Over the past three years, each Martin Luther King Holiday weekend in January there have been organized cachepeditions led by bitbrain and Tiger130 and called themselves the Frozen Dozen. The 2009 adventure was at Walls of Jericho in Alabama, 2010 was Virgin Falls in Tennessee and this past year the hike were near Stone Island State Park in Tennessee. I have been invited to these cachepedition but for one reason or another I have been unable to attend. Unlike the group effort, I went about this cachepedition finding three category grids, solo.
This past weekend I had a long trip while not intended to be in Arctic conditions, my caching was in the snow and ice. My first significant find was Stumpy's Path, which was near the end of a 1/3 mile long paved trail. Normally, this is just a walk in the park, but the snow and ice made this a little more difficult. I found the cache and went to the end of the trail to view the spectacular water fall. Later in the day, seeking more difficult terrain cache, I sought and found Ensor Shower. This was a major accomplishment since it was rated a four difficulty. Thankfully, with the frozen conditions, I found the cache with ease. Had it been a recent hard rain, this cache would nearly be impossible to retrieve. I kept on hiking and found No Ships or Loose Lips Here. I had been to this park in 2006 and didn't go after this cache even though I was just about 600 feet away. I recall when I found the nearby earthcache, it was pouring down rain.
The next day the roads were in better shape however, there was still plenty of snow and ice on the ground. I made my way to the one of three caches I wanted, Love/Hate Relationship Redo. While deployed to Kuwait in 2010, I spent much of my idle time looking for caches to complete the Well Rounded Cacher category grid. The original Love/Hate Relationship was missing and became archived. The redo cache was placed in November and made my plans to find it. Arrived at the parking location, took some pictures and found a nearby cache. While my walk was only about 400 feet, I was freezing. Being I had a little less than a mile hike with elevation changes, I put on another layer of clothes. The temps were below 20. Made my way to cache location taking my time and with small steps due to the icy conditions. After doing some crawling around, I spotted the hiding location and was elated to find this cache. Signed the log and took a long time getting back up to the parking location, a change in nearly 300 feet of elevation. I figured this would be the most difficult and exhausting cache of the day, I would be correct.
Later in the morning, I made my way to Basket Case. I studied the satellite photos of this area and the weekend prior I made a light recon of it from the nearby 4-lane. I got an idea of what I needed to grab this cache by calling the cache owner and took his advise word for word. I must have looked strange carrying so many objects from the parking lot and across the bridge. I spotted the cache right away. Completed setting up my gear and retrieved the cache without incident. Signed the log and then went after Down Below. This one turned out to be the most hazardous since I fell on the icy rocks and nearly smashed my GPS. Thankfully, I was uninjured and GPS only suffered a small scratch. I was going to give up on the cache but after looking from a distance, I spotted what I thought was a hiding place, regrouped and found the cache.
Left that location feeling tired and worn out and elected not go after anymore in this area, I went after the last find for category grid, Protector of the Great War. I had solved this mystery while in Kuwait, studied photos too to figure how I would retrieve the cache. A few days before I was set to return to the United States, the cache was archived. It seemed like a punch in the gut to see this one archived since the nearest 4.5 terrain/4.5 difficult was almost 200 miles from home. After conference with the cache owner, he explained why he archived it and told me I could still find the log the find. I parked nearby and quickly made the find.
The next two days, I paid for the adventure with a sore knee and strained calf muscle.
It was an awesome day, knocking out three caches of the 81 category grid and now my magic number is at five.
Caches on target are:
Flip Dizzy Loves Jelly Beans, a mystery that is about 95% solved, close enough to that I think I can find it.
Over the Deer V2 located in Jackson, TN.
Peace and Tranquility I, located in Clarksville, TN.
Hi Ho Silver, located near Franklin, TN.
Legal Only by Boat Nashville Secrets #1, located in Nashville, the only cache left for the category grid that requires a kayak.
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