"Ay Caramba!!" is named after the exclamation emitted by The Artful Dodger on seeing the mother of all geocaching hurdles. Located in Wawayanda State Park, this multicache is positioned close to pristine hiking trails in a well-maintained park. If there is one cache to do in the park this one is definitely it as it takes you to explore several different ecosystems.
Bookmarked on seven lists, this cache, hidden in 2002, has received multiple awards including a 2005 NNJC Award and an NNJC Hall of Fame nod. This month Ay Caramba !!" is our cache of the month for it was the center piece of the NNJC MMM…Donuts event on November 16th. That day Aye Caramba was found by more people than had found it in the last two and a half years combined.
"Ay Caramba !!" is a great, challenging multi that is very nicely laid out. WaylessWood described it as "a great multi that took us through some awesome woods and varied terrain." It left several of those who found it speaking in several languages as Mountain Racer stated, "Ay caramba, que camina tan larga! Making this a round trip bumped the mileage to more than ten for the day." Team Divi Divi noted that "The bigger group made this challenging multi a bit easier."
Many had been keeping an eye on this cache for years. Brian B had been waiting for 6 years to complete this one. MBlach had heard good things about this cache, and it has been on his radar screen for quite some time now. He was glad to finally have the opportunity (and the excuse of a well-timed/placed caching event) to come to log it. Marc stated that he really enjoyed the hike as a few from the group took a break while in the middle to do some other caches. The entire group finally made its way back to the task and logged the final. Great job overall. Marc loved all of the spots for the various stages.
Others were more surprised by the adventure of the day. Specifically, Pokey and the youngest kid joined the terrific group of cachers following the Donut event to do this very challenging multi. The leader of Pokey's group recounted, "While munching on our donuts prior to the assault, one cacher who had made this find sometime in the past told us, 'It's about 1.5 miles there and back, about a total of 3 miles, and mostly easy climbs.' Well, now, memories surely must fade over time, because there was a fairly big climb to stage 2 that had Pokey resting with others in our group at two spots. The overall hike from car back to car was somewhere between 7 and 8 miles. All of those .5 finds that I've done to prepare for this one just didn't do the trick! With sore old legs aside, both the youngest and I had a wonderful time through these beautiful trails, with such a fun and nice group of people. I had to laugh when we were looking for stage 3, and a runner jogged by on the trail, announcing that he knew one of the people in our party, and was Ramsey101! How nice of Brian to arrange for this cacher to run by, JUST at that moment, to nod in the general direction where we were searching! The youngest was thrilled to find stage one; it made his day! Great cache, awesome trails, and lots of fun!"
Some didn't find a single part but that's not critical on a group assault like this one. Congratulations to young Kyle for finding Stage 1, Brian for finding Stage 2, Sean for Stage 3, Sue for Stage 4 and Doug for the final.
Ay Caramba; Great team work on this one. Thanks to all who joined us at NNJC on completing this quest.