2015-04-25: Geocaching, GeoArt, a Butterfly, Celebrities, and Friends

OK so you're probably getting tired of me saying this, but WOW what a day! A big day today so we drove up last night to Gainesville, FL and stayed in a hotel so that we wouldn't have a long drive this morning. Today we were meeting up with YankaBucs, MsYB, CoalCracker7 and Parkhoppers to go Geocaching. The goal was to complete the Butterfly GeoArt and the Celebrity power run caches.

We got an early start and conquered the Butterfly caches first and it was OUR first GeoArt ever completed! GeoArt is what you get when all the cache coordinates arrange to form a picture like such:

This was a very creative TB hotel.

Some poor dog was bagged and tossed to the side of the road.

Looks like lightening split this tree in half.

After the Butterfly, we headed over to another power run series each named after different celebrities. Plus there were a few miscellaneous caches mixed in that were nearby. The total finds for the entire day were 155! That sets a new record for us for the most caches found in one day! Plus caching with friends always makes for a fun day. This is such a great game. If you're not a Geocacher, you really should look into it at Geocaching.com.

2015-04-04: Geocaching and Roaming Around Back Country Roads

Most of the time when we decide to go Geocaching, we don't really have anyplace in particular to get to. I just sorta pick a direction and we head that way. If I see a road we've never been down before or it looks interesting, we take it. I also have the live Geocaching map open so that if there's a cache nearby, we'll head towards it. We just roam around and see where we end up.

After spending a lot of time recently going north to Ocala, this morning I decided to go southwest. We drove west down I-4 to US-27 and turned south. Reaching Davenport, I saw a cache called "Horseshoe Creek One Lane Bridge." Well that sounded interesting so we went to check it out. We found the narrow bridge, the small creek, and of course the cache.

At the end of that road was the Lake Marion Creek Wildlife Management Area where another cache was located. After parking, it was a short 0.3 mile hike to the cache. A quick find and back to the car and down the road.

From there we drove over to Old Bartow Lake Wales Rd which runs through some ranches and cow pastures. There were quite a few caches down this stretch of road so we found all those and a few more nearby before heading home. A nice drive, a short hike, 20 caches later and another great day.

2015-03-29: Geocaching and Hiking With Friends in the Ocala National Forest

In store for us today was another hike along a section of the Florida Trail in the Ocala National Forest. We met up with YankaBucs, MsYB, and TeamFelixG along 52nd Place Rd and left a vehicle there. Then drove down to the south end of the trail along 145th Avenue to begin our hike.

We could definitely tell that this was a less often used section of the trail as the ground cover was growing up and some sections were very narrow making the trail almost non-existent. Near the beginning the ground was pretty muddy as well but soon dried up. I think we also picked up more ticks than the other hikes.

Overall it was a good day for hiking as the temperatures stayed fairly cool. We found a total of 26 caches along the trail. Another great adventure in the ONF with friends.

2015-03-28: An Event and Geocaching Around Lake County

Today was a Geocaching event day hosted by QQnonrev up at the new Lake Hiawatha Preserve in Clermont, FL. It started at 7:30 in the morning, so we were a little late in arriving and missed out on the group photo below. The cachers who attended were: of course the hosts QQnonrev, YankaBucs & MsYB, CoalCracker7, TeamFelixG, RD69, MrsL10, TT23, RAHNNERGOTHUC, kricklick, victorthevmandawson1, TheLF, stephers88, framptoncomesalive, TomToad, DirtyD13, moparots, Turfgator, Pen4, and GeoCharmer81. Had a good time there chatting with some old friends and meeting a couple new ones. And found a few caches in the park also.

After we left there, we ended up heading south picking up random Geocaches. Our total finds for the day was 22. Tomorrow we head back up to the ONF for another hike with a few friends we saw this morning.

2015-03-08: More Geocaching and Hiking in the Ocala National Forest

After the change of plans yesterday, today we got an early start and headed back up to the Ocala National Forest to finally finish up the TAFF series power run Geocaches. Twenty park and grab caches later and the series completed, it was time to stretch our legs and go for a hike.

So we drove up SR-19 a few miles, turning west onto Forest Road 595 and headed over to Farles Prairie Recreation Area. Setting out from the trail head to the east side of the lake, the was a series of caches that went all the way up to Forest Road 599. However it looks as though there was a very recent controlled burn in the area. Of the 24 caches along this trail, we found 13 caches in tact, 5 caches partially melted, and the remaining 6 were completely burnt up with very little remains if any all.

We also found several tree stumps and areas still smoldering and even some flames. Getting to the end we turned around and backtracked to the car. It was about 6-7 miles of hiking round trip.

Of course we also ended the day at Beef O'Brady's in Umatilla.