The Leave It to Beaver cache is a kid friendly educational cache located at Pyramid Mountain Natural Historic Area which has many human and wildlife neighbors around its 1,500 acres of protected land.
Please remember to stay on the marked trails as you navigate to the cache. You are in sensitive wildlife habitat! Maps are available in the Visitors Center or at the parking lot kiosk.
Beavers are incredible engineers, and they can change the landscape as few other animals can. Beavers will burrow into the banks of rivers and lakes, or they will transform less suitable habitats by building dams. Gnawing and cutting down trees with their strong teeth and powerful jaws, they create massive log, branch, and mud dams to block streams and turn fields and forests into the large ponds that they love.
This cache will take you to an old beaver pond at the Pyramid Mountain Natural Historic Area. The landscape has changed - tree skeletons stand where there was once a forest, and around the pond, gnawed logs and stumps remain.
These large rodents waddle on land but are graceful in the water, where they use their large, webbed rear feet like swimming fins and their paddle-shaped tails like rudders. This allows beavers to swim at speeds of up to five miles an hour. They can remain underwater for 15 minutes without surfacing, and have a set of transparent eyelids that function like goggles.
What else can a beaver do with its tail? For more beaver information check inside the cache!
The Morris County Park Commission maintains approximately 1,500 acres in Montville, Kinnelon, and Boonton Township as the Pyramid Mountain Natural Historic Area.
The Pyramid Mountain Visitors Center offers year-round nature programs for all ages as well as 25 miles of nature trails open to the public from dawn to dusk. The Visitors Center is open Wednesdays through Sundays from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.morrisparks.net or call 973-334-3130.
This cache is placed in partnership between The Morris County Park Commission and The Northern New Jersey cachers, (NNJC). This cache is part of the Pyramid Mountain education geocaching program.