Sunday, October 7, 2007

So, I went geocaching on my scooter....

And even remembered to take the camera. I decided to return to a cache I had tried to find a long time ago, back when I had only found a few caches. I didn't find it that day, ending up 400 feet away from the cache and with no apparent path to get me closer to it, I gave up.

This is the entrance to the park. The park is huge. And today it was huge, hot and extremely muggy.



Can you see the little x on the left side of the map? I was there, so you can see how huge the park is. You'll have to trust me that the park was also hot and muggy.














This was one of the nice shaded paths I took on the way to the cache. Too bad it wasn't the right path, but you can't really blame the path, can you? This park has a lot of diverse scenery.


These are your choices for getting around the park. I was hiking...or walking and sweating really bad.

Well, I managed to basically retrace my steps and wound up 400 feet away from the cache and I didn't feel like bushwhacking that far so after doing some checking to see if the path suddenly turned towards the cache (it didn't) I decided to try another nearby cache.

Now, if you have never cached before, most caches are hidden in, behind or even under something. Nothing is allowed to be buried (technically) so basically, you can sort of gravitate towards the area the cache is going to be. Like a tree, a pile of sticks, a stump, a fence, a WalMart lamp post, etc.

Anyway, I headed to the cache, 'You've got to be kidding me' and even before I made it to 'ground zero', the cache location, I figured I was in trouble. You see, people that hide caches like to use the name of the cache as a hint. Or warning. So, a cache with this name had me wondering how bad it was going to be.

So, this is what I saw when I got to ground zero:



That's not the actual meadow, but you get the idea. Absolutely nothing that could hide a cache. The cache is somewhere in that grass. It is a nanocache, which means it is molecular in size. The grass was also knee high. Absolutely impossible to find unless I spent hours and hours looking for it.

So, after twenty minutes searching in the hot and muggy day, I gave up. I'm getting bummed out.

Luckily, there is yet another cache near by. It's also termed 'kid friendly' so that means I may have a slight chance of finding it.

Eggo my lego is an excellent cache in a beautiful wooded shady area of the park. It was also easier to find. But it is a great cache, so go find it. Then walk around in a huge field looking for a cache the size of a penny. In the middle of a very hot and muggy day. Then ask yourself why you are doing that :)

Seriously though, Alford Arm and the caches there are very nice and I'll be back (again) to find those remaining caches.

Next on the list was St. Mark's Trail Head cache, which is the first of six caches that when found will give a code for a final bonus cache. I had thought of putting some caches on this treail but never got around to it so I'm glad to see someone do it. I found the cache easily and took some pictures at the trail head.

The nice paved parking lot at the St. Mark's Trail head.


Nice of them to provide scooter parking, huh?

Next, I found Life, Duty, Honor, Country, a cache near the really cool Korean War Memorial here in town. It replaces a cache that had fallen victim to the thirty pound rock it was sitting under but the new cache ought to be ok. While there, Dash, a fellow cacher, showed up so we found it together and then headed over to the nearby Prime Meridian Cache. This was a very cool cache, since there is so much history in this tiny site. Read the info on the cache page, it is really interesting.

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