We had a long route planned this day, from Cortland, NY to Arlington, VA. We had a very specific goal this day, and that was to find at least one cache in each of the remaining lower 48 states we hadn’t cached in yet. And we wanted to find at least one in each county along the route as well, and some other special caches.

Approximate time on road/out caching: 14 hours + 1 hour walk after arriving at the hotel
Total miles driven: 399.2 mi / 642,5 km
Total cahes found: 25
Total DNF: 0
States visited: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Washington D.C., Virginia
Famous places visited: None
Most memorable cache: GCHMD4 Tiger Tracks
Biggest surprise: The crazy weather
Weather: Overcast, sunny, rain, heavy rain, windy
Highest temperature: We forgot to write it down
Lowest temperature: We forgot to write it down
Roadwork: Yes

A foggy morning

We got up early, as we’ve done every day on this trip, and hit the road around 7am. It was a foggy morning, but at least it wasn’t raining.

The fog cleared quickly after about an hour (and a cache find), and by the time we got to the first virtual of the day, the weather was beautiful.

Pennsylvania next!

We didn’t find more than a couple caches in New York, before we entered Pennsylvania. We found it a bit strange that the Welcome Center didn’t have any caches, but we stopped by anyway (as we do on all Welcome Centers).

We had just enough caches planned in Pennsylvania to get one find in each county,  and our plan worked out perfectly! 8 caches, 8 counties. The weather was great, and there was little to no traffic. So we had a very pleasant drive through Pennsylvania.

A quick stop in New Jersey

We didn’t spend much time in New Jersey, neither did we spend much time in Delaware. But we spent enough time to find two caches in each state (we like to find at least two in each state).

If we had all the time in the world, we would have used a lot more time in each state. But right now, our mission is to at least make the map green 🙂

A lot more planned for Maryland

We had a lot more planned for Maryland, including a virtual, a webcam and the oldest active cache in the state. Just as we did in Delaware, we started with two finds at the first rest area in Maryland. The rest areas are not particularly far away here…

We did a detour to find the virtual cache, before we stopped at another rest area. The weather was okay, and had been that since we left New York. But that was about to change…

Perfect timing

The next cache on the plan, was the webcam at Towson University. As with the previous university webcams on this trip, we had done some preparation, and knew where to park. What we didn’t know, was the fastest way to GZ from where we parked.

But we found a way, and got the first warning that things were about to happen. Some quite strong winds suddenly helped us walk a bit faster. We kinda took that as a sign, especially when we could see the massive dark clouds coming in our direction. And the sound effects kinda gave it away…

We made it to the webcam, and got the pictures we needed. Not a muggle in sight anywhere. We tried a different route back to the car, and just as we spotted the parking garage, we started feeling some raindrops. By the time we made it into the parking garage, the rain was pouring down like we were inside a ship that was sinking. We decided to stay inside for a while…

After the storm

We figured that this storm should pass just as quickly as it arrived. And it kinda did. It felt like we had to wait an eternity, but at least we were able to walk to the car, and get in, without getting both the car and ourselves drenched.

There was a lot of broken branches and leaves everywhere, but at least the weather was a lot better now. We were able to continue with our plan, and by the time we got to the parking lot for the oldest cache, the weather was actually quite nice.

Is it down there!?

I guess we hadn’t prepared well enough for this one… GC1FD Jusef’s Cache turned out to have a lot harder terrain then we had anticipated, and I (as usual) did not bring proper footwear. But that never stopped me before, and it sure didn’t this time either!

We made it down safely, and after a while we also found the cache. We took some photos down there, and kinda did not look forward to the hike back up… But we even got back up without any injuries. We did need to lay down for a few minutes, and we probably lost a gallon in sweat, but we were still alive 😀 Now this is just another story for the story book, another one in the chapter of the inappropriate footwear.

Let’s go to the capital!

We still had a couple caches left, and some miles to drive. The weather got worse again, and so did the traffic. When we stopped at one of the two last caches we had planned in Maryland, we had to wander around in something that almost turned to a swamp during the heavy rain.

We spent some more time in traffic, and by the time we crossed the border to D.C., the sun had already set. We only had one virtual planned in D.C. this day, the rest had to wait til after we got some sleep.

Just one more…

We needed to find a cache near the hotel, both to get as many states as possible in one day and becuase we needed to find one in that county. So after checking in, we did a short walk to get some food and a cache. We found both food and a cache at the same place. And after that, we just had to do one more. You know how it is…

We ended up using quite some time on that one, and almost gave up. But giving up is hard, so we didn’t We found it instead 😀 And after that, it was time to head to bed, it had been a long day…

Pictures