For weeks, Cayuga and I plotted a scenic get away into Canada, where we would grace the beaver-loving masses with our presence as we floated gingerly down waterways and digested pound after pound of sweet delicious drowning in gravy poutine. The kink in the proverbial chain however was that despite the fact that Cayuga has like 15 kids, a bride and two pint sized bullmastiffs, he couldn’t coerce any of them into putting a canoe on top of his truck. Try as he might, he bellowed orders from his lazy boy with a bowl of zesty ranch Doritos in his lap, no one would strap down the buoyant chariot to the top of his cavalcade.<br /> <br /> Oh the woe. So instead of traversing the glimmering waters of Canada where gaggle upon gaggle of Blue Light girls were sure to be lined up along the shore donning their slutty Sunday best, Cayuga decided to instead head south toward a few new caches near Great Valley, New York. With the glint of FTFing in his eye, we met at our super secret lair (AKA: the unpaved corner of the parking lot at Springville’s Tim Hortons) and began our unconventionally circuitous route towards Canada.<br /> <br /> The Pat McGee trail in yonder Great Valley was a wonderful sight, and with the fall foliage in full bloom we enjoyed our hike along this old railroad bed. The caches were found quickly, and soon we found ourselves pondering next steps. Cayuga, in all his geographic glory, decided that we would continue our trip to Canada by heading towards State College, Pennsylvania. This seemed like an odd decision, but as with all Cayuga plans it came with a realistic, well rounded and quite plausible plan. You see, Cayuga would ducktape circus peanuts to the undercarriage of his pickup truck. This would give it the necessary buoyancy to float our way towards the Mississippi. There we would take a sharp right, and work our way towards the Great Lakes, thereby landing us near Fort Erie Canada where we could continue our Canadian voyage. It’s like MacGuyver himself dropped this massive golden dookie from the heavens above. It was a special moment.<br /> <br /> Anyway, we piled into the 2008 Dodge Amphicar and started south. It was a magnificent drive. The mountains of Cattaraugus County were aglow with color, and soon we were crossing into Pennsylvania. Approximately 20 miles outside of Bradford, we discovered Myra’s. Myra’s was a cute little diner along Route 6 in East Smethport that served up a mean shatty on a shingle. The food was good, and once our bellies were full, we continued along our way towards the Great White North (via the Balmy Aquamarine South). After a couple hours of oohing and awing at the hills, the colors and the complete lack of damned elk, we arrived in State Game Lands prepared for anything.<br /> <br /> As we pulled up, there was a car already in the parking lot. “Other cachers??” we mused while stroking our studly beards in sexy Adonis-like curiosity. As we pulled up to the parking coords, Cayuga engaged two older gentlemen in genial conversation. After an extensive discussion about hunting, fragmenting rock in order to suck out gas and the many topical uses for cocoa butter, the men bade us farewell and we haphazardly decided to start our trek. Unfortunately, our Opencaching mojo had been quelled by unexpected idle chit-chat, and we chose the first trail that tickled our fancy – which pointed directly towards cache. It seemed to makes sense at the time, so for a while we walked, with Cayuga ever so gingerly commenting that we needed to go left. The directions started to become a little confusing, and we started to questions the cache placers ability to get us to the correct spot. At one point, we realized we were a quarter mile from the cache. However, the left we soon discovered seemed to take us farther away from where we needed to be. “Hmm” we thought, what could Johmer possibly to doing? After pondering our predicament and attempting to read our fortune in the bear droppings we had to catapult, we decided to return back to the original section of trail. Even though the coords were behind us, we had still yet to confront the dead end. Eventually though, this “new” trail took us right to a dead end. Scratching our heads, Cayuga started modifying the coords as we just knew the cache owner had messed up and perhaps transposed a number here or there. These new “right” coords too us inside a fenced off section of land, which we thought might be a good spot for a cache. So we found a little hatch, and entered. We bushwhacked the 200 feet or so to the coords where we stumbled upon a spot that fit the clue perfectly! Proud that we were so smart to have solved the puzzle, we looked and looked but couldn’t turn up any cache.<br /> <br /> We expanded our search radius, but nothing yielded the cache. Soon we had to extract ourselves from this little fenced off asylum, and started looking around the meadow nearby. Still nothing! Damn you Johmer, how badly did you screw this cache up? At this point the day had gotten pretty warm, and we had already probably added an extra mile or so of hiking on top of the “noted” hiking distance. Where could this cache possibly be?!?<br /> <br /> Tired and dejected we were ready to throw in the towel. I’m not sure who said it, but someone comments, “Well I guess we should just go to the posted coords huh?” As I sit here and write that, I swear at the time it didn’t seem nearly as idiotic as it does now. Haha. We just knew something was wrong, but we figured the coords would just prove our point. So into the woods we went to start an over quarter mile bushwhack. Along the way we stirred up a bunch of turkey which was really cool. Thankfully for us there was a game trial that cut down on swimming through the shrub and other low lying bush. After a long whacking of bush, we arrived at the coords. “I’ll be damned” we both said in hushed tones. There we found the items referenced in the clue. So in earnest we began our search…and within moments, Cayuga was pulling a nice juicy ammobox out from its hiding spot.<br /> <br /> Should anyone have been within earshot, they might have heard what they thought was a woodpecker looking for lunch…but was instead the two of us bashing our brains on the nearby rocks for being insufferably stupid. Regardless, we happily signed in on this one, noting how beautiful the location was. The conifers and open woods really made this a beautiful spot to enjoy nature. Of course, it was also a good place to hide our shame and ineptitude…<br /> <br /> After rehiding the cache, we walked the 130 feet or so to the REAL trail (son of a bitch poser trails…haha). As we exited we noticed the little dead end meadow…and we couldn’t resist laughing and how damn dumb we are. I guess perseverance can overcome stupidity most any day! It’s probably a good thing that we aren’t number whores, because we’d be completely awful at it.<br /> <br /> ANYWAYS…the hike back to the truck was a wonderful one. The woods were gorgeous and open. There was so much to see, and we were glad that we’ve probably seen more of these woods than most have (and some of it we even saw on purpose!) I’m going to admit, the instructions for this cache are perfect. Which makes me feel even worse since there wasn’t a single thing we didn’t spend a minute or two doubting. Hahaha. All in all though, we wouldn’t have had it any other way. The miles of hiking coupled with the wonderful weather and amazing scenery makes this a must do. Thanks Jeffie for your efforts on this one, and for putting together a cache so simple that it was even too hard for us idiots to figure out. Hahaha.<br /> <br /> ~Szuchie