We had a wonderful time this past weekend at the Cape Breton Highlands Park Event that was held in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park here in Nova Scotia.

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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On our trip to New Mexico last month we also got a chance to spend a day Geocaching in beautiful Santa Fe.

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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In addition to going to the Geocaching Event that we told you about in our previous post we also got out to do a bit of caching while in Albuqueurque.

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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We just returned home from a fantastic week in New Mexico and during our trip we were able to meet up with an awesome bunch of local Geocachers at a Meet and Greet event in Albuquerque.

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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