"Welcome to the Recreational Trail"
This is the welcome center cache for the entire bike trail. This cache has all the things you need to know for planning your visit to this trail. It has waypoints for all the road crossings, food stops (bathrooms), and parking areas. You will notice that most of the waypoints have a number in the title. That number references the mile you are on the trail at. The trail is 10.3 miles in total. Starting at 0 in Martinsburg and ending with 10.3 in Ranson/Charles Town. They are not exact numbers but should be close enough for you to know where you are at. The trail also has signs at every mile.
MORE ABOUT THE CACHES ON THE TRAIL:
The trail is home to about 50 caches. Most are Traditional style caches with a few Multi's and Unknown's along with at least one EarthCache and Letterbox. That gives you 5 types of cache styles along with many different sizes. Some caches will be very easy to find and some might be hard to find. Some are inches off the trail and others require bending and climbing over rocks and hills. The highest difficultly rating is a 4 and the highest terrain is a 4.5 rating as of this writing. There is something here for everyone. If you are looking for a power trail this is not it but if you want to find 50 caches in a day and be challenged this is your trail. Using bikes and with a good plan most can do the caches in 5-8 hours. Check out the book mark list that has all the caches on the trail for your reference.
Most of the caches can only be accessed by waking or biking the trail. There is no access from Route 9 as it is illegal to park on the highway. Not to mention the fence separating the trail from the highway. You will be crossing some very active secondary roads while on this trail pay attention and use caution when making these crossings.
The entire trail is paved and very easy to bike. However it is no rails to trails and you will find many hills and some of these hills will be challenging on a bike. The first 4 miles have the most hills after that it becomes easier. The trail first opened in September of 2010 and is still new there is not a lot of tree cover so on sunny hot days you will need water.
ABOUT THIS CACHE:
I rated the terrain at 2 due to the rocky area you might travel through to get to the cache. It is a quart size lock and lock with room for travelers. It should be easy to find. Please try and return it as found as this is a very high muggle area. It is always safer to have your own pen but one is provided in the cache. Finally always remember to trade up or at least even. For some of you this is a redo cache and I know you will be disappointed, sorry in advance.
ABOUT THIS AREA'S CACHES:
This area is a geocachers paradise. Along with this trail we have a 92 cache power trail that also contains geoart (Take me Home Courntry Roads GC46JZ5). Currently there are 2 different trails that you can earn a geocoin by completing, GC4HRKQ Villages of Berkeley Co. & GC4EFXZ Washington Co. Geotrail. We also have 9 of the top 10 caches in West Virginia in terms of favorite points right in this area. Then there are the night caches one being on the trail (Things that go bump in the night) and the 5 located within miles of each other in Sleepy Creek (GC3XY3B Legend of Sleepy Creek Hollow) being the closest. So you can spend a day on the trail then gather the top 10 coming back to the trail for the night cache and then the next day you can do the power trail and end the day doing 5 more night caches. Then on day 3 and 4 if you didn't need to take a break you could do the coin trails along with many of the other caches that are around including many on the water. So pack your water kraft along with the bike. Plus I haven't even mentioned the Psycho Urban caches or the 2 cave caches yet. Talk about caching adventure!
If you have suggestions or other waypoints idea's let us know.
Happy caching! And remember cache happens!