Short caching trip - McKaig Nature Education Center

My son and I had a short caching day several weeks ago, and while the bulk of my photos were taken at Skunk Hollow, we did manage to hit a few more spots on our day off.  One of the places we visited was the McKaig Nature Education Center in Upper Merion Township.

There are two caches in the park - Just Toying Around and McKaig's Scenic Simion.  I had originally visited this spot way back in February to pick both caches up, and what impressed me at the time was a largish hill that you climb up to reach GZ of McKaig's Scenic Simion.  Jack loves climbing stuff (generally furniture, but hills are good too) and I filed this location away for a future revisit.  As things worked out, we ended up having a reason to visit - Jack's Travel Bug Game was there, and we wanted to get it moving again.

I had placed Jack's Travel Bug Game in a cache near my work way back in February.  After a month and a half of waiting with bated breath, it was finally picked up and taken on a trip to Pittsburgh. It made several cache visits (and someone rolled a 6 and posted a haiku!) and then came back to the general area - specifically, back to the Scenic Simion cache.  Knowing that Jack and I had the whole day to visit caches we decided to stop by here, pick up the bug, and give it to my father in law in NJ, so he could get the game moving again.

The McKaig Nature Education Center was created in 1979 to preserve open land in Upper Merion.  It occupies 89 acres of land, and has several hiking trails and two creeks.

Jack, hiking up the hill.

There is a main entrance on the north side of the park, but both caches are located near the two southern entrances on Brower Road - Just Toying Around is a short walk from the Southwest entrance, and McKaig's Scenic Simion is a hike up a hill from the Southeast entrance.  Seeing as we had already braved a dog attack and vicious thorn wounds earlier in the day, I decided that we would only take the trip to get our travel bug, rather than get both caches.

While I'm only documenting our trip to McKaig's Scenic Simion, be assured that it's worth the trip over to Just Toying Around. It is one of the largest containers I have ever seen while caching, and it's on my short list of places that I can drop of large trackables.   The key difference between the hikes is that Scenic Simion is high up a hill, while Toying Around is in a relatively flat area.

You can see my car way down the hill.

The hill to the cache is pretty steep, but has a clearly marked trail that switches back and forth, so it's not that difficult of a climb.

Whoops - we ended up on the wrong side of this sign after going off trail for a bit.

Going off trail and straight up the hill isn't too hard, but we found out that we had wandered into a closed area after reaching the trail again.

The cache hints reference the waterbars, but coming from the main entrance.  Just follow your GPS and look around a bit.

There is a trail map available on the McKaig website.  The cache is located near where Laurel Trail and Fire Road intersect.  When I found it in February, it was lying exposed near a log that had rotted away some time in the past.  I re-hid it under some bark and debris to make it a little less obvious.  This time, it was even more exposed, so I'm kinda glad we grabbed the travel bug, as anyone wandering a little off trail could have spotted it easily.  I did hide it in some debris again, but since it's been 0 for 2 in the visits that I have made, I don't trust that it will stay hidden all that long.

This was taken right when the leaves were coming in.

The whole cache trip, from walking the hill up to getting back to the car, takes a little more than 15 minutes. Jack enjoyed this trip as well, though we did run into another dog walker, and after the Skunk Hollow Incident he was a little wary.  All in all, it's a decent park with two largish caches, so if you have 45 minutes to an hour to kill it's certainly worth stopping by and picking them both up.

Caches in this post:

• McKaig's Scenic Simion
• Just Toying Around