My parents called last night. My grandmother has passed away. You ever go around the whole day feeling like something is missing? I can't even describe that properly but you know what I mean.
6 caches today: 2 in the Bronx and 4 in Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island. Today must have been a Bayonets4u lovefest because all 4 of the Long Island caches were hidden by this cacher.
On the way from NYC to LI, I found that the Long Island Expressway was backed up so badly that the line of traffic spilled out onto the Cross Island Parkway. No thanks, I thought, so I took the next exit, which was to the Grand Central Parkway and Northern Parkway. What a difference! Very light traffic there. The Northern Parkway doesn't run very far from the LIE for most of its length so why even take the LIE with its long-running construction and heavy traffic? I guess only Long Islanders would know which of the Northern, Southern, LIE, Sunrise, Montauk, 25, 25A or 454 is the best route at any given time. I know I choose the wrong one pretty often but today, I'm happy to have dodged a pretty serious traffic jam. I didn't even take the LIE the whole day, which is another first for me.
At the first two LI caches, I found that 
jbadger had been the only visitor before me. So that makes 3 caches for which we were the first two visitors. Tag team caching. Yay! However, one of the caches had been sitting there for 3 weeks between our visits so I think the real problem is there aren't too many hardcore cachers on LI willing to drive out more than 20-30 miles. I notice caches around Islip, Smithtown and Hauppauge don't seem to have trouble attracting visitors but Muttontown and Target Rock are a bit further from Central LI.
RPA-24 was certainly a challenge in navigation because the most direct trail leads you right into the lake. I have no doubt it could be done with hip waders or knee-high boots. I did not have those so I chose to find another way around and all went well. (except for the wire trap... egads!)
RPA-22 was another challenge in navigation but I think I screwed up. The trails are rather twisted but I got back on track quickly. The odd thing here is the cache had been dragged out into the open and the lid on the cache container was chewed up a bit. I didn't see any food in the cache so I don't know what any animal would want with it. Perhaps Tupperware is nutritious and full of Vitamin P. (for plastic)
Dinner was at the A&W/Long John Silver's co-branded restaurant. Fish and root beer, of course. And it was conveniently down the same road from this cache, the last of the day and an easy one.
