This is the third post of our camping / geocaching trip. It covers the fighting raccoons that kept us up all night and the cool caches we got Saturday morning.
Let There Be Light, And No Cloud Cover!
The night was filled with strange sounds and rough sleep. The raccoons came back and must have been fighting over the stew that was left on the ground. I think I got maybe a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep and by 7:30 am I didn’t feel like fighting it anymore. We got up and ate the rest of what stew we had left. Holly had luckily packed some extra nutrigrain bars so we had those and some fried giant meat expletive for breakfast. It was just enough to keep us going.
We considered heading back out to get some caches right away, but decided to break down camp and get everything packed up before we hit the trails. We made quick work of that and were back in the trucks in no time. We stopped in a parking lot next to the river and headed back out on foot to a few nature trails. We started off just trekking through the bush again when we realized how futile it would be to fight the palmetto bushes all day long. We found a couple this way http://coord.info/GC1G12C (9:24 am) http://coord.info/GC200TN (9:38 am) and then decided to stick to the nature trail and only split off the trail when we got near a cache.
We were doing great compared to the night before. With the skies now clear, my GPS was getting a terrific signal. But it’s a Garmin 255w – made for Cars and not exactly made for the open woods. But Donnie’s phone has GPS AND Google Maps so we were able to pinpoint the caches pretty well!
The next cache was called “Gorilla Cache” and was my personal favorite of the trip. http://coord.info/GC20CWZ Some people like the big containers but I personally love a clever hide or one that has a good payoff. This one was both. We found the location pretty easily, just a burned down tree right along the edge of the trail. About 6 feet of the tree was still standing, but we couldn’t find the actual cache. I got on my knees and looked under and around the tree but couldn’t find anything. Then I got up on my tip toes and found it staring me back in the face. Too cool! (9:53 am)
Sticking to the trail may have meant a bit more walking, but it was much easier to make good time when on a somewhat even surface. We were having a blast at this point, making finds pretty quickly. The next 2 caches were ammo cans named for the species of 2 different kinds of bats. http://coord.info/GC200TY (9:58 am) http://coord.info/GC20GX0 (10:06 am) They even had little rubber bats in them. I took one home to put in a cache in Tampa.
We were going strong now, having an awesome time when we hit our first serious snag. We approached “Kitching Creek” with enthusiasm since the last few finds were so easy. It was a small dock built above a creek. We looked under every nook and cranny, but it proved to be too much for us. We looked all over the place not wanting to admit defeat. The clue was no help whatsoever, just “JONA”. We couldn’t figure it out. I saw a string hanging out from a nail above the water, maybe that was where it used to be? We hated to leave without a find but we easily spent 30 minutes there. I think it may have gone missing since the last 5 entries were DNFs. http://coord.info/GCHNFP
Spurred on by our DNF we crashed through the tall grass and palmetto trees to find 2 more micros http://coord.info/GC20JNW (10:34 am) http://coord.info/GC20JNY (10:41 am) One of them took us back into an area next to the water where a single flower was growing on a vine. Adam made the awesome observation that if it weren’t for us caching out there, perhaps nobody would ever see that flower. Kind of makes you think, how much beauty are we passing up in life because we don’t take the time to look for it? Ok, enough sap. To the next cache!
Our trip was starting to wind down by now, as we were all quite tired at the time. With very little sleep and no food in our bellies we were pretty worthless. But we went for one more find. And it took forever. But we did find it. It was a lousy green waterbottle in a dense growth of palmettos. http://coord.info/GC20JP6 (10:58 am)
Not knowing how to quit when we were ahead, we went for one more but couldn’t find it after searching for 20 minutes. http://coord.info/GC20JP0 We plowed through more very dense palmettos but couldn’t come up with it. It could have been anywhere in there. (11:22 am)
Since my GPS battery was dead as was Donnie’s phone, we decided to walk back to the truck and get some lunch. The walk back took 30 minutes because we had gone so far from where we’d parked. We decided to grab a bunch along the road on the drive out, so we stopped and grabbed “Old Bolts” http://coord.info/GC20TB2 and it was really cool. But we were plain dead. We threw in the towel and headed out of the park to get some lunch. (12:08 pm)
Once we got some lunch in our bellies, we had a bit more energy. I mean really, who doesn’t feel GREAT after a double baconator and an Oreo Frosty from Wendy’s?!? So we hit the city for some urban caches. There were so many unique urban hides it would take another post just to write about each one. I think we easily got 8 or 10 more before finally getting home. I will mention RX Cammo, though. http://coord.info/GC1HFWD That one was awesome. RX Cammo was the very first geocache I ever tried to find back in July last year. It had me stumped as I’d never looked for one before and had no idea what I was looking for. Well after 120 finds under my belt, this little bugger stood no chance. I finally got to log the smiley 6 months later!
We had a total blast camping and caching last weekend. It was so much fun, we’ve already scheduled our next trip. This time Tim and I will be heading over in March to conquer the wilderness and see how many we can find. Donnie and Dad are definitely coming along, hopefully Adam can make it too. Check back then for an update on that trip. I’ll be taking a lot more pictures and will have more awesome stories for you all to read!
