International Earthcache Day is held at the beginning of Earth Sciences' Week, sponsored by the Geological Society of America. They encourage people, not just geocachers, to get out and learn about the earth. In 2007, a couple of friends and I spent "Earthcache Day" together. We headed to Virginia to specifically visit GC105P8 "Wetlands: A Natural Treasure. That day we wandered around Huntley Meadows Park gathering the information. We then spent another great couple of hours in another portion of the park finding the other traditional caches there. This year we wanted to go bigger and better. So we ventured off to Great Falls National Park. Located on each side of the falls are two earthcaches. We visited an old gold mine, for the "Gold in Maryland" earthcache..
The hike to that one was fantastic. We then headed over to the Virginia side of the falls to visit the GCZDA0 Great Falls Earthcache. For this one we had to visited various lookouts along the river for some amazing scenery. We then had another terrific hike out to GCZP3V Mather Gorge. This one took us from the top of the falls down about 9/10 of a mile down to a terrific spot to look back up the gorge itself. 
After making our way back to the car we realized that we had missed one of the earthcaches on the Maryland side, since it looked like on the map and GPSr that it was in Virginia. But it could only be accessed from the Maryland side. Once back we visited GCZCGF Great Falls Olmstead Island along with about 200 of our closest muggle friends. But they were more concerned with looking at the falls and the kayakers enjoying them.The entire day was a blast! Great hikes, with terrific scenery accompanied by good friends. Can't wait to see where we go next year!
I realize that this may not be the best or most descriptive posting of a such a great day. But sometimes words escape me. If you are interested in seeing a few pictures of the day check out the "other pics" link on the right side. Then look at the "12 of Twelve for October." More geocaching news later...
