This Cache is placed as part of the New York State Park Saratoga/Capital District Regional Geocache Challenge. There are 52 geocaches hidden within 16 state parks and historic sites in this parks region, and geocachers finding 35 or more will be eligible to enter their names in a drawing for valuable prizes. The first 75 people to find 35 or more caches will receive a special geocache challenge coin. If you are interested in taking up the challenge, you can pick up a geocache passport at any of the participating parks and sites or download it at www.nysparks.com
This cache contains a unique stamp which must stay with the cache. Use this stamp to stamp your passport. This stamp is NOT a trade item. Some of the items in the cache are park souvenirs and do not need to be replaced with a trade item.
Closest Parking Coordinates: N 42°46.655’ W 073°26.949’
Take Route 2 to the Winter Entrance of Grafton Lakes State Park in Grafton. Travel up North Long Pond until you see Second Pond on your left.
Grafton Lakes State Park is known for its water, so each of our geocaches is offering you views of the park’s beauty along our many shores. We hope you’ll be inspired to come back and try the fishing, have a picnic or perhaps paddle a canoe for an afternoon.
Once you find the cache, enjoy a moment atop the rock, taking in the stream. Beaver periodically dam this stream as they grow in numbers in the park, so some years it “babbles” less than others. The stream connects Second Pond and Mill Pond, which are naturally smaller ponds than you see now. Settlers dammed them in Grafton’s earliest days to make the water deeper, using the hydropower at Mill Pond to run a grist mill for making flour. It’s remarkable to think that people make dams to alter the flow, just like the beaver but with different tools. Considering how hard you can imagine it would be to simply get the flow of water in the stream to stop, just imagine how innovative the beaver are who made dams 2 miles wide in Canada! Makes you feel like you could learn some construction from these ingenious mammals.