This post covers the time we spent getting to camp and grabbing some late night caches before going to bed way too late.
Chilling at Camp & Late Night Caching
At camp we had some fun setting up the fire and eating the stew dad made. It was nice to rest our legs and just enjoy each other’s company for a couple hours. With the fire burning and marshmallows being toasted, I decided this was the opportune time to take out my GIANT MEAT EXPLETIVE! (a huge summer sausage). Adam couldn’t stop laughing at what I called it, and how big it was (That’s what she said!).
After Donnie cut down half the forest and got our fire and our neighbor’s fires roaring, we hit the trail again to find more caches. The next two were close by so we grabbed them pretty quickly. I think Adam found “Blue Runner” http://coord.info/GC20JN7 (11:42 pm) and Dad found “Mutton Snapper” http://coord.info/GC20JNC (11:50 pm)
We then headed towards an area where we thought we could find a bunch all together. Little did we realize how much walking was in store for us. The first one was a cool decon container filled with your normal swag items. (12:11 am)
Our next cache was “Oh, you are kidding me, right?” and it put us on quite an adventure. We hadn’t found any large sized caches yet so we were excited that this one was listed as “HUGE”. Donnie and Adam found it pretty quickly after they got close enough to see the container. It definitely lived up to its name too as the cache owner has placed 40 little film containers inside and you had to open each one and find the real log. All the others were marked “Not a Log”. With 4 of us it wasn’t too bad of a hunt, but literally the LAST canister we checked was the real log! (12:21 am)
The next find was quite a hike away. All of these were at a minimum of 500 feet apart and with just our legs and GPSs (and a very cloudy night sky) we were walking all over creation and back trying to get close to the caches. The area was really dense with palmetto bushes and burnt logs so it was pretty hard on our legs to keep going. But the caches must be found so we kept at it.
“At the end of my Rope” was neat because it actually survived a forest fire in the park. Intentional burning is a regular occurance at the park, but most caches get destroyed in the process if the cache owner doesn’t move them. This one was a large ammo can and although the can survived the fire, the contents inside were all melted and charred. It was really cool to see something that survived a fire. http://coord.info/GC20TCG (12:36 am)
The next three caches were all part of a theme of Radar caches with cool names and lots of information. About Radar. If you’re into that. But at this point our GPS’s were dropping in and out and we had to rely on Hillbilly’s compass and the power lines which we knew ran north and south. We knew the lat and long coordinates of the caches, so with the compass we got pretty close. But in the middle of the night with only flashlights and bad satellite reception, we walked around for a long time finding these three. http://coord.info/GC20TDT (12:51 am) http://coord.info/GC20TED (1:04 am) http://coord.info/GC20TER (1:15 am) But amazingly enough, we did find each one. I don’t know how we did it but we did.
At this point we were all pretty tuckered out, and we had easily walked several miles. We found the main road and headed back to the truck. Unable to resist the urge to find just one more, we deviated a bit and Donnie found “Eye-cache” http://coord.info/GC20CX9 This one stood out to me because of its interesting container (a big huge clay eyeball hanging from a tree) but also because there were literally hundreds of spiders on the ground nearby. You could see the reflection of our headlamps in their eyes. We really got lucky that nobody was bitten that night. Next time we’ll be more careful and tuck our pants into our socks or something equally dorky I’m sure. (1:35 am)
After we found this one, we were all pretty much wasted. My GPS battery was dead and our legs wouldn’t go anymore. We found the truck and drove back to camp only to find guests at our table eating all our stew. This BIG FAT RACCOON had PUSHED OVER one of our slow cookers and dumped half our stew onto the table. And to top that off, we were so excited getting to camp that we forgot to buy any breakfast food for the next morning. I think we were all pretty angry and worried, but too tired to show it. We cleaned it up as best we could and relaxed next to the fire for a little while before calling it a night. It was about 2:30 am when we finally turned in.
The next post will cover the caches we grabbed Saturday morning!
Click here to view Geocamping 2010 Part Three: Let There Be Light, And No Cloud Cover!
