Thursday, July 25, 2013

Bears Go East: Mapping New England

The following events happened on July 2nd, 2013
I am currently on an epic road trip with my wife and kids. Our ultimate destination is to visit the bonny isle of Newfoundland. Along the way we are taking in as much adventure as we can fit in.

Today we left our hotel in West Warwick Rhode Island and headed north.

There was a lot of rain today, and we had to put in a fair amount of mileage, so we didn't do a lot of extraneous geocaching, but we did manage to get in some rather notable caches just the same.

The highlight was a visit to the map company Delorme.  You may recall that yesterday I blogged about completed the Rhode Island Delorme Challenge - this is the company that inspired those challenges.

Their headquarters is just north of Portland Maine.  In their lobby is a huge (by huge I mean *HUGE* - 3+ stories of pure globe goodness).  It is also a virtual.

 In fact there are 4 geocaching on the Delorme campus - a virtual, another cache inside the building in the form of a geocoin treasure chest, and two relatively easy caches out on the grounds.  I, with the help of my family, found them all. We also toured the on-site store to pick up a map of the earth for the kids, and a globe for us.

This is the bear from "Bears in the bushes" at the Delorme headquarters.  Seemed fitting for a couple of bears to find this cache, eh?

While doing the DeLORME challenge yesterday brdad suggested we do a virtual cache just outside of Boston Mass.  It is a tower located in a cemetery, at the top of a hill.  The views from the top were spectacular:



We ended our day in a hotel in Bangor Maine.  We will be heading back here to spend more time, so today we satisfied ourself with a good meal, and a good nights sleep.

Tomorrow we attempt to cross the border into Canada. I bet you are excited to find out what happens next - the possibilities are endless: Will we get stripped searched by Mounties? Will we "go native" and apologize for no reason?  Will we fatten ourselves at the first Tim Hortons we see and refuse to leave?

Stay tuned!  This adventure has only just begun.