Caching in Jonesboro

I haven't been taking a lot of road trips lately and it had been awhile since my last cache run west of West Memphis so when Prontopup suggested we make a run to Jonesboro, I was excited! Over the next week we made some plans and decided to go on a Tuesday. There was a forecast of snow, but we expected we would be in and out before it hit...

On Wednesday, January 31st, Prontopup met me at my building around 7:45am and off we went! I served as navigator that day, a role I enjoy - especially since buying a GPSr with mapping software!

I had intended to experiment with podcasting - I brought along a small tape recorder - but it was so cold, I decided it wasn't worth the hassle.

First stop: Trumann

We stopped off briefly in Trumann where I didn't expect to have much success based on reading cache logs. We found the first cache we looked for and gave another cache a good search, but decided in the end to head on into Jonesboro.

Next stop: Jonesboro

We spent the morning caching in town, our only DNFs being in downtown itself. We did encounter more than a few logs that had been soaked and were now frozen. My gel pen was able to write on most of them.

We stopped at KFC for lunch and while Pup was washing his hands, I decided to put fresh batteries in my GPSr. A couple of guys at the next table asked me if it was a ..telephone... When I explained what it was and that I used it to help me with directions, one guy laughed and told me I was in Jonesboro!

After lunch we picked up a few more caches and headed into Craighead Forest State Park. By this time it was starting to snow pretty good so we were careful to park in a way that made it easy to get out.

We considered ourselves pretty clever for caching in town before the snow hit, but when we discovered many of the caches in the park were micros, we were a bit concerned that the snow would make it tough to find them. We weren't terribly concerned about getting lost since the caches in this park are around a lake with nice trails and paved roads. The worst part for me was that I kept taking off my gloves to work the GPSr and sign logs and eventually my hands became numb from the cold. Although we made it around the loop, we DNFed probably half the caches in the park.

When we got back to the car, we shook off the snow, brushed snow off of the car windows and tried to leave the park. The park exit was not terribly far from the highway but there was an accident and some traffic backup on the road we needed to be on. One of the residents allowed us (and others) to cut through his yard onto another road that took us toward the highway.

Once we got a little ways east of Jonesboro the snowfall stopped.

Last stop: Marked Tree

As we approached Marked Tree, we decided we would take another shot at one we missed earlier, "Marked Tree Siphons". Since Prontopup was familiar with Marked Tree, we had no trouble getting to the somewhat isolated cache location. It was tricky getting to the cache itself, but we had fun and were glad we stopped here.

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I am pleased to note that many of the caches we found that day were placed by tech_guy and the missus, who I later met (briefly) at a GOWT CITO in Memphis.

I certainly enjoyed the day and the caches! Some of them could have used some better ziplocs but I'm not complaining! Jonesboro is a great town and I hope to come back soon and find the caches I missed.

I would certainly like to cache more in Northeast Arkansas in the future! I have more than 200 finds in Arkansas, mostly in towns and cities along the interstate from West Memphis to Clarksville.