Western New Jersey and geocaching event at Branchburg

Sunny but cold. 35-39°F. I'd planned on going to the Welcome to . . . (Branchburg NJ) geocaching event so I did some geocaching in Western NJ throughout the day. Made good progress. Found a bunch of new geocaches. Also did two geocaches at Round Valley that I skipped over this summer because of the park fee. Also did 5 geocaches at Voorhees State Park. I didn't know it at the time but NJBearChaser was following me. He told me at the event later that he saw my log entries at a bunch of geocaches that he found. I estimate that he was at each geocache less than half an hour after me.

Sunset was a 4:30pm but the geocaching event was at 7pm, so I still had over 2 hours to kill. So I continued geocaching and found 4 caches in the dark. Had to be careful while driving around that area in the dark though. The roads are poorly marked and one road in particular had an unexpected 90-degree bend. I bumped my knee on a bridge in the dark but that was minor and no hindrance to finding the cache.

Once I was done with those, it was time to go to Moe's in Branchburg for the event. I was a bit early but charlieOU812 and PTBilly were already there. We chatted it up and then more geocachers arrived. I had the Billy Barou, which is nachos topped with a pile of stuff.

( The caches... )

Sloatsburg and Hawk Rock

Cloudy. 35-39°F. I didn't want to go too far out today because I needed to take some time in the evening to prepare for upcoming events/trips. So I picked two nearby geocaches and did those. Both were more work than the average cache but they were very much worth the effort.

The first geocache was Sloat's Dam in Sloatsburg. This 4-stage geocache is a tour of an old dam system. It's hidden away from the main road so I had no idea it was there before going for this geocache. I could still see part of an old road and stone wall and a stone gate. I also saw the backdoor entrance to the Ramapo Service Area on the NYS Thruway.

The second geocache was The Hawk Temple at Ramapo Reservation in Mahwah. It is near Hawk Rock, which is a 3/4-mile hike up a mountain. The hike started off level but became quite steep when the Halifax Trail split off from the lake trail. The view from Hawk Rock is great.

After that, I had lunch at Subway in Ramsey and returned home.