As with Geofests of the past Atlantic GeoFest 2009 was held at Blomidon, a Provincial Park located on the cliffs of the North Mountain, overlooking the Minas Basin, here in Nova Scotia. With over 1800 acres of natural attractions, majestic trees, trails and wildlife the park is the perfect place to let Geocachers out to play.

The cachers began to arrive on Friday afternoon and continued to arrive into the early evening. With the forecasted storm, many of the expected attendees regrettably did not arrive but those who did proved to be faithful campers who showed what Caching Campers are really made of!

Friday evening was spent relaxing around the GeoFest Café, chatting into the wee hours of the morning. Several cachers who missed last year’s event took part in the ‘Night Cache’ which was set up specifically for the annual Geofest.

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The 950 square kilometer (590 sq mi) Cape Breton Highlands National Park with its spectacular highlands and ocean scenery is located on Cape Breton Island, on the northeast tip of Nova Scotia, Canada. The world-famous scenic highway, the Cabot Trail, runs through the park.

The event was part of the park’s First Annual Geocaching Weekend, of which the highlight was the introduction of the park’s new Geocache series, the ‘EcoCache Geocache Challenge’, and the release of the cache coordinates.

The Ecocache Geocache Challenge is a five part series of Geocaches that the park developed with the help and support of the Atlantic Canada Geocaching Association to introduce people to our natural and cultural heritage.

Each of the caches takes you to a different trail within the park and in order to complete all five Geocaches you will hike between 17 to 21 kms and drive from Chéticamp to Ingonish. Total time for this series of Geocaches will be 6-9 hours. (They do not have to all done in one day! )

When you complete all five of the caches, you receive a limited edition Parks Canada Geocoin.

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Santa Fe is New Mexico’s state capital and the fourth largest city in the state.

It’s about an hour’s drive North of Albuquerque by car but since we didn’t have a car we hopped aboard the Rail Runner Express at the Alvarado Transportation Center on 1st Street and Central Avenue in Albuquerque.

This turned out to be one of the best values that we had ever got, anywhere. For only four (4) bucks you get a fantastic hour and a half ride from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. You just sit back, relax in the comfort of the smooth riding and quiet Rail Runner and sight-see all the way there!

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One of the places that we wanted to visit while we were in New Mexico was the Sandia Mountains via the Sandia Peak Tramway.

The Sandia Peak Tramway is the world’s longest passenger aerial tramway. It also has the world’s third longest single span. It stretches from the Northeast edge of the city of Albuquerque to the crestline of the Sandia Mountains at 10,378 feet (3163.21 meters).

We almost didn’t get there but once again the awesome New Mexico Geocachers came through! We weren’t renting a car on this trip and while making our plans we couldn’t find any information regarding any type of public transportation to the Tramway. We inquired on the New Mexico Geocaching website forums about this and were told that we were correct, there was none. This was disappointing. Then came a post from nclinnm saying that she would be happy to pick us up ad take us there! (We told you they were awesome!)

Here are some photos of our day:

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The New Mexico Geocachers are so hospitable and accommodating that we’re still talking about it!

Here’s how it all began…

A couple of months ago we made plans to visit New Mexico, in the Albuquerque and Santa Fe area. One of the first things we did after our flight and hotel arrangements were made was to seek out some caches. We found from past experience that there’s no better place to start than at the local Geocachers website so we went to the New Mexico Geocaching website forums.

Once there we found a thread that was started by Goldfinch& Lady Goldfinch from Lansing, Michigan who would be visiting around the same time as we were. They were inquiring if there were any local events during their visit. Now here is where the New Mexico Cachers really start to show their true colors – since there were no local events in that time frame they quickly put together one to coincide with their visit and appropriately called it An Albuquerque Welcome!

Here’s a couple photos from the event:

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Locally, the term ‘Dingle’ is also synonymous with the Dingle Tower, the landmark ten-story tower located in the park, which serves as a memorial to the development of parliamentary institutions in the British Empire, now the British Commonwealth.

Situated on Halifax’s North West Arm the 95 acre park has a couple of small beaches, a boat launch, large picnic areas and several walking trails that skirt the water’s edge and meander through second-growth woodlands. The trails are groomed and graveled, for the most part, with lots of interconnecting pine needle covered footpaths.

The Loop Trail takes you around a small drumlin where, in addition to Spruce, White Pine, Red Pine and Hemlock trees, you will find a smattering of Jack Pine, the third of the three native Pines in Nova Scotia. The Jack Pine is not as common as the other two and this is one of the few places in the province where you can view them. You can identify the Jack Pine by their twinned needles and curved cones. Here’s a couple of photos of Jack Pine:

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Andy Smith, aka HeadHardHat of GeoCache: I’m NOT Obsessed blog fame is featured in this great article here. (We can say we knew him when )

Another blogger friend, Elin Carlson, from Geocaching with EMC fame along with John Cappi, Jeff Jost and Robb Boyle are mentioned in this article here.

Sally Smith and her husband Jim Leesburg, Virginia are mentioned in this article here.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota resident Dorin Hemmelman and his family are mentioned in this article here.

Donna Wester, Mary Lee Gunn and Bill Davies, Geocachers from New York are mentioned in this article here.

Nate Cushman of Washington is mentioned in this article here.

University of Florida student Will Dueease is featured in this article here.

Springfield, Missouri residents John Curtis and his wife, Jennifer and Paul Kelsay are mentioned in this article here.

Jim Cox and David Kuhn of Evansville, Indiana are mentioned in this article here.

Shawn and Tiffany Goddard from Snow Hill, Maryland are mentioned in this article here.

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We were contacted by cribdonor earlier in the month with this disturbing message:

“I was checking on bugs I moved around and discovered that HooHaa Race – GoGo T. Urtle was in a cache that had been muggled. Since I am not far away I went to check it out and sure enough he has had a hard life and his tag is gone. I brought him along with me to dry him out and see if i can fix him up some. If you can get another tag for him we can try to get him going again, will help all i can. Sure wish I had put him somewhere else. . Anyway just thought i would let you know.”

Then, checking the cache logs we seen an entry on April 25th:

“This one was wide open, very wet and parts were spread out – looks like an animal got to it.”

There it was, a Cache Attack! It was then that it became clear.

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In addition, there is access from the park to a great woodland trail that runs through a peninsula that splits the lake. The trail is a well-worn footpath that travels over rock and through bog areas culminating in a area that offers some great views.

We had to do a bit of bushwacking to reach the cache at the end of this trail and we were glad that we chose this time of year to visit. It’s likely that once the leaves come out slogging across the boggy areas would slow one down. We were also glad to have our waterproof hikers.

Here are some photos we took of our visit:

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Dave Baumchen from Seattle, Washington area, who has 10,126 cache finds, is featured in this article here.

Jeff Zesch, Walter Guertin and Donna Siegel of Massachusetts are mentioned in this article here.

Denise Eickbush from Wichita, Kansas is featured in this article from KSN3 News.

Kathleen Fisher and Bob and Barb Fochtman are mentioned in this article about their caching experiences around Fort Gratiot’s Natural Reserve and Walking Trail in Port Huron, Michigan.

Amy Mills, from Central Iowa, is mention in this article here.

Nate Cushman, from the Everette, Washington area, is featured in this article here.

An introduction to Geocaching was held at The Indiana Dunes State Park recently which was well received. You can read more here.

Geocaching was also the part of the festivities of The No Child Left Inside event held recently in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. You can read more about this event here.

A Kelowna, British Columbia cache was recently mistaken for a bomb and the police are looking for the Geocacher so that they can ‘educate’ him. You can read more here.

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