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January 2017 : Ruined Chicken

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2017 12:21 am
by humphr1d
Greetings MGS! L am excited to highlight some of older, favored, or legendary geocaches from across “The Old Line State”. This month the focus turns to one of the oldest Multi-caches in Maryland. I was privileged to join a hearty group of cachers who weathered the cold and occasional snow showers to conquer this cache and the nearby “Fair Hill Multicache” (Maryland’s oldest Multi-cache).


Ruined-Chicken Multicache
GC Code: GC2BE4 https://coord.info/GC2BE4

Where it's located: Fairhill Natural Resource Management Area (northeast Cecil County near the junction of Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania)

Favorite Points: 32

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Description:
This is a 3.5 mile adventure in the Fairhill Natural Resource Management Area that will challenge your GPS. compass, and map skills.

There are six geocaches in clear tupperware-type containers with blue lids. The first five give only information to the next geocache. The sixth and last geocache has all the goodies. Please log your visit and let us know about your adventure. Check out 8 new caches at this location!!


Selected Finder logs:

HaveBirdWillGeo: Drove down from PA with Stews Crew to join up with some Maryland cachers to look for a couple of old multis in Fairhill Park. People began trickling in and we soon had a large group of 20 cachers! We called ourselves Mark's Marauders and it was quite impressive seeing all of us filing along the narrow forest trails. After tackling the Fair Hill Multicache, this one was next on our list. This multi was certainly the tougher of the two in distance, # of stages and difficulty. At one stage the projection goofed us up some, where we had to use magnetic rather than true north, but a PAF set us on the right track. The stages took us to some interesting places and although the hike was long and tiring, I thoroughly enjoyed this ol' multi! When we arrived back at parking (yes, we all got "ticketed" by a ranger :), I was amazed to see that it was still a little before noon, so we had the whole afternoon to cache! Woohoo! TFTM$!

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MDSurveyor: I came to Fair Hill today with a friend to tackle two of the 5 oldest multi’s in Maryland (seems like an ongoing theme here lately). It was nice to see it was found 5 days ago so I knew all stages were there.

We got to stage one and saw the two structures. I prayed I would not have to do anything crazy here to get to the cache. I was glad to find out no crazy climbing was needed and we made the find quickly. I was a little concerned at stage two with the comments alzarius and lpaulriddle made, but we did not have much trouble there. Stage three was a very quick find and glad there was no ice today. Stage four was our (my) toughest. This was because I forgot I had changed one of the direction settings on my GPSr. This probably caused us close to an hour of extra time and a lot of unnecessary hiking. Once I had the “DUH” moment and realized the problem, we got right to stage four and found easily. Stage five was the toughest hiking through the bushes to get to the stage, but once at the stage, I saw the easy path back and on to the final. The final was a quick find however the contents are getting damp.

The whole trip took about 3 hours, which could have been much quicker if I realized my problem at stage four quicker. TN and left ‘tuit’ token. Great multi and adding a favorite point.



lpaulriddle: Wow. Awesome multi! This cache, and its nearby sister multi, have been on my radar for awhile. I had originally been planning a solo trip up here, but decided that given the park's distance from home (about 75 minutes), the number of stages involved with both caches, etc., it might be prudent to have a second set of eyes along. So, I contacted Alzarius, and we settled on today. The weather turned out to be beautiful. The trails got a little muddy as the day progressed and the ground thawed out, but it really wasn't all that bad. We were able to shorten the distance between a few of the stages by cutting across fields and bushwhacking through a few thorny patches. It wasn't easy going everywhere, but we were able to complete the cache in about 2 hours, with total distance covered around 4.5 miles. The stages were well-thought-out, and the inspiration behind the cache name finally hit us about halfway in. Teamwork definitely sped things along -- I think I spotted about half of the stages, and Alzarius spotted the other half. Stage 2 took the longest to find. The final location had a few thorns, but nothing we hadn't already dealt with. Cache was a little damp inside (which discouraged me from leaving a trackable for the MGS group that's coming in a few weeks), but all is well otherwise. An awesome, classic multi, and a definite favorite. TNLNSL. TFTC!!


Bocco: We drove up from southern Maryland with Moonpie10 to find this cache and Fair Hill Multi as we are working on finding Maryland's Five Oldest Challenge.

This is a really great cache. It is very well laid out in that you will end up back near where you parked, and the various stages take you to some really cool "ruined chickens." the hints along the way are very helpful, and most of the stages are near the trail. There is one big field to cross, and we are pretty impressed that Serrabou was able to ride his bike across that. We ran into our equestrian friends along the way and they again fussed over our geo pup as we were hunting for a stage.

At the final we found a nice little surprise. Hmmm...we thought that was down south deep in VA...crafty move! LOL!!

Thanks for a very nice cache, this is a favorite among favorites, very well placed!

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