Geocamping 2010 Part One: Jonathan Dickinson State Park

Last weekend I went camping and geocaching with my dad, brother and long-time friend. We had a blast and will definitely be going again, possibly soon! I’ve decided to write down as much as I can remember so we can come back and relive the memories of this amazing trip.

Given the massive size of what I’ve written so far, I’m going to split it up into a few different posts.

Geocamping 2010 – Pre Campsite Caching

We booked a spot at Jonathan Dickinson State Park to go camping and I drove over from Tampa Friday afternoon. When I got into town Mom, Dad, Donnie and Adam were setting up camp so I grabbed 2 of dad’s new caches and 1 other nearby while waiting. We grabbed some food at Chick-fil-A and then Dad let me look for his first awesome cache. It’s called “Strainge Bird” and it’s a modified Rain Bird sprinkler head cache, discretely placed right on Chick-fil-A property and filled with some free sandwich coupons. Awesome cache, check it out: http://coord.info/GC23BT0

We then headed down to the park and got there pretty quickly. The first cache we spotted was on a tree outside the park called “Making Memories”. We laughed at the dorkiness of that title, but had no idea what a harbinger it would turn out to be.  (7:46 pm)

We got stumped for a minute on our next cache, then realized it was an “Event” Cache, which had no physical container and we could not mark as found since we missed the Cachapalooza event. I took that chance to give Dad and Donnie their birthday presents, a knife for Donnie and a new Flashlight for dad. Donnie gave me a cool Cubs wristband that he had found in a cache a few days earlier.

Dad's Flashlight Donnie's Knife

Armed with a new flashlight and tons of enthusiasm, we headed off to our first cache inside the park. It was called The Riding Turtle and had us all stumped. We looked through the sandy undergrowth for probably 20 minutes until Donnie spotted the cache: a small plastic turtle hidden under some pieces of wood. I was completely amazed that Donnie found it AT NIGHT with just his headlamp. Wow. http://coord.info/GC20C0X (8:27 pm)

With our first real cache a success, we headed to the next one “Sand Pine Trail”. Since this trip was the very first time all four of us had gone caching together, we had to learn each other’s styles really quickly. Donnie and I made the bad mistake of splitting off from Dad and Adam for about 30 minutes. Believe it or not, Donnie was wearing FLIP FLOPS and SHORTS while running around the sandy area covered in CACTUS plants everywhere. He got stuck real bad 2 or 3 times and once I had to pull the cactus barb out of his leg. Amazingly, his excitement didn’t die down and he kept “Treasure huntin’!”. After almost an hour, we found the cache and it was full of gold pirate coins and this awesome geocoin: http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?tracker=USH001 This Fallen Hero coin started out in Texas and made its way to Florida near Orlando a month later. It bounced around Orlando in and out of a few caches until someone brought it to South Miami. Then the very day we went caching, someone placed it where we found it. I’ll be taking the coin to a geocoin exchange cache in Tampa near I-75 and hopefully someone can take it north. (8:51 pm)

Amazingly, cell phones still worked out there, so Adam called me and we all found each other and stayed together for the rest of the trip. Our next cache, “Praying Mantis” was a bit closer to the road: http://coord.info/GC20CEP A park ranger approached us and asked what we were doing, I replied “Geocachin’, man!” and he said “Oh, I didn’t know we had any of those out here.” Funny how he knew what geocaching was and didn’t know they had almost 200 caches in the park! Dad found this one and made quick business of signing the log. (9:09 pm)

We moved on to the next one, Dancing-Lady Orchid – http://coord.info/GC20CED It lived up to its name as Dad and I were still learning how to use our Automotive GPSs out in the woods so it took us a while to zone in on this one. We did the GPS dance for probably 10 minutes before Donnie found it with his catlike night vision. (9:26 pm)

The next cache was a matchstick box on the base of a tree by the road. http://coord.info/GC20JMQ Another park ranger stopped us here and when we told him we were geocaching he laughed and asked us how many days did we plan on being there. Little did we know how right he was. By this time we had spent about 2 hours so we decided to head back to camp and chill out a little while Donnie changed into some real shoes and longer pants. (9:35 pm)

Tomorrow I will post about the rest of the caches we got Friday night and the interesting visitors we had at our campsite when we got back.

Click here to view Geocamping 2010 Part Two – Late Night Caching

About the Author

Michael

I'm just a dorky guy who married an awesome girl and I get the privilege of waking up every day next to my best friend. As you can tell I like to geocache and love working with all kinds of technology and other fun stuff. I am a huge nerd, but hey, it pays the bills!

3 thoughts on “Geocamping 2010 Part One: Jonathan Dickinson State Park

  1. Dittos Holly!!

    I would like to add that the picture of that turtle was zoomed in a bit. That thing was SMALL. I still can’t believe Donnie found that thing AT NIGHT.

  2. Hey Michael- remember us from CCC? Like the geocache post- we just started up ourselves in the last few months! Found about 40 now!

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