Geocaching Assabet Refuge

The Assabet National Wildlife Refuge is now sort of open with a new visitors center (expect to open in March/April).  You can learn more here. 

I've hiked, biked, and cross country skied this area for many years and have always been surprised that there were not geocaches here.  It turns out that the USFWS has a policy that forbids geocaching on the properties it manages.  You can find out somethings about it at geocaching.com here and here.  While the policy seems to be softening, it still seems that placing a cache container on FWS managed lands is a no no!  In my view it's a bit of a shame and hardly universally justified given the permitted uses that include walking, biking, hunting, seasonal placement of hunting tree stands, fishing, and boating.  But it's still forbidden.

Since I'm retired and have some free time, I thought I'd ask to place some caches in cooperation with the Assabet Refuge managers.  So I gave them a call the other day and talked to Susan Russo.  Susan was very helpful and suggested that mystery caches might be possible.  She took my name, number, and email address and said she'd try to find the current policy and email me a copy.  She also asked if I'd like to volunteer at the new visitor's center and agreed to pass my name along to Friends of the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge.  We'll see what happens.

That got me interested in existing nearby caches of which there seem to be three - Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Firefighter's Exercise Trail, and Babe Ruth's Piano.  I'd previously found 'Firefighters' and today decided to visit 'Assabet' before the heavy snow starts.  I'll admit to using the hints as I've walked most of the Assabet trails.  That almost make this one a park and grab.

While there today I bumped into a couple of Town of Sudbury employees.  It seems that once every five years the town must verify the location of various town markers and today a team was out doing so.  A bit of checking suggest the coordinates are near N42° 24.1452' W71° 28.1497'.  There are also several others.  Hummmmmm, this might be a good geocache adventure.

In any event, I took some photos of today's adventure.  As usual, no spoilers and click to see the full size images.