We are authorized users!  We are a husband (aka "B") and wife (aka "E") team who started geocaching in
July 2010. 

We live in Western New York, in between Buffalo and Rochester.  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, we have a wide variety of hobbies that keep me busy throughout the year.  During the winter, we 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 E's 6-year old niece.  In the fall, we enjoy taking long walks on leaf-covered back 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 remote control pilot in B and the kite-flyer in E and allows us to start up our two-miles-a-night walks to prepare for the upcoming warmer weather.  We like to do a lot of camping in the summer, aerobie tossing with friends and our casual 20 mile rides on our recumbent bicycles.  However, there is only one hobby that we can do year round, and it is one that we are very passionate about - that hobby is geocaching.

We're 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. 

We started caching in late July 2010 and we go by the caching name of “authorized users.”  To this date, we have found over 300 caches!  Included in that number are the caches we found to complete the Seaway Trail GeoTrail, Enchanted Mountains GeoTrail and the NY Amish GeoTrail.

If asked whether we prefer to cache in urban or rural areas, we would definitely tell you that we 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 we call, upside down icicles!

“Did You Say Ohio?” was a very fun multi-cache, putting a play on the town name of Akron, NY.  This cache  took us to various historic buildings and businesses in Akron, NY.  E has lived in this area for over 20 years and had never visited the places we were taken to with this cache.  This actually happens quite frequently, and we really appreciate the opportunities it gives us to open up our eyes to the historic and natural places that are right in our own backyard. 

After three days and a lot of research, we were able to figure out the solution 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.  E was the one to stumble upon necessary key to decrypt the picture and then figured out the math solution.   Unfortunately, we solved the puzzle just as winter hit and we only tend to make it out to Olcott during the warm months.  Once the weather broke, we took a trip back to Olcott and conquered the cache!  E left a special wind-up ladybug toy in the cache, in tribute of the fun and complexity of the cache's puzzle.

We could go on and on about our geocaching adventures and journeys, as we have become truly passionate about this hobby.  As a momentum, we like to keep a photo-journal of our finds, so that we can later reflect on the awesome adventures, and even some funny blunders, that we have had while caching.  Feel free to check out E's Blog for more on our geocaching adventures and see some of our pictures from our photo-journal!

We just think that everyone should experience this wonderful hobby – it is a great, fun and healthy pastime for people of all ages and lifestyles.  

We hope to see you on the trails!  May you be stealthy with cache!

E & B, authorized users