Today is was absolutely gorgeous in scene Bolton, MA. So much so that Zach and I decided to go out for a hike. After running an errand or two, I checked out Geocaching.com to see if there were any new caches in the area. A few, but because we only had 2 or so hours, we decided to hike a trail very near the house.
This was called the Powerderhouse cache, which was along a trail in some town-owned land behind town hall. Unfortunately, the antenna for my Garmin GPS III+ is missing, so I couldn’t take the unit with me (it normally lives mounted to my dash in the VW).
Zach and I parked in the lot behind Town Hall and started walking. The initial 1/2 mile or so was up a VERY steep hill to, well, a powderhouse.
The Bolton Trail Guide says:
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History
The powder house, depicted on the Bolton Town Seal, was built around 1812 for the storage of gunpowder and ammunition. George B. Newton gave approximately four acres around the powder house to the town in 1916, and his sister Fidelia C. Newton gave another adjoining acre in 1930. The Lions Club restored the powderhouse in 1957 and 1976.
Description
The geology of Powder House Hill is its most unique feature. Rock formation types known as “gneiss” and “schist” comprise the hill and are about 500 million years old. The banded layers of rock, exposed as “ledge” at the Powder House itself, are part of the larger Nashoba formation which extends from Bedford to Worcester. The glacier which covered and then carved out Powder House Hill, left behind boulders as it retreated. Walking north a hundred yards from the powder house, hikers will see several Volkswagen-sized boulders – the glacier’s calling cards. The oak and hardwood forest provides a lovely hike and an excellent habitat for wildlife.
And boy they aren’t kiddin. Eventually I’ll have a camera again, and I’ll take pictures. It’s a beautiful cliff. Ripe for climbing.
Today we hiked past the powderhouse itself and into the woods behind. These trails seem to go on for MILES. We walked about a mile back and encountered a gas line road, as well as another logging road. It was this intersection in the middle of nowhere. Zach and I decided that this was as far as we wanted to go for the day, but just as we were about to head back, I spied a flock of wild turkeys in the woods. There were about 12 of them, and we watched them go over a hill nearby. It was very quiet, and they didn’t make a sound. Very cool. One other tidbit was near this intersection, we could look dead east, and see all the way to the Waltham hills where the radio antennae are. That’s probably 15 miles or so. Quite a vista!
I love the woods, particularly in early spring or late fall. It’s cool, breezy, sunny, and just wonderful.
A delightful afternoon hiking. The walk back was pleasant and just plain good Dad and Son time. We’re definately going back, next time with the GPS so we can find the cache, and I want to explore those woods some more!
Did you find any caches? I need to learn how to use my GPS unit and go out with Peri. I think he’d love romping around on trails.
Well, you don’t just sort of ‘find’ them, you look for specific ones that are listed on the geocaching.com site. That’s sort of the ‘master index’. There’s dozens within a few miles of the house here, sometimes they have little toys in them, sometimes they have small signin books, etc etc.
You need to be able to carry the GPS with you when you hike, and that gets you within 30′ of the cache. After that it’s a scavenger hunt. “Where would you hide something the size of an ammo box within 60′ of where I’m standing?”.
I couldn’t get that close to where this cache was without carrying the unit, so it’ll have to wait til our next trek 🙂