My trip to New York State also allowed me to visit a few other places I had never been, despite living in New York for 39 years. These are areas in upstate New York, as we called it. One of the main ones I was eager to see was the facilities in Lake Placid, New York from the 1980 Winter Olympics.

First, however, I had to get there. To do that, I had to cross Vermont.

I’m starting to like cemetery geocaches more and more. There usually aren’t muggles around so that makes them easy to search for and retrieve. Of course, if there are people around mourning their relatives, I move along without searching.

The geocache above was interesting. The geocache had been hidden in April of 2018. No one found it from October of 2018 until August 18 of this year. There was only one person during that time who searched for it and said they couldn’t find it. In August of this year, someone else went there and said that since it hadn’t been found in nearly 2 years and they couldn’t find it, they were putting out a new container. In geocaching terms, that’s called a “throwdown.” When I got there and searched, I found the original container. I couldn’t locate the throwdown. I claimed it as a “resurrection” cache, meaning I found it after it hadn’t been found in a long time since it was just a month shy of 2 years since anyone found the original container. You can see on the log here the last find was dated in 2018. It wasn’t that hard of a find either.

Back to a cemetery geocache. This one had a lot of Revolutionary War soldiers buried here. It was really interesting to try to read the gravestones.

I crossed into New York State and was greeted by a sign listing all of the sightings of Lake Champlain’s answer to the Loch Ness monster. Yes, there was a geocache behind it.

Eventually, after a pretty drive and several other stops, I made it to Lake Placid.

The first geocache I didn’t find gave me an awesome view of the ski jump facility. The cache was allegedly hidden in some trees, and it looked like they might have been recently pruned. Such is life. There were gondolas running up to the ski jump the day I was there, but I didn’t take the time to go on them.

This marks the entrance to the Sports Complex that houses the bobsled run, luge, and skeleton. There was construction going on when I visited. I don’t think it’s been open at all this summer. There was a geocache near this entrance that I found, but I couldn’t go any further in and see those facilities.

There was a geocache here, where the Olympic flame was lit for the duration of the games. Now it’s a variety of sports fields and also where a horse show happens once a year. The Olympic Village, where the athletes lived, is now a prison.

The town was packed. I was really surprised that this small village drew such big crowds. The picture on the above left is the Herb Brooks Arena. That’s where the USA famously beat the Soviet team in hockey and went on to win the gold medal. Across from it are the flags for every country that participated in the 1980 Winter Olympics, including the old Soviet flag. Up the hill is the ice arena for figure skating and an Olympic Museum. If I ever get back there, I will definitely take the time to check out the museum. The large picture is the oval speed-skating track where Eric Heiden won five gold medals in 1980.

This was a day I racked up 36 geocaching finds, which is really good for the distance I covered. I loved seeing Lake Placid but would prefer to check it out again when it’s not so crowded. I guess with more people staying closer to home due to COVID, these small towns are getting overwhelmed just like where I live.