By Emily Accipiter Stewart (eaccipi)
Cheerio fro
m the beautiful Welsh countryside! Rstewar and I are on a 10 day holiday along the Mon & Brec canals in southern Wales. We’re spending a week on a 45’ long narrowboat moving around 2 mph through 30 miles of canals. It is incredibly slow paced, and lends a lot of time for chatting, reading, checking out all of the pubs, and geocaching.
Amazingly, there are over 100 geocaches hidden along the tow path (trail) beside the canal. Several beautiful series, hidden by CanalCruisers, line the area, which was a pleasant surprise when were getting into the planning stages of this adventure. Overall, I found about 50 caches over our week on the water – some of them clever, some of them convenient, and all of them well maintained.
One of the funniest parts, and that shows me what a small world we live in – is that I saw fellow Alaskan geocacher AlaskaTim had found several of the caches in the area where we were going!
I love traveling, and getting to geocache in a new place often adds a layer of exploration for me. Since caches have to be hidden by locals, I’m often taken to places off the beaten path, or through parks I wouldn’t have found otherwise. I’ve been fortunate to cache in 17 countries and each time, my family has agreed that we’ve found cooler spots because of where geocaching takes us.
Something incredibly special about Alaska and Alaskan Geocachers is I think we do the same thing. We’ve got one of the highest concentrations of caches in our cities, and offer a variety of terrain, difficulty, and urban/wild opportunities to find. Caching in other places always reminds me of what we’ve got and how special it is.
Tourist season is in full swing here in Alaska, and, with everything going on, it looks like there will be fewer visitors to our state – both national and international. Let’s use this as a chance to discover new things in our own backyard. Place geocaches in interesting spots that you want to share. Highlight a trail or viewpoint you love. Include a story of why you hid the cache there in the description. Include parking waypoints for those who aren’t familiar with the area. Write logs on caches you find that tell about the day, the adventure, the find.
Enjoy the journey this month!
Yours,
Emily Accipiter Stewart | eaccipi
GeocacheAlaska! President