2015-05-17: Geocaching, GeoArt, Power Run and Baseball

OK let me just make this announcement: I do NOT like baseball, I don't know much about baseball, even more so I don't know anything about the New York Yankees! Why do I start with these statements you ask? Because in order for us to find today's bunch of Geocaches, I had to spend a couple of hours researching New York Yankees trivia! 

Today we were heading south to go Geocaching along US-441 between Holopaw and YeeHaw Junction. Along 30 mile that stretch of road you'll find hundreds of caches. At the north end nearest Holopaw, is a group of puzzle caches that form the New York Yankees logo into a GeoArt design. To solve the puzzles and get the correct coordinates for the caches you have to answer trivia questions for the Yankees. 40 questions in all and 40 questions to Google and look up! Ugh!

Anyway, we drove down to start finding the caches and encountered a rain shower. We had to drive several miles through the rain to get past it. So we skipped the first 15 or so caches and started near the middle. We worked our way south getting the remaining puzzle caches.

After those we encountered those caches which we had already found the last time we were down this way. So we drove past all those until we got to my previous DNF called "Treediculous." Remember that one? I spent about 20-30 minutes up in the tree only to come away without a find? Anyway this time I was determined to find it! I climbed up again and after about 15 minutes, I found it! YAY!! That made the day!

After the tree climb, we continued south and picked up where we previously left off. About an hour later, we turned back around towards home stopping to find those few we passed earlier because of the rain. We completed our second GeoArt. 

2015-05-16: Ghost Town Cemetery and Geocaching with Friends

Today we were meeting some friends to go Geocaching on the west side of I-4 in Sanford, FL. They were driving down from North Florida and wasn't going to get there until late morning. So with Candy and I having time to spare, we decided to get some of the other area caches before hand.

Did you know there was a ghost town right there off of Hwy 46? Probably thousands of people drive by on that busy highway every day and not know about it. Well thanks to Geocaching, it told us there was once a small town there called Ethel established back in the 1800's. We parked down the road to the Rock Spring Run State Preserve and made the 1.5 mile round trip hike to visit the Ethel Cemetery.

After returning to our car, we made our way over to meet up with HorseshoeChamp, Geoturtlelover, and Parkhoppers to find the "Lucky 7" series of puzzle caches nearby. It was a pretty fun time and we ended finding a total of 39 caches for the day before heading home.

2015-05-03: Geocaching in Sumter County Florida

For today's adventure, we decided to drive west over to Sumter County, Florida. After driving up the Florida Turnpike and exiting onto State Road 50, our first stop was the Cracker Barrel in Clermont for a big breakfast! Then we continued west into Sumter County.

We then turned north onto US-301 and started Geocaching along the way. A few miles up the road was an undeveloped community that came to a halt during the real estate bust. There were 7 caches hidden among the pot holed roads and overgrown lots.

After that we continued west on Hwy 50 a few miles over to Withlacoochee Trail State Park. Instead of taking the paved trail, we took the Ridge Manor Trail Head into the woods. We hiked about a mile and found three caches, but wasn't much in a hiking mood. So we decided to return here another day and continued our drive.

We made our way over to CR-673 and completed the SKP power run of caches. We found 37 caches in total, saw a lot of ranches and pastures, and just enjoyed the day.

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.