August Caching

During the month of August, Groundspeak attempts to push caching in different ways.  Seeing the trend over recent years in regard to numbers, with so many highway power trails which are nothing more than a self-maintained keyholder or film canister on a guard rail; Groundspeak attempted to set up a contest for cachers to find different types of caches.

I took up the challenge and new the difficulties.  Being that I have actively cached my region for over 9 years, where would not be much in the likes of the virtual cache for me.  Regardless, I took up the challenge.

As with any challenge, I go after it headfirst.  With my employment, I have many days of annual leave to use and took off on August 1.  I headed to Murray, KY en route to the LBL and grabbed a puzzle cache.  I was easy to solve and my timing was perfect, early morning before the business was open.  Headed to the LBL to go after the different caches.  One type I needed was the Multi-Stage.  I had two on my target list and both resulted in DNF's  they were:  Hematite Doom and Buckner Cemetery.   I would re-group later in the month to find a Multi.  One of the disadvantages of solo caching is the high rate of DNF's.  

Moving on, I found two earthcaches:  Hematite Lake and Center Furnace Quarry, I found information of the cache pages interesting and learned more about the area.  I went onto a nearby area of the LBL where there was a concentration of caches, including Whereigo's.  My experience with those types of caches are very limited and I don't care to use my smartphone for caching, so they were ignored for this trip.  I found a few traditionals, one was an interesting spot that was once a major tourist area of the LBL:  Silo Overlook, I spent time looking at this area and didn't know of this location and its popularity in the 1980's.  

I ended the day with the kayak going after, LBL Fossil Beach.  Despite being hot, it was a nice kayak float on a still lake.  I did have issues with my old flipflops that tore apart on my trip.  

The following day, I made an excuse to visit Clarksville, TN for before school shopping and we stopped at The Old Customs House.  This was a nice museum to visit and encourage others to visit.  I clearned all virtuals to over 100 miles from home. 

The Multi-Stage type cache would be  most difficult but I had an easy find on  roadside with: Its all in the NUMBERS.

Pcsenn contacted me and he needed a whereigo for the August caching and went traveled to Waverly and found, Geocaching Trivia.  This was my first whereigo that I completed using my own device, a smartphone.  To our horror, we arrived at final coordinates to find the cache MIA.  I sent a message to the cache owner using the smartphone and he emailed back his phone number.  We called and obtained permission to repair this hide.

I would complete the August Challenge at a cache event in Jackson, TN