A Very Historic Tree and Upcoming Events

A very Historic Tree (and geocache)

Sunday morning, as I was resting a very sore ankle, Nana came running into the room yelling to change the channel!  I immediately switched over to the local CBS channel to see an excellent news article on a very sick White Oak Tree in Basking Ridge NJ.

Nana & I had first visited this very same tree last year.  After attending GeoWoodStock XIII, we had made a very large circular trip through the North-East grabbing all types of "older" geocaches before heading back home.  One of the last stops on our trip had been to the Virtual geocache: GC799B - Tie a yellow ribbon.

  As we arrived at ground zero for this fantastic cache we were drawn to this fantastic White Oak tree.  The limbs of this tree were not only supported from the ground but they were also supported with huge steel cables from all directions to keep the tree from collapsing under it's own weight.  The tree is over 600 years old which means this tree predates both America and Columbus.  This tree is considered to be the oldest in New Jersey.  George Washington is said to have walked past this tree and the graveyard surrounding this tree contains the graves of more than 30 Revolutionary War soldiers.  

You can imagine our dismay when, while watching this news report, we found out the tree is very ill.  I hope that the Virtual Geocache survives the tree as there is enough history not only in the churchyard but in the town to merit it, but just in case, it might be worth your time and effort to give this geocache a visit in the near future.  I did notice as I was writing this blog that the number of visits to this cache in the last few days has increased dramatically.

It will be well worth the visit if you could possibly schedule a trip to this cache

 before the tree passes away.

You will remember it always.   

UPCOMING EVENTS

Here are some other events in the area we plan to attend.

 Mark your calendars – hope to see you at some of these events!

Tuesday – September 20 – Virginia Beach, VA

GC6Q9N0 – 3^rd Tuesday – HIDEY AWARD RALLY – GCHR Sept Event

Rick’s Cafe

6 till 8 PM

Thursday – September 22 – Chesapeake, VA

GC6RGY0 – AACC – September 22, 2016

Elizabeth River Boat Landing Park

4 till 6 PM

Saturday – September 24 – Virginia Beach, VA

GC6RM57 – Clean the Lakes Natural Area - CITO

Lake Lawson/Lake Smith Nature area

9 till 11 AM

Thursday – October 6  – Newport News, VA

GC6T6CA – AACC – October 6, 2016

Huntington Park – Newport News

4 till 6 PM

Tuesday – November 1 – Virginia Beach, VA

GC6Q9TM – The Nominees Are…..

Rick’s Cafe

6 till 8 PM

Saturday – January 7 – Virginia Beach, VA

GC6HYJ2 – 10 Years! Milestones M-n-G and Hidey Awards!

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

5 till 9 PM

Till next time!!!

Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!

Suffolk Nana & Papa - - - or just plain ol' - - - -  SNAP!!!  

On Twitter at: @SNAPgeocaching

On Instagram at: snap_geocaching

Day 8 of SNAP!!!'s "GeoWoodstock13 and more" trip

For those that are just joining us, Nana & I have had this 9 day geocaching trip scheduled for almost a year with daily TARGETs we hope to do each day.  Here is a recap of the previous days.

Day 1 Target - travel to GeoWoodstock13 - accomplished
Day 2 Target - Events prior to GeoWoodstock13 - accomplished
Day 3 Target - GeoWoodstock13 - accomplished
Day 4 Target - Train Trestle Falls (GCT397) - accomplished
Day 5 Target - State Game Lands #109 (GC184) – accomplished
Day 6 Target - The Spot (GC39) – accomplished
Day 7 Target - NH #1 - Mines Follies - accomplished

We had spent the night on the edge of New Paltz NY.  This particular town was on our to do list as my relatives (from many, many, many, generations ago) founded this little town.

Nana & I spent the morning touring the historical sites and then spent an hour or so walking on the Rails to Trails path that went beside the river finding a few caches.

The actual size of the gunport

The graves at the local church showed many names I recognized from my family tree.

We had visited the town many years ago and it was nice to see how well maintained the older houses were.

Notice the size of the gun port in the fort wall!  I sure hope that whomever is attacking is coming straight at us!

We eventually left town and headed out for the target cache of the day.  Southward we drove until we reached the community of Sleepy Hollow.

GCAE - Sleepy Hollow-1 - this cache was hidden way back in November of 2000 which allowed us to color another block in on our stats.  The parking cords were right on and it made really short work the walk to this cache.  Once at GZ our minds seemingly played a game with our eyes as we wandered here and there and couldn't really find anything that looked like a cache.  It wasn't until I mentally slapped myself and stopped for a minute or two before I realized I was practically standing on top of this huge geo-pile!  Voila!  The cache!  Amazing how things just seem to blend into the scenery so well.  Favorite point awarded not only for the cache but also for the amazing scenery.

A short while later we ran into an amazing cache.  I truly think this virtual amazed me the most of any cache we found on this trip.  For no other reason than the size, the huge tree, and according to the info at GZ, the largest Oak Tree on the East Coast!

GC799B - Tie a yellow ribbon - a virtual cache in Bernardsville, NJ.  If you are anywhere near this town this Virtual Cache is a definite cache for your to-do list!!!

Look at how big that tree is!  Nana sure looks small!

GCB748 - Pickletown #1 - a nice little virtual that indeed, did have us scratching our heads until we walked the park one more time and found the invisible answer that was needed to prove we were there.

Although we spent a lot of the day touring family history we still managed to get further towards home and still managed a total of 12 caches, 10 Traditional and 2 Virtual.  Not really that bad.


Papa at the tree

Day 9's blog will cover the last day of our trip - did we manage to find the target cache for the last day???  Until then...

Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!

Hope to see everyone at the Picnic!

Suffolk Nana & Papa!!! - - - or just plain ol' - - - SNAP!!!