010 with my husband and we go by the caching name of “authorized users.”  To this date, we have found over 130 caches!  Included in that number are the caches we found to complete the Seaway Trail GeoTrail, which entailed a month and a half journey along the Great Lakes, from northwestern Pennsylvania to the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York.

If asked whether I prefer to cache in urban or rural areas, I would definitely tell you that I prefer to cache in rural areas.  The caches in rural areas require more hiking and really expand your mind to a much farther capacity for your search. 

One of our most favorite local caches is called “Bruce Wayne’s Lair” which is located near the old mining caves in Akron, NY.  We trudged through about two feet of snow for about an hour to get to this cache, mostly because we took a wrong turn, but it was the most fantastic location to visit.  Not only do the caves have a rich history, they also have, what I call, upside down icicles!

“Did You Say Ohio?” was a very fun multi-cache, putting a play on the town name of Akron.  This cache  took us to various historic buildings and businesses in Akron, NY.  I have lived in this area for over 15 years and had never visited the places I was taken on this cache.  This actually happens quite frequently, so I really appreciate the opportunities it give me to open up my eyes to the historic and natural places that are right in my own backyard.  Unfortunately, this cache has been archived.

After three days and a lot of research, I was able to figure out the riddle to the first part of a puzzle cache in Olcott, NY, called “She’s A Lady… Bug!”  The puzzle was actually a picture of several ladybugs with different patterns of spots on their backs.  To figure out the puzzle, you had to decrypt the pattern into a math problem to determine the coordinates of the final location of the cache.  I figured out the puzzle just as winter hit, and we only make it to Olcott during the warm months.  Once the weather breaks, we will conquer that cache!  I have a very special trinket of a wind-up ladybug that I plan to place in the cache once we find the final, in tribute of the complexity of the puzzle.

Also, we just recently experienced our first earthcache, which was in Akron Falls Park, and it was spectacular!  It took us to an overlook of one of the falls and we had to describe to the cache owner our experience at the location, how much water we thought was coming over the falls at the time of our visit and what the weather was like while there.

I could go on and on about my geocaching adventures and journeys, as I have become truly passionate about this hobby.  As a momentum, I like to keep a photo-journal of our finds, so that we can later reflect on the awesome adventures we have had, and even some funny blunders, that we have had while caching.  To keep up with the times, we just created a Twitter account so that our friends and family across the country can experience our journeys and finds with us in real-time.  We hope to have a webpage up for our family and friends to see our photo-journal, but that is still in the creativity stages. 

My niece loves to come with us and calls it “treasure hunting.” She does a really good job of watching out for the pirates who may want to steal the treasure.  I just think that everyone should experience this wonderful hobby – it is a great, fun and healthy pastime for people of all ages and lifestyles.

I would like to invite you to follow us on Twitter!  We can't explain everything about our experiences in only 140 characters, but you will at least know that we are out there and you can look up our detailed logs on www.geocaching.com after our posts.  Find us on Twitter as @authorizedusers (make sure it s all one word and plural!)

Also, feel free to check out our profile on www.geocaching.com.  If you do not have an account, it is absolutely free to sign up!

We hope to see you on the trails soon!  May you steer clear of muggles and be rich with cache! 

 

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