The Catskill Chronicle

LIBERTY, NY— Youth over the age of 8 and their families are invited on an after-school Earth Day adventure in the forest.

Trailkeeper.org partners are offering a Treasures on Turtle Trail event for families on Tuesday, April 22 from 4:30 to 6:00 pm in celebration of Earth Day.

This unique opportunity will be held at Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) Sullivan County’s Turtle Spring Nature Trail on 64 Ferndale-Loomis Road in Liberty.

Participants will begin the journey by meeting in the CCE Gerald J. Skoda Extension Education Center building for a brief overview of the activity. Nicole Slevin, CCE Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math (STEM) Community Educator, will present to families the process of Geocaching and explain how groups will use GPS units to discover hidden “treasures” when venturing outside onto the nearby trail.

According to the official Geocaching website, “Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. The word Geocaching refers to GEO for geography, and to CACHING, the process of hiding a cache. A cache in computer terms usually refers to information stored in memory to make it faster to retrieve, but the term is also used in hiking/camping as a hiding place for concealing and preserving provisions.”

Pre-registration is required in advance to attend this program. Registration and more information can be obtained by calling CCE at 845-292-6180 or emailing Nicole Slevin at nas96@cornell.edu. A donation of $5 per family is suggested to help support 4-H Youth Development programs. Participants should bring appropriate clothing and footwear for easy-to-moderate trail conditions.

Trailkeeper.org is a one-source outlet for hiking trails and public lands in Sullivan County with easy-to-ready, easy-to-access maps and facilities information and guides to hiking safety. This website is the result of a partnership between the Catskill Mountainkeeper, Cornell Cooperative Extension Sullivan County, Delaware Highlands Conservancy, Morgan Outdoors, Sullivan County Division of Planning and Environmental Management, and Sullivan County Visitors Association, with support from Basha Kill Area Association, National Park Service, Sullivan County Audubon, Sullivan Renaissance, Upper Delaware Council, and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference. Funding was provided by the Upper Delaware Council through the TAG program and Sullivan Renaissance through the Environmental Initiatives grant. The website was designed by adcSTUDIO.