Auburn caching, Clementine Trail

I took Hope up to Auburn today to go hiking. My intention was not necessarily to go geocaching, but to take her for a nice hike and swim. I like taking my GPS as it keeps track of how far we've hiked, elevation gain, etc. As the old Boy Scout saying goes, "Be Prepared" so I loaded up my GPS with geocaches near the area where we would be hiking just in case there were any geocaches nearby.

As luck would have it, there was one geocache located along the trail we were hiking on (Clementine Trail in the Auburn State Recreation Area)! It was pretty easy to find right off the trail, luckily I brought my hiking pole (aka "snake stick") to poke around before I stuck my hand out to reach for it (it was at the base of a bush). 

There was another cache located at Clementine Lake which was our ultimate destination, but unfortunately we had to turn around shortly before reaching the lake because some State Park Rangers stopped us and told me that dogs were not allowed at the Lake. Bummer!

We still hiked almost 4 miles, started out at about 500 ft elevation and hiked to 1,000+ elevation on a nice trail, basically we were at the water level and hiked up to where Hope is stitting in the picture above. Hope enjoyed a nice swim at a place called Clark's Pool; we had the place to ourselves!