It took me nearly two hours to get to the location of the first cache of the day - Life of the Party by itcomagic (GC130RR). I had read the hint so I knew what to do when I got to the 1st stage. After getting the coords to the second stage and plugging them in to my GPSr, I found the final stage was relatively close by in a spot I had visited once before. It took me a moment to find the cache, though, as I think the coords may have been off slightly.
I made my way over to the University of Memphis campus to check on the progress of the new University Center. It appears that progress has slowed a little because of the holidays. After taking advantage of a nearby port-a-potty, I headed east on Southern to the next cache on my list - Back to Nature - Back to Life by itcomagic (GC16AWF). This cache was located at a Cancer Survivors park newly established on the east end of Audubon Park. This cache was my easiest find of the day so I took a little extra time to walk around and read the plaques and take a few pictures.
My next stop was a bus stop near the Dillard's at the Oak Court Mall to look for Whatsa MATA with Oak Court? by itcomagic (GC14HZ5). I had passed by this on my way to Cancer Survivor's Park because I knew the hide here was tricky. I must have looked silly to people driving by. The mall was actually pretty busy and since the buses weren't running, I was a bit out of place. I looked all over and after security drove by me for the third time, I decided to take a break and have lunch at the Food Court.
After enjoying a delicious lunch at Steak Escape, I decided to head east to hunt SCS #1: Sanderlin Place by itcomagic (GC153KN). Unlike Oak Court Mall, this place was dead. This was great since I had to walk all over gathering information to plug into a formula to find the cache. I don't really like caches like this because of the number of opportunities to make mistakes. On this day, however, I made no mistakes and found the cache and signed the log. It was around 2pm at this point and I needed to head back towards home if I wanted to get there by dark. It was starting the get windier and colder as well. I passed back by Oak Court Mall where I used the restroom and made one more try at the cache outside. This time I found it quickly by correctly interpreting the previous finders' logs. That would be my fourth and last find of a long day of walking. It took another 2 1/2 hours to make it back to my neighborhood and the temperature had dropped quite a bit. I stopped at a Wendy's to pick up dinner and almost had to eat it there because my hands and wrists were so cold I was barely able to hold onto my food. I also had quite a bit of trouble unlocking the doors to my apartment because I couldn't hold my keys well. I don't know what the temperature was when I left home that morning, but when I got home it was 32 degrees with a windchill of 21. I had been outside for roughly 8 hours (minus my lunch break) so it took me quite a while to warm up, but at least the day was memorable and a lot of fun!
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