Friday, February 19, 2016

2015-12-12: Road Trip 870 Miles, 6 Geocaches, 5 States, 1 Day!

What a long day! I had some business to take care of back in Florida. I had two goals for the 870 mile drive back: do it one day and find at least one Geocache in each of the 5 states within the one day. My previous record was only Geocaching 3 states in one day. For those of you in the north east, that's not a big deal. But the states are bigger in the rest of the country and take longer to drive across.

So I left Jasper, Texas around 5 AM this morning heading east on US-190. Somewhere between Newton and the Louisiana state line was an old rest area with my first cache stop. Supposed to be an easy park and grab cache, but it is still dark out which makes it harder sometimes. But the flashlight found it quickly and I was on my way again!

Crossing the state line, I turned onto Hwy 110 in Merryville over to Longville. There I turned south onto US-171 down into Lake Charles. Right before getting onto I-10 eastbound, there's a WalMart where I stopped for a quick parking lot cache, bathroom break, and a bag of mini-donuts to eat along the way.

Now was the long, boring I-10 drive! To pass the time on these long drives, I like listening to audiobooks. Today I started listening to Patriot Games by Tom Clancy.

One more Geocaching stop in Louisiana to grab a new county in West Baton Rouge. The first one I looked for was at visitor center and supposed to be a quick find. However with their Christmas decorations up for display, they removed the cache until January. They said so in their full description, but they didn't disable the cache itself. Well guess who didn't read the full description! I did log a note on their cache page telling my disappointment and that they needed to disable the cache so that we don't waste our time getting off the interstate to go look for it. Which they did later in the day.

So after wasting 15-20 minutes there, I looked up another cache a mile down the road and went to find it. I stopped and 5 minutes later, I'm trying to figure out how to get back on the highway.

Halfway across Mississippi, I exited I-10 for another quick WalMart parking lot cache and state #3.

Crossing over into Alabama, I get off at exit #4 to grab a quick cache for state #4 in a T/A Travel Center parking lot.

Once into Florida, I stopped again at the rest area near Crestview for a cache in state #5! YAY! Mission accomplished! Well one goal down anyway. I still had about 300 miles or so to go. From there it was non-stop all the way down to my mothers house in Umatilla, Florida. Umatilla is a small town about an hour north of Orlando.

Now I can stretch out, relax, and get some sleep!

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