Di and I truly enjoy the many fine preserves and other places with trails where clusters of caches are found. But for geocaching, we would never have visited most of these places. We enjoy a place where we can park, cache for a half day or more, bag a bunch of caches, see some of nature's wonders and enjoy what Maine has to offer. I'm starting this thread to encourage fellow cachers to tell us about your favorite parks or preserves, where they're located, types of caches, and anything a cacher might want to know in advance to add to the enjoyment. There are lots of places like this in Maine so let me be the first to tell you all about one of our favorites.

The Dodge Point Preserve is north of Boothby and south of Damariscotta on the River Road The preserve is expansive and the back of the preserve borders the Damariscotta River. The trails are well marked and I believe there's close to 20 caches of all types hidden. Make sure that you at least get to the caches along the river.

Like a lot of these places, there are rarely trail maps available at the kiosk and I couldn't find a place to download one before we visited. There's a huge ravine that traverses right through the middle of the preserve so many of the trails take a lot of twists and turns. Newbies might wonder why they're suddenly headed "away" from a cache or headed away from the parking area when it's time to head out, but trust the trail markings and have a look at them on the map at the kiosk. Mark your car as a waypoint, as always.

Several cachers have done all of these in a day. We did all but 5 the first visit and I think that's because the last 5 we just did were placed after our first visit.

This preserve is dog friendly and we didn't see any dog hazards although if you have labs, there will be swimming at some point!

I have no restaurants to report about this area although downtown Damariscotta is about 10 minutes from the park.

So let your fellow cachers know about similar places you've visited that you know others will enjoy!