Tackling Central Park

I’ll have some other posts coming up about my recent vacation — both caching and non-caching. But, I wanted to start out with Central Park. Ever since the trip to Maine got, unfortunately, canceled, I had put my eyes on trying to complete an amazing multi-cache in the Bridges and Arches of Central Park.

This is part of the description from the cache page:

An extensive multi-cache (offset) that brings you on a tour of Central Park’s historical bridges and archways. Bring a calculator if you intend to solve in the field!

Welcome to the Bridges and Arches of Central Park! This ambitious challenge takes you on a grand tour of the most famous park in the world. Central Park covers over 800 acres of greenery and recreation areas in the middle of Manhattan, so prepare for a long (but pleasant) walk.

It was long, indeed.

For the day, four of us logged probably 10-12 miles traipsing through Central Park. Now, I’ve never been to Central Park, so that was fun. And, it was one of the cooler days of the week, which was nice. Still, that many miles and getting other caches in the park (including a longer whereigo cache), meant jumping around a little and having to find a lot of things as we broke off trails and such.

Essentially, the goal is to find all of these bridges and arches — 32 of them total. In the end, you do some math, get the final coordinates and go seek said cache. While at it, of course, there are many other caches in Central Park to grab.

Here’s Darren, Jim and Heather getting the needed info from one of the spots:

This day wasn’t just about all the walking though. Allow me to give a brief look at some of the things that were used/done during the day.

We came into the city with Darren’s truck — not a small one, either. That meant finding parking, too. We did eventually find parking, many blocks away. We got to the starting spot, just to get a call from Jim and Heather saying they, too, were having problems finding parking.

Once they arrived, we started by going into the Apple Store — which is quite the spot — in the hopes of loading Darren’s GPS with the Central Park Whereigo cache. No luck.

Then it was off on the hunt.

We did a handful of the bridges and arches and caches while we were in the midst of doing the Whereigo cache. Once finishing that, we then set forth into finding all the bridges and arches needed for the final. Mind you, we’ve already done a ton of walking (2+ miles according to my pedometer).

For the rest of the Bridges and Arches cache, we did the following items:

• Walked
• Paid a guy on one of the ponds to row us from one side to the other.
• Climbed hills
• Took a subway
• Rode a carousel

Heather and Jim being paddled across the water:

Turns out that guy paid $12 to use the boat for an hour. Darren forked over $10 to take us across. Not a bad deal for that guy, eh?

We hit a handful of caches that day, too. One was near this statue, of which Darren seemed to like:

Back to the Bridges and Arches cache, however. A lot of these were really nice. I probably should have taken more photos, but I have to be honest — as the day drew on, it got harder and harder to stick with it. The feet started to hurt and even though it was cooler than in previous days, it was still pretty hot. It was all starting to catch up with us. So as we got nearer and nearer to the finish, it was to the point where we started to kind of push onward.

At one of the arches:

We stopped and did a couple of virtual caches as well, and here’s the group getting the needed info at one of them:

After doing the final ones at the one end of the park, we had to go back to the other end to get one last one. We did that as night was setting in and we all stopped at some benches to figure the final coordinates. However, knowing about where the cache was, nothing was adding up. Now, this got frustrating.

We knew things were wrong, but thankfully I had the phone number of the cache owner. Problem was, we couldn’t get him. Jim and Heather couldn’t get two people they knew who had done it. And as it got closer to 8:30 p.m., the reality that we might not be able to finish this cache was setting in and it was very annoying.

We opted to walk to a place we were going to eat and halfway there, I got the phone call from the cache owner. Yes! We figured where our error was and we soon had the real coordinates and were on our way to get the final cache. We found that with relative ease and the best part is each finder gets a coin for finishing. I left a couple of my pathtags and we happily signed the log book before heading off to finally eat dinner.

Oh, I got a big hamburger and fries — I had earned that meal! Good stuff.

After that, it was a taxi ride to where the truck was parked and then we dropped Jim and Heather off at their car before heading back to Darren’s place. What a day turned out to be.

In the end, we figured 10-12 miles worth of walking. In the end, we found 14 caches, but the Bridges and Arches was the crowing achievement. It was one heck of a challenge to do and I’m glad to say I got to do it with the others who went along. It was a fun time for sure.

During the day, we also did ride the famous Central Park Carousel, which for $2 it was something that had to be done. Not that carousel’s are thrilling rides, but being that close, we had to do it. This carousel has been in operation since 1871, so that’s pretty cool. It’s really old-school and kind of neat how it’s just set in the park.
The best part is knowing this park — which is so country-like — is in the middle of New York City.

I’ll have more about the vacation and other items soon.

One other thing — starting Monday (24th), I’ll be back to updating the photo blog on a regular basis. Stop by!
More later!