7 FTF's!

A few days ago, dalls called to inform me that he has placed new caches off Deep Gap road in a Tennessee Wildlife Resource Area. I told him that I was pleased and especially pleased to hear most were regular size caches. I told him that I would look at my schedule and determine when I would go after the new caches.

I emailed pcsenn of the new caches and after looking at my schedule, I saw I could go after the caches on Friday, where I would work part of the day and take annual leave the rest of the day. Met with pcsenn that morning and he rode with me as I conducted a visit at a contract agency. After the visit, we headed towards the new caches. The caches had been published a few days and since there were no new logs, we figured we had the chance for the First to Find.

South Fork Haunted Hollow, a multi was our first. When we found the finally, we noticed that no one else had attempted the caches and we should have FTF on all the caches. Next was Raccoon Hideout. Took a bit to ind and retrieve the cache. Then we went after Deer Trail, a micro in the woods, but was an easy find. We ventured to the outskirts of the TWRA land and found Turkey Crossing. The best and my favorite was Bobcat Hangout. At this point I was very thankful I wore my Goretex waterproof boots. Even though I was not used to the extra weight of the boots and took a toll on my knee, I really didn't wet feet. I made the climb to the cache and found my boots are slick. So I crawled up the tree. Signed the log and headed back down.

Pcsenn told me at one point to jump, but remembering my ankle injury I suffered last year, I decided to take my time and come down the safer way. Pcsenn was happy to color in another difficult/terrain grid on this cache on his way to the Well Rounded Cacher. Our last find in the area was Possum Hollow. Cache was easy to find, but retrieving cache was very difficult. We headed to Over the Deer V.2 and wanted pcsenn to log that find. However, he was nervous about it and he decided not to attempt it.

On the way out of the woods, we met with Abiecto who was going after the FTF's. He reported that he drove up and saw a truck in the parking lot with a geocaching decal on the windshield and Operation Iraqi Freedom tags and knew it was me.

After caching south of Jackson, we ate a late lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings. This was his first visit to this establishment. I told pcsenn of a few events that were held at this location.

On the way back home, we grabbed the last cache, another FTF at White City-Friends Welcome-Strangers Too.

Concluded the day with seven First to Finds, the most I have ever accomplished.

Caching with GEO.JOE

Typically, I have something to do on New Year's Eve Day, but this year I had no plans to reign in the new year and thought it would be nice to make a cache run. GEO.JOE placed several new caches in the Shawnee National Forest and offered to head up a cache run. I posted on the RVG page on Facebook that I was interested. Being the meeting was at 10 am in Paducah, I knocked out It's on Track! Are You?. It's a really difficult hide and worked a while to find it. Two muggles noticed my struggle and after I took their pictures at the locomotive, they assisted in finding the cache. From there, I met the crew at the Pilot Truck Stop located off I-24. GEO.JOE offered me a ride, in which, I gladly accepted. We drove onto the forest and met scoutpaddle and Bubba95 who had camped at the parking area.

First cache was: Splatterstone Falls, probably my favorite of the day, very nice waterfall. Coordinates were way off and GEO.JOE adjusted the coordinates while we were there. We stopped to take a few pictures. Mine are posted on my Facebook profile.
We found more caches in the canyon, another one of my favorites was Heart Arch. By this time in the run, I began to get ahead of the group. I found the cache and in the time it took for the rest of the crew to arrive I ate my lunch. After Heart Arch, next stop was Above the Boulders, again, I had left the group and made a beeline towards the cache. Nearing the listed coordinates, I began to worry that the cache would be located on top of the ridge line and would be embarrassed to see the rest of the crew on top of the ridge and me below. I persisted and went to the listed coordinates and climbed onto the rocks. Thankfully, the cache was not on the ridge top. Coordinates were about 30 feet off but my geo-mojo found the cache. I waited another 20 minutes for the crew to arrive once again. This time, I had the cache signed and replaced.
I took the time to rest and drink lots of water while the others looked for the cache. We headed off for the next cache, Filmy Fern Cave. Getting to this cache was hazardous by climbing over and through rocks. After this find, we headed to the last cache, Go With the Flow. This time, the crew had thinned down and two of us signed the log. Regnad's son was with us, the others left the trail, one had twisted a knee.
Was one of the best adventures of geo-year 2011 and what a way to end the year with a hard hike with friends.

Crew consisted of:
GEO.JOE and his wife Fairy Flirt
Adventuretrekker
Regnad and his family
scoutpaddle and his son Bubba95

Ashland City Trail

In 2006, Pharmd93, brickbat66 and myself cleared the caches on that trail while on bikes while I was on a warpath to reach the 1K. I have wanted to return to the trail.

While attending the 1K event for Sunshinegirl42017 in Murray, KY, dhrnrcpa mentioned about hitting the long trail where over 50 caches were placed prior to tax season where his employment as an accountant will slow down his caching. After some weeks of preparation, a group gathered Paris and Clarksville and I hit the trail once again. I decided not to bring my bike along since there were cachers placed nearly 528 feet from each other and getting on and off the bike were become tiresome. There were too many caches to keep count and all of us ended up setting new daily find records. I managed to knock out 57 finds. My GSAK stats noted 58 finds, but after further research, I had double-logged a find and that has been corrected.

It was a great day of caching and on the way back home we stopped to eat in Clarksville where I purchased the meal for Chicontater and his son since we took his truck from Dresden.

All who made the hike were:

Chicontater & son

pcsenn

brickbat66

scoutpaddle

Orion_13 and his family

and the one who got the cache run going, dhrnrcpa

Record Breaking Year

Had a record breaking geo-year in 2011. A year that had me find caches in new states and a district: Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. for a total of 23 US souvenirs. The biggest highlight was completion of the Well Rounded Cacher and finding two Fizzy Challenge caches related to the WRC. Completion of the WRC placed me in elite company, where around 14 cachers in Tennessee have completed the 81 category grid.

Had 738 finds, out doing what I did in 2006, which was 640. Found 738 finds over 167 cache days, marking 13 consecutive months with double-digit cache days. With the high number of finds, I also increased my terrain rating from 1.64 to 1.71. Increased my regular (ammo can) find rate from 24% to 26%.

Hiked many miles of trails over the year to include over 50 finds on a trail outside of Ashland City, TN. Also visited a new area for me, the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois where some extreme hiking was conducted. Completed a few kayak adventures, one in Clarksville, TN and another in Mississippi.

Another recent completion was the Finds by Each Day of the Year. I set a goal to complete 95% of the grid by the end of 2011. Thankfully, caches were placed near my home area. I was able to complete the challenge despite some stressful days in May.

What will geo-year 2012 bring? What are some goals?

With completion of the WRC and other challenges, I want to keep the game interesting for me. Numbers are nice, but I feel numbers bring burn out, which I believe resulted with some friends giving up the game. Therefore, to keep the game interesting for me, I have the below.

I plan to revisit the Shawnee National Forest.

Make an attempt for the Mississippi Fizzy Challenge cache.

Hit the north end of the Land Between the Lakes.

Attend Geo-Woodstock X in Sellersburg, Indiana.

Uphold the above 25% find rate of regular (ammo can) size caches.

Attempt to make more kayak runs.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle

Making plans for the Ashland City trail run on 12/26/11, I knew that some of us would drive right by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cache located in Clarksville. I had noticed this before but didn't pay much attention to it since I figured it was like some other caches in reference to the movie "Teenage Mutan Ninja Turtles". Those that I have found were nothing more than an uninteresting magnetic keyholder at a storm drain. The last few months, I began to study this cache and pay particular attention to the 3 difficulty and 4 terrain star ratings. Later, pictures were posted and got a much better idea of the cache. Since the cache had over 20 favorites, I shouldn't be disappointed.

Being that a group would travel from West Tennessee, I couldn't pass up the opportunity for this cache. We arrived at the cache site and began to study the approach. About that time, scoutpaddle comes out of the tunnel and said he found the cache. Yet, after scoutpaddle came out of the tunnel, we were still standing around. I got tired of it, turned on my Surefire tactical light and led the way into the tunnel, followed by chicontater, pcsenn and dhrnrcpa. After getting into the tunnel I found scoutpaddle's footprints and followed them. Made a left turn and soon the footprints were gone! I saw some light and went for the light and could finally stand up. There were several of us in the small area where we could all stand and we were under a storm drain and GPS told us we were in the right location. After shinning the lights around the cache was spotted. We signed the log and made our way back to the entrance/exit of the tunnel. We got out of the tunnel with all smiles. Couple of minutes later, Orion_13 showed up and chicontater's son volunteered to go with Orion_13 into the tunnel where he signed his first 4-star terrain cache!

This was a lot of fun to begin a long day of cache. Prior to departing, I visited the nearby store for refreshments and the employees were inquiring what was going on outside. I told them about our game.

Mopping up Hwy 68/80

Due to my mistakes in bookmarking the caches along Highway 68/80 of the LBL, I didn't have two caches on my GPSr'. The reason I have gone to bookmarking instead of a general pocket query is that I am using a Nuvi for auto-routing and having so many caches on the Nuvi creates a huge amount of clutter.

Last Sunday, minnie mouse and myself wanted to take a bike ride on the LBL Greenway and part of the agreement is that I clear the caches I missed and then take the bike ride. Our first find was Indian Access, this cache was not published at the time of the November cache run, but for us, it was an easy find. Next up was Beach in City of Canton, this cache took a truck with high clearance to make it down to the parking area. After a long search we came up with the cache. A missed cache from the November run was This one's for the birds,... , minnie mouse had a good laugh as I made the tree climb to grab the container. After grabbing the cache I tossed it to minne mouse so she could sign the log. After climbing the tree, I was in no mood to climb down to sign and then climb back up. Minnie mouse signed the log and tossed the container back to me.

Last find in the LBL was LBL Greenway East - Maybe Wet, which is officially the first find while using the mountain bike that I purchased for myself while home on leave in 2010. We rode about 2 miles on the greenway before minnie mouse got tired. She had a good time riding the bike and we plan to return on a warm sunny day and ride the round trip of 5 miles.

Highway 68/80 run

Since my return from deployment a year ago, I had not ventured into the Kentucky side of the Land Between the Lakes. During this time, I watched the amount of caches along Highway 68/80 grow and grow and had been tempted to make a cache run of the area.

Being there were so many caches to go after, I posted on GOWT and RVG sites on Facebook that I would make a run of the area the Friday after Thanksgiving. The Friday after Thanksgiving has traditionally been a free day for me and have used the day to be geo-aggressive. My aggressiveness paid off with 29 finds. All my caching partners set new daily find records and cleared at least two Fizzy terrain/difficulty grids as well.

The highlight caches of the day were:

Turkey Bay ATV Series # 1 The Silo and Turkey Bay ATV Series # 2 Edsel proved to be the most physically challenge with steep hills to traverse. Both are 5-star terrain caches, requiring an ATV. Neither of us had ATV's and we did it the hard way by hiking. Thankfully, we found the caches before the ATV's were on the course.

Mt. Everest, another physically challenging cache, we parked .10 away and hiked straight up the hill.

!!! BE PREPARED !!!, a clever hide. I had found two caches like this in my geo-career and wanted to show chicontator of the work some cachers will put into a cache. The cache container was missing. We ended up taking the entire device apart and repaired the cache. Cache is located in secluded area of the LBL were many duck blinds could be seen.

One of the most unusual experiences was at Bogard Cemetery where dhrnrcpa found a pentagram on a headstone and we were all a little freaked out that someone buried here was a worshiper of Satan.

We also found caches on a brand new LBL greenway. I plan to return with my girls when the weather turns nice for a bike ride. Most memorable of those caches was: LBL Greenway East Duck Island/End of the road took a lot of effort but we found the cache.