Fall Creek Falls State Park

Working in the Juvenile Justice field of DCS, I have the opportunity to attend a few Juvenile Justice Retreats. Two of those retreats were held at Fall Creek Falls State Park located in East Tennessee and regard this park to be one of my favorites. On my two trips I did manage to conduct some geocaching after seminars. My first trip I was unable to find a 4-star terrain cache due to the poor reception of my Garmin Legend. I did manage to find the virtual Smoke Signals. The memory I have of that visit was dealing with a score of dogs at the bottom of the fire tower and climbing to the top of the tower with the wind whipping around.

My second trip to the park, again I attended seminars and the classes lasted much longer in the day and prevented me from venturing far from the park. During lunch, I transported two other DCS workers to the Fall Creek Falls Earthcache and viewed the waterfall. I obtained information for the earthcache and took a photo.

There was one cache about a quarter mile from the inn called Yogi Bear & Boo Boo's Stash Cache along a walking trail around the lake. While the GPS noted the cache was well under a 1/2 mile, the walk was much longer and due to long classes, I hunted this cache at night. I found the cache with aid of a flashlight and returned after reseting the odometer on the GPS. I returned with a Red Jeep Travel Bug that I showed to some DCS workers interested in the GPS game. One worker was particularly interested and wanted to go find the cache. Since I check the distance the night before, I told the worker that the walk would be .75 of a mile. I had known this worker since the days I transported students to the Memphis Group Home and used to be in the Marine Corps and US Army as an Armored Cavalry Scout. We left the starting pointed and walked around the lake. There was no moon and not much light at all. We chatted much of the way and when I realized we were getting close to the place we would leave the paved trail, he abruptly stopped and said "we are here". I asked what his GPS told him, he replied he was unable to see the GPS due to the night conditions and but knew that we walked exactly .75 of a mile. I checked my GPS and he was correct. We found the cache and headed back to the inn. Being that he was a Scout in the Armored Cavalry, he knew how to tell distance without the aid of electronics and counting steps. I did find that amazing.