Monday, April 18, 2016

Cub Lake

As I close in on my 5,000th find, which I plan to obtain on the return trip from Utah in May of this year, I needed to grab a few caches to be closer to my goal.  Being off on Good Friday and with good weather, I made the drive to Cub Lake of the Natchez Trace State Park in Tennessee.  A new cacher in the area put over 16 on a 4 mile trail.  I did ask if anyone wanted to tag along, posting my plan on three Facebook groups.  There was some interest but in the end, I ended up doing solo.

The hike was tough in some area, fairly easy in others.  Using a Fitbit I did log many flights of stairs (59) and many steps (15,000) with the workout.  I am thankful that I completed this hike in spring weather and not in the heat of July.  I did have one DNF on the trail.  I used my Geo-Mojo to grab the final cache.

At this time, I don't have any plans to return to find the DNF cache.

Monday, January 25, 2016

Trip to Utah

Cacherstalker94 is a student at the University of Tennessee at Martin and this spring semester is in the National Student Exchange program and attending school at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

She took her car and I traveled with her in the 1,800 mile journey.  We cached new states of:  Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.  We selected easy and interesting caches during the trip. The highlight was grabbing Mingo in Kansas.

Despite being January, the weather too our favor for the most part.  We did deal with snow in Utah.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Revisiting Tunica, MS

Last spring, my wife attended a charity auction and won two nights at the Goldstrike Casino.  We traveled to the casino in Mississippi.  While there, we did some limited caching, I selected interesting caches and did work on caching a county in Mississippi and Arkansas.

On the return trip, we went through Helena, Arkansas and I drove through the town of Marianna, Arkansas.  As a child, I stayed two summers in the early 1970's and hadn't been back to the town since then.  As we drove through and headed to a skirt lifter cache, I saw the church that I attended during those two summers.  On the way out of town, I saw the neighborhood of where my relatives lived and we made a drive through it.  It was nice to reflect on those days of long ago.

Kayak event

I saw this kayak event appear and decided to attend this event.  I think I was the only cacher from West Tennessee to attend and this was my first opportunity this year to get the kayak out on the water.  I am limited in Weakley County of where to kayak and not need others to assist to go kayaking other than Garrett Lake and technically, it's a fishing only lake.

I met many cachers that I didn't know and enjoyed the float.  I generally stayed around ones who have floated the Duck river and used their experiences.

This was my type of power trail, however my awareness of my age and abilities come forth and don't know if I can continue to do this type of caching.

Clarksville Meet & Greet

Clarksville being located next to Ft. Campbell, KY has a unique geocaching community many with a military background or currently serving.  Due to movement of military families, the geocachers come and go.  Recently, a new group arrived with the ambition to hosting an event each month.  I really like the idea and hope the events go well.  However, Clarksville is just outside of my range to go every month.  We did attend an event  at a city park.

We geocaching along the way and return, mostly concentrating on the Purple Heart trail.  We did have a police encounter while on the power trail.

A Cool Event

Last spring, the geocaching commuity lost an icon of the game, JoGPS.  The Nashville geocaching community set up an event to honor who many consider the godfather of geocaching.

The event had a large gathering and we didn't cache much on the way or return.  While the event was cool, the summer heat was not and this may have been the hottest summer day.

It was nice to be apart of the event and very much enjoyed conversation with several cachers.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Cameron Brown Park

My geocaching career has taken myself to many parks in the Tennessee.  In Madison County, I have been to every park and some parks about a half-dozen times.  As for Memphis, I've been to many parks but not all and Cameron Brown was a park that I've never set foot.  Typically, my trips to Memphis are on my job and cache hunts can't take a lot of time and I am not dressed for hiking.  There have been events at the park in the past, but I've been unable to attend.  I would attednd this one:  Geocaching 101/FUNdamentals Class and more .

It was an enjoyable event and haven't been to many events where the host supplied all the food and participates were only asked to bring their own drinks.  Wrath557 was the host and he covered every aspect of the geocaching game.  One of the reasons I wanted to attend the event is that he came up to an event I held in Martin and I wanted to show the same respect.

Days prior to the event, I posted my intention of attending the event and my plan to cache out the park while in the area.  While not as typical as with events from years ago, back then many cachers would go on cache runs prior to an event.  I wasn't in the mood to go after park and grabs and settled to go after all the caches in the park.  I knew the difficulties of caching in the 90+ degree heat and since the park is near the Wolf River, I wouldn't have to worry about hills, but there would be ditches and briars.  The Facebook post invited anyone to attend the hike and I provided my number.  While there was some interest, dhrnrcpa would be the only one to commit to the hike.  We arrived just after 3 pm and went after the caches in clockwise motion to end the run on a puzzle and most difficult cache.  What we thought would be least difficult cache Other Side of the Fence would be the most difficult and resulted in a DNF.  After the event, we were guided by MorWoods and made the find before heading home.

Our favorite was  The Key is the Key.  We went to the posted coordinates and found nothing.  We expanded our seach and still nothing.  We had given up and heading towards the event where dhrnrcpa easily found the cache.  It took much effort to open the lock and some phone calls, but persistance paid off and I gave it a favorite point.

It took us just a little over 2 hours to cache out the park.  I guess our hike was about 2 miles and we did negotiate around some ditches that I predicted would be there.  We also took some breaks to cool off including a break under a highway to get into the shade.