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.

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.

JAG Meet and Greet

As summer of 2015 Groundspeak push for souvenir continues, minnie mouse and I attended the JAG Meet and Greet Plus Road Trip Event.  We had a pleasent time, did meet new cachers to the area and continued relations with cachers I've known for a few years.

The geocaching face of Jackson has changed greatly from the time I began caching in 2005.  I call the current geo-crew the 3rd geo-generation of Jackson.  Much of the 1st generation and good part of 2nd, rarely cache anymore and some of the 2nd are much into the Munzee game.

We grabbed a couple of caches prior to the event, one was Redneck Caching; I wanted it due to the high terrain rating.  I picked a good time to go after this cache since it's located in an industrial area and no one was around to bother us.

Enchanted TB Village

Father's Day weekend, my wife wanted to take her dad to Lambert's in Sikeston, MO.  Before the trip I looked around for interesting caches and found Enchanted TB Village with over 55 favorite points.

The trip to Sikeston took much longer than anticipated along with the nearly 2 hour wait for a table.  While eating, I kept my eye through a window of the sky and was concerned darkness would approach before we could complete our meal.  We did finish with about 30 minutes to spare.  Being that we have a cache in our yard I understand why the cache owners don't want visitors after dark.  We arrived and were thrilled with the work on this cache and I also gave it a favorite points.

In Loving Memory of....

With some free time this past Saturday morning, minnie mouse and I went just north of Fulton, KY to complete a difficult multi called In Loving Memory of....  With the difficulty and chance of rain in the area, it would be the only find for us on that day.

Cache is back to some of the basics of land navigation, the cache owner is from a military background.  In Army land navigation, no one really goes at it alone, using a second person or more to pace the distance and help line up the azimuth.  With modern GPS, one person can do this alone.

First stages were most part straight forward with completion of math problems.  My smartphone has a good calculator and made easy work of the first stages.  Last stage was a bit of a challenge, I had to Google a "Smoot" and saw it is 5 feet and 7 inches.  I multiplied the inches of the amount of "smoots" and determined the total inches and then divided it by 12 to obtain the number of feet.  At the next to last location, I had to waypoint project, something I have not learned on my Garmin 62s, but I used the Sigh n' Go feature, to get very close to the degrees to at least get me in the ballpark.  We came up to two trees and each of us searched the trees and found the cache.  Being the number of smoots was 202 feet, I told minnie mouse that if we could not get the accurate bearing, we would go out 202 feet from the 3rd stage and make a circle searching obvious locations.  I also told her that if we had flopped at the first three stages, we would have circled the outskirts of the cemetery finding the hint for the final stage "Steele" and search from there.  Nevertheless, we did find the cache in the way the cache owner wanted.  It was a fun cache and hope to see more like it.  

Cache owner is new to the game and he will learn that the more difficult or more stages, the less number of people will come to find it.  I will admit that a cache like that, if not within 50 miles of home, or on a regularly travelled route, I tend to ignore.

Passing of a friend

Yesterday afternoon I learned of the passing of JoGPS.  As Tiger130 illustrated her Facebook page, JoGPS was the Godfather of Geocaching.  While I may have passed JoGPS in the number of finds, I will never catch up to what he has done for this game both directly and indirectly.  Since yesterday afternoon, I have seen countless newsfeeds on Facebook both individual pages and group pages of what JoGPS was for the game and the impact on their lives.

I have heard that there will not be a public funeral but a geocaching event possibly the weekend of June 13th.

Coloring in more counties

As I go on trips, I attempt to color in counties where I go and most recent trips I have extended my county range to just east of Little Rock, Arkansas and into Mississippi.  For the most part, I have colored every county with 2 and 1/2 hours from home.

Another Gulf Coast trip

My family wanting another trip to the beaches of the Gulf Coast.  Last October, we visited Panama City Beach, FL.  This go around, we went to Orange Beach, AL.  Overall, I was not very impressed with Orange Beach, but due to funds, we were not able to obtain a hotel or condo on or very hear the water and instead, we found a condo a little less than a mile from a public beach.  While the house was very nice and quiet neighborhood, traffic was heavy at the nearby Wal-Mart and the public beach was not much to write home about.

We drove overnight and didn't stop at any caches along with way.  I am not very fond of night caching and beside my entourage was two vehicles and I was the only competative cacher onboard.  After entering Alabama on Highway 45, we stayed in a downpour all the way to the Orange Beach area.

I was mostly excluded from the planning process of this trip and therefore my cache plotting centered around where we would be staying and route to and from.  I picked Highway 45 over I-65 for a couple of reasons.  I knew that I-65 would be full of trucks which causes anxiety among the passangers in my vehicle.  I was also somewhat aware of Highway 45 since I've taken that route a couple of times going back and forth from Camp Shelby, MS on Army National Guard convoys.  Thankfully, the route was good with very limited construction and very few large trucks.

While in the area we did visit the beaches and finding that Gulf Shores is a better location than Orange Beach, the public beach was one of the best I've seen.

On the return trip we visited the USS Alabama Memorial Park in Mobile, AL and Elvis Presley's birthplace in Tupalo, MS.

Some of the notable caches we completed:

Oldest cache in Mississippi:  Bonita Lakes .  I know have my signature on the oldest caches in Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi.

A virtual at the US Navy Aviation museum.

Virtual at Fort Barrancas

Cache near the USS Alabama

A cache that leads up to the birthplace and childhood home of Elvis Presley.

Coloring in St. Francis and Cross counties in Arkansas

My daughter needed a ride to the airport in Memphis and would need to be at the airport about 6 in the morning.  This would leave me the rest of the day for caching.  Past few years, I have focused on caching different counties.  That day, I would go after St. Francis and Cross counties in Arkansas.  I didn't want to take all day and arrive home late in the evening, I selected a few caches to go after; selecting more than just one per county, in the event, I had a DNF.  There were a couple of interesting caches, one being on a community college campus:  Between Classes.  Nice place for a cache and thankful the coordinates were very close and a regular size.  It helped I made my visit between semesters with less crowd around.

Another nice find was Parkin Park Cache at an Arkansas State Park.  Very nice place and enjoyed the conversation with the park staff.

GoGo79, JWarren375, and MiniGoGo Hit the Big 1K!!!

This past Saturday, we attended the event for GoGo79, JWarren375 and MiniGoGo for their 1K party.  It was very nice to attend an event for a family of cachers who cache together and are selective of what they hunt.  They are no strangers to events, including a host of Mega events in different states.

The team set up their own event and I was delighted to see KY Chase take up the leadership role to make the announcments and present the awards.

Turkey Season: Bagged First Tom

After I retired from the Tennessee Army National Guard with a VA disabilty, I had obtained the Tennessee Sportsman Lifetime License and that license opened the door for many other opportunties. Last year, I began wild turkey hunting.  I didn't have any luck last year and would give it another try this year.  I spent the last several months scounting my hunting location and observing the movements and behaviors of the elusive bird.  The closest encounter last year was two Toms were heading towards me and where shot by other hunters on their side of the property line.

Went out on opening morning again this year, and unlike last year, the weather was more to my favor.  I heard at least 4 Toms, but didn't see anything, I did hear some distant shots.  I figure the birds were confused by at last 4 hunters that were within 500 yards of me calling the birds.

I returned to the field yesterday afternoon to give it another try.  Weather was clouding up but no rain.  I figured the low pressure coming through would get the birds moving about the fields.  I set up my decoys and began calling and immediatly heard a Tom gobbling an answer to me.  To my surprise, I had the area all to myself, no other hunters with a 1/2 mile of myself.  I called and he would answer.  Finally, he quit answering.  I placed my shotgun in the direction of his last gobble.  Then I saw a bird come out of the woods.  I looked hard and figured it was another hen.  But this bird walked different......like a strut.  I had seen hens during the juvenile hunt and the day prior hunt and the hens ignored my decoys and my calls.  This one came up to me.  I re-positioned my shotgun and observed more closely.  Then as he turned, I saw this beard, I fired, he went down, then began to fly away, I fired again and he went down.

Came out with a 14-pound young Tom and he will made a fine dinner this week.

MOGA 2015

We attended our first MOGA event this past weekend.  We have been veterans of two prior Geo-Woodstock, we found out the differences between a MOGA and Geo-Woodstock.  When we arrived at the Pharaoh's Event on Friday night, being that we were running a little late, I assumed I would drive up to a full parking lot.  While the lot had many cars, we did find parking close by.  There were much fewer vendors as compared to other mega events.

I made my reservations in November and nearly hotel locations within our price range were in Perryville, MO, 21 miles from the MOGA site.  I was concerned as we drove up after 9 am, we would be parking a long distance away, but the event had a sparce crowd.  We stayed around for a bit and later went to on a cache run working on a Poker Challenge, were we found all 7 caches that were in two different parks.

I learned the differences between a MOGA and Geo-Woodstock, one is based on competitions, the other for social.  Also learned more about the Lab caches.  Lab cachers are nothing more than a temporary virtual cache and instead of emailing the cache owner, one only has to enter the answer on the lab cache website.

Overall, it was a good experience and nice to be able to attend a Mega size event only about 2 hours from home.

Pi Day Events

March 14, 2015 was Pi Day, a day for the Mathmetical term.  While Math is not my favorite subject, attending events, are my favorite subjects.

Both events were in McKenzie, the flash mob was the shortest, but I stayed around for a while to chat with cachers who stayed around.  Having cleared McKenzie, there was not much for me to do.  Also attended the lunch event.  Again, more excellent conversation and was amazed by the number of cachers from different areas who attended.  The cache owner whom had not created a previous event, but with experience from many attended events did an outstanding job and very creative with the log being a pie plate.

Long trip to Waco

Having been retired from the Tennessee Army National Guard for over 2 years; I have still maintained some contact with my old unit, 1171st Transportation Company in Dresden, TN.  Late one week, someone posted that they needed a ride that would require overnight, travel would be on Sunday March 1 and return Monday March 2.  I have plenty of annual leave and posted a repy that I could assist.  I would later learn the trip was to take me to Waco, TX.  After learning the destination, I began plotting geocachers to seek.

The trip to Waco, I would have company and since we didn't leave his home in Humboldt, TN until after 12 noon, I was aware that caching along the way would be limited.

I set up a priority of caches to seek and was not going to concern myself with numbers.  Caches on the Jasmer list were my highest priority and I did fill in three months to include the oldest cache in State of Texas, which is Tombstone.  Another on my priority list was The Grassy Knoll in Dallas, where President Kennedy was shot.  I found that one to be the most interesting and thankful it was a virtual since there were so many people around.  There were several panhandlers provided details of the shooting, one in particular showed me around for details.  I gladly paid him a $10 tip for his assistance.

Began my return trip to Dresden from Dallas at about 11 pm.  All together the day would be about 14 hours on the road and 750 miles.    The second priority was to grab a few caches east of Little Rock, Arkansas to color in about 3 counties along I-40.  Detouring away from construction, I ended up on Hwy 70, grabbing 3 of that series to color in 3 counties.

RVG is 10 years old

I begun caching nearly 10 years ago and about that time I started, GOWT (Geocachers of West Tennessee) and RVG (River Valley Geocachers) had started a few weeks before in late 2004.  We attended the RVG event in Mayfield and was delighted to see some new cachers.  Many of us veteran cachers are not fond of the current development and use of smartphone applications for geocaching, even though most of us have the apps on our phones.  We have discovered that since the often free app has lead to fly-by-night cachers, who rarely take the time to research the game; much less put any money into equipment.

We had a good time and the new cachers had many questions and there were plenty of veteran cachers to answer the questions.

Prepping for MOGA

We wanted to attend Geo-Woodstock in Maryland but, realized attending the event that far from home would be difficult.  Also, if I traveled to that area, I would want to cache states of Delaware and New Jersey and that would add to the possible misery.  This cacher did cache Washingon D.C and northern Virginia and traffic is horrible in that region of the United States.

The event was a planning event and mostly for volunteers who would be working the MOGA.  Having little desire to work an event; I did want to attend the later part of the event to learn more about MOGA and it's differences from a Geo-Woostock.  We arrived and put to work, it did appear much was accomplished.  Having hosted some events, I know the work to prepare for an event and could only imagine the difficulties and challenges for a Mega type event.

Prior to the event, we traveled to Bollinger County, Missouri and visited a Natural History Museum.  While driving into the county, the region resembled the Ozarks that we visited in 2011 in Arkansas and we learned we were on the outer edges of the Ozarks.

We also visited a grist mill and walked across a covered bridge.

WALKING DEAD

I will be winding down some of my geocaching for the 2015 year.  Last year I didn't even have 300 finds and if not for the MLK weekend cache run and some of the power trails, I would have been lucky to have 100 finds.

There are few interesting caches near my home location and my occupation at this time is not placing me on the road.  With that, I do want to give back to the game.  I've been archiving many caches and observed that city of Sharon was without any caches.  I returned to the park where I had my cache "Centerfield" and looked around for the ammo can and to no surprise it was gone.  I did see a very used geo-trail which may have lead to the cache's disappearence.

Anyways, I developed a puzzle cache of my favorite TV "The Walking Dead" which runs on the AMC channel.  My cache is:  WALKING DEAD.

As with many puzzles I don't expect to get many finds.  But, I do look forward to the logs from TWD fans.