2015-09-07: Labor Day Weekend Geocaching in Georgia

YAY! It's a long 3-day weekend for Labor Day. That calls for a Geocaching road trip! Hmmm... where to? One of our goals is to complete our Geocaching by county map. With Florida already completed, the next closest is Georgia. So a Georgia road trip is the order of the weekend. So we pack the bags, head up I-4 to I-95 north. When we arrive in Jacksonville, we exit onto US-23 up to US-301.

Our first stop is in Folkston, GA and Charlton County. We continued up US-301 north picking up caches within each new county. Reaching Statesboro, GA, we decided to call it a day. On day #1 of this weekend road trip, we picked up 9 caches.

Yesterday started out with a few VERY creative caches put out by one cacher down the same dirt road. Even though we already had the county, there are some you can't bypass. I won't explain them, but the next few photos are the caches. A couple of them took a little detective work figuring out how to get them open and finding the log sheet in order to sign it.

We stayed on US-301 all the way up towards the SC state line in order to get a cache at the Georgia Welcome Center. This is the OLDEST welcome center still in use in the country, opening in 1962!

After the Welcome Center, we did a u-turn back south to GA-25 west. Then following some rural back roads we found another creative cache using a gator head at McKinneys Pond and Mill Creek. On the property was also this old house about to fall into the creek.

A few more caches here and there picking up new counties, we made our way over to the town of Jackson. There along Lake Jackson and the Lloyd Shoals Dam was the "Cache Across America" for Georgia. It was a nice little hike through the woods. Even the GeoDog Max got in on the action here. From there we drove down to Macon and called it a day, having found 14 more caches and more counties.

This morning waking up in Macon, it was the last day for our weekend road trip. We had some more caches and more counties in the works before arriving at home back in Florida. We followed US-80 south down to GA-26 over to US-23 south. It was a great weekend. We found a total of 32 caches for the weekend and 20 new counties for Georgia. A lot of history, some hiking, and some unusual and creative caches. 

 

2015-08-29: Conquering the Urban Jungle Fear Factor with Friends

This weekend was another big adventure day with the Geocaching gang. Our challenge for today was to conquer the Urban Jungle/Fear Factor, a D5/T5 rated cache right in the heart of the city of Ocala.

Because it was a 2 hour drive from home, Candy and I decided to drive up yesterday and do some local Geocaching. Then stay the night so we wouldn't have to wake up so early. We picked up 28 caches yesterday with the Southern Fried power run series along with a couple of others mixed in.

Then this morning we met up with fellow cachers: clark boys, Daykinator, FL-Geo-Trekker, saylorboys+mom, TeamFelixG, and TeamReedica. The rendezvous point was in an office parking lot, the coordinates for Stage 1 of a 7 Stage adventure. The best way I can describe the Urban Jungle/Fear Factor cache is like walking down into a long neglected football stadium, overgrown with oak trees, palms, ferns, and other plant life. Mix in some rocks, holes, and a cave and place it behind a WalMart and you have the Urban Jungle.

Some background story from the cache owner was that this was once a quarry long ago. After the miners closed shop and left, the city eventually took it over and made it into a park with picnic tables, nature trails, etc. Then that went unfunded, neglected, and overgrown. Homeless people come and go. And at one point a troubled high school boy was kicked out of his home and he slept in the cave while going to school. All I know is that once you hike down into it, you completely forget you are behind a WalMart or anywhere near civilization!

OK, back to caching... I think the entire place was only 400' or so across, so finding 7 stages to a multi-puzzle cache it seemed as though we did a lot of criss-crossing back and forth. I don't believe the terrain was all that challenging, especially after the bushwhacking hike of a couple weeks ago. Although there was a tree climb involved at one stage and a rock slide climb at the final. The difficulty of the hunt was actually finding the caches as they were hidden very well.

The old steps from when this was a park

This stage near the cave and the final were probably the hardest to find!

After 20 minutes of looking for the final stage, our mission was accomplished. We overcame and conquered the Urban Jungle, and our Fear was NOT a Factor! It was another great adventure and just one more reason we like Geocaching! Because those hundreds or thousands of muggles (non-cachers) who may shop at the Wally World to the north, they never know this place even exists. Now, where to next?

(Thanks to TeamReedica for taking the photos.

I hope you don't mind me using them because I forgot to take some.)

2015-08-09: Hiking to BoonieMan Springs With Geocaching Friends

Today was an adventure unlike any we've had so far. Yes, we have gone on some long hikes. Yes, we've had some bushwhacking. But this was the first where the majority of the hike was some serious bushwhacking! 

We met up with Geocachers TeamFelixG, Daykinator, norma627, clark boys, saylorboys+mom, princessjewel, gutfiddle78, and Lori8996 at the Rock Spring Run State Preserve off of SR-46. The challenge was to bushwhack our way to find the elusive BoonieMan Springs Geocache. Hidden back in November of 2006, it has only been found by 33 brave cachers in the 9 year period.

Gathering in the parking area, the only familiar face for us was TeamFelixG. So introductions began and some chit chat, putting on our gear like athletes preparing for the big game, and mentally preparing ourselves for the challenge ahead. OK, so that may be a little over dramatic! We put on our backpacks, got our hiking sticks and off we went.

The first mile or so wasn't so bad. A clear wide vehicle access road headed into the woods. About 2/3 of the way down we cleared the way for a truck to pass. Wait... we encountered a locked gate. How they'd get through? Why couldn't we have driving down through this first segment? All part of the adventure I guess.

When we arrived at the turnoff point to start bushwhacking the so-called trail, we encountered the man in the truck. He was a researcher tagging and photographing the bear population. He gave us a lesson on the bears and showed us how one just used that tree the previous night to scratch their back.

OK, back to our quest! It was bushwhacking time! Thick palmettos, bushes, pine trees, and the sun beaming down from above. A few of us took turns with the hard part of leading the way, but the big guy "clark boys" did the majority of the hard work and we all appreciated that.

I think we found the remains of BoonieMan

While most of the way was on dry land, there was some water crossing. I mean we were looking for a spring.

OK, so not much of being a beautiful spring. Smelled like sulfur also. Probably why the area wasn't cleared and converted into a park for families to come and picnic. Which is good because then there wouldn't have been the adventure we had today.

But the springs were not the prize we were after. Our quest was for the old ammo can Geocache! The 10 of us began to spread out and start looking for the cache. After about 5 minutes it was spotted by a few of us while we let the others search a little longer. Eventually we announced those words we like hearing: FOUND IT! The cache owner made arrangements with us to replace the old can with a new one.

Celebrating with a bottle of bubbly, a group photo and a long break before bushwhacking it back to the cars.

On the way back we decided to take another route for a change of scenery. Along this route we also encountered some thick mud. With 10 of us passing through, you know there's got to be at least one that will sink knee deep in the mud and have to be pulled out! We took another break upon reaching the vehicle access road because it seemed to be 150 degrees outside and there was absolutely no shade the rest of the way!

Finally we reached the parking area! Yep, we started with 10. Now there's 9. Candy was the only smart one already in the car, a/c on full blast, boots off, legs throbbing, and not able to stand back up to pose for the "after" photo. It was a GREAT day. We enjoyed the new friends we made and look forward to the next adventure!