A personal review of the new Opera 8 browser is coming in next few days but I first wanted to finish the second half of the Kauai story. Since we had a very nice geocaching experience on the island and also today in Pennsylvania, this will become a geocaching update. The more I learn about geocaching, the more I like it — there are some more stories about geocaching in the hiking category.
There are many ways to enjoy the splendor of Kauai. In January 2003, I was there on a side-trip from the Global Internet Project meeting in Honolulu and rented a Road King for an afternoon. Another way to see the scenery is by hiking and geocaching. The hike to the bottom of Wailua Falls was the most challenging I have ever experienced. At one point we had to swing from a rope to get around some rocks. Climbing back up the 300 feet or so to the top would have been extremely difficult if it had not been for ropes that someone left attached at various points along the trail. The next day we had a mostly flat hike along the beach not far from Poipu. The hardest part was enduring the extraordinarily bumpy road to get from Poipu to the parking area. The cache — named Tiny Bubbles — was easy to find and not well hidden. We took extra care to make it more challenging for the next visitor.
Two weeks later we found our fifteenth cache — this one in Pennsylvania at Lake Wallenpaupack. I have been spending "escape" time at this lake for nearly thirty years and never knew there were 250 acres of undeveloped land along the shore near Hawley. The land was set aside by PPL Corporation, the owner of the lake, for public use. The area is called the Shuman Point Natural Area and Beech House Creek Wildlife Refuge. There are black bear known to be there but fortunately we did not see any. The cache we found is called Point Rock Geocache and the hike to get to it was very nice. Just right — not too long, not too short. We made a false start by driving to the wrong park entrance. After a couple of false starts into the woods we realized we were in the wrong place. GPS always points to the right place but when the path takes you through someone’s backyard, it just might be the wrong way to approach where you are going. The cache can be found by taking either of two paths. I recommend taking the right path from the parking lot and following the blue trail. After enjoying the cache, just keep going on blue back to the parking lot. The total hike is about three miles and takes about an hour and a half. We found the cache not well hidden but we left it much more hidden. I am sure the next geocacher will be grateful.
The Point Rock Geocache had a "travel bug" in the container. Travel bugs are very interesting and a lot of fun. The bugs are usually dog tags that are attached to a "hitchhiker" and move from place to place, picking up stories along the way. If you find a travel bug, you go to geocaching.com and add your own story to its journey. Each bug has a unique serial number that allows it to be tracked. The one we found at Point Rock Geocache was #490539 and it has a very interesting history. We did not take it with us this time but if we had we would have gone to the site to "grab" the bug and put it in our own inventory and then take the bug to another cache somewhere. Some bugs have been all over the world!

• Other patrickWeb hiking stories
• Get your own travel bug