Many of Tyburn's students and teachers took advantage of the beautiful weather on Columbus Day weekend (not to mention the sudden drop in gas prices) and took to the highways.

On Saturday, several students from Janet Cuthbert's Earth Science class headed for the state parks in the Ithaca area to participate in a new phenomenon, geocaching. Geocaching is a worldwide game of hiding and seeking treasure. A geocacher can place a geocache anywhere in the world, pinpoint its location using GPS technology and then share the geocache's existence and location online. Anyone with a GPS unit can then try to locate the geocache.

Our group was successful at locating two in Robert H. Treman State Park and two more at Taughannock Falls State Park. Part of the fun is looking at and signing a book inside the cache, seeing what the previous finders have left, and leaving something of your own for future scavengers.

Finding a cache can be tricky, as we found out; although the GPS gives latitude and longitude, it doesn't show altitude. When searching the lower gorge at Treman in the spot we were sure was correct, proved futile; we started over on the upper trail, and found the second cache - exactly 200 feet above where we had been looking.

Even without treasure to find, both parks are themselves treasures. Treman, about three miles south of Ithaca, consists of more than 1,000-acres around Enfield Glen. Within the gorge, Enfield Creek cuts through 370-million-year-old rock, cascading over 12 waterfalls. The largest of these, Lucifer Falls, is 115 feet high. Like many of the state parks, sturdy trails, bridges and stairs were built following the depression through the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Fall color was just about at its peak and every turn revealed more of central New York's annual beauty. A water-powered gristmill built in 1839 remains open in the upper park, and the students got a brief physics lesson from my husband about the mechanics of the mill.

After lunch, we headed up the west side of Cayuga Lake to Taughannock Falls. This park is popular for its beaches in summer, but on Saturday, the crowds on the gorge trail reminded me of Fifth Avenue in New York. It was obvious that many people were out to enjoy the great weather and fall color; there was even a wedding taking place near the falls. The trail meanders nearly a mile from the road back to this 215-foot waterfall, the highest straight drop east of the Rockies, and 33 feet higher than Niagara. This trail is an easy one, flat all the way, but most people soon abandon the trail to walk upstream on the mostly dry limestone creekbed. Some of the gorge walls reach a stunning 400 feet high, with the north edge mostly rock and the south side mostly wooded.

While we were hiking through the woods, Tyburn boys' soccer team left on Friday for a weekend visit to the Seminary of the Legion of Christ in Cheshire, Conn. Two area young men are now in their second year of studies there and while visiting them, the team stayed in the dormitories.

They also had a chance to play soccer against their hosts' team; quite a challenge, considering that the seminarians are all college age.

On Sunday, following Mass with their hosts, the team drove to the Atlantic coast to visit the United States Navy Submarine Base and Museum in Groton.

The USS Nautilus, which was launched on Jan. 21, 1954, was christened with the traditional bottle of champagne by then First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. It was the first commissioned nuclear powered submarine in the U.S. Navy and is now permanently housed there along with other military exhibits. All agreed that they wished they had had more time to spend there.

Barbara Murphy is the school nurse and does publicity for Tyburn Academy