This past weekend had some excellent weather so on Sunday, I took advantage of the cool temps and clear sky to do some hiking in the woods.
Village Creek State Park is roughly between Forrest City, AR and Wynne, AR, so I decided to make a loop from Memphis. I made it to Forrest City around 9am. This was later than I had planned, but not a big deal. There was no traffic to speak of in the the town. I parked across the street from the Chamber of Commerce and walked to An Old-Fashioned Rest by kjw0169 (GC1AKY5) and The Shepherd. by Jason_Paul_Ring (GC1PMKJ). These were both caches I DNF'd the last time I passed through. Both were easy finds on this day in part because of a change in approach. I hunted and found 5 other caches before leaving town. My favorite of those 5 was Between Classes by fcdiva (GC1WQ63). Sunday is a good day for hunting that one.
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It was a short drive up Hwy 284 to Village Creek State Park. Photo Op! by LuckyoneinAR (GC19RAK) was at the entrance of the park and was a good opportunity to get a close up look at a rather intricate entrance sign.
I picked up another cache - We(l)come to Village Creek! by GABBY01 (GCX7FK) before parking at the Visitor's Center. My plan for the day involved hiking around the park while caching, then coming back to the Visitor's Center.
I hiked the length of the Big Ben trail, finding Big Ben by LuckyoneinAR (GCX7FW) along the way. This trail was my first indication of how steep the trails were.
[ Big Ben Trail ]
[ Arborteum Trail ]I took the Austell trail to Not Useful! by LuckyoneinAR (GC19XD4). It wen in all sorts of directions, so you just have to trust it. This area - where the cache was - appeared to be abandoned or it didn't get much use. I took the road east to within 400 feet of Village Creek ParkCache by Arkansas State Parks (GC1DR3Y) and then headed cross country to the cache. This hike had everything, creeks and steep terrain. This was a tough find because (I believe) the coords are quite a bit off. One I found it, I signed the log and wrote down the numbers (for a puzzle).
After backtracking out of the woods, I started back to the Visitor's Center, but decided once again to cut across country and hunt Village Creek - Cache in with The Natural State by Ark. Parks & Tourism (GC10VKJ). This was a four-stage cache, and once I found the first stage, the rest of the hunt was easy (but long). There were plenty of obstacles to contend with as well.
[Swinging Bridge]
[Lake Austell]After finishing my Coke, I realized I didn't have enough time to hike to the remaining 4 caches, so I drove as close as I could to each of the next three caches.
Swing on By by LuckyoneinAR (GC19XC2) was just a short hike across a grassy field to a wooded area. It was a micro that took some time to spot.
Stargazer by itsmebigd (GC1APZW) was near the cabins area. After finding a close psot to park, I hiked the 0.19 miles to the cache. It was a tough hike, but the kicker was when I got to within 50 feet of the cache, it was straight down the side of a steep hill. I'm gld the container was big because moving around on the side of that hill was tough. If I had dropped anything it would have been gone. After signing the log, I had to make the tough climb up the slick hillside.
Sleepy Hollow by LuckyoneinAR (GCXKG4) was in the area of the horse trails. I parked near the entrance of the corral area and hiked 0.13 miles into the cache area. I ran into a curious guy on a horse who asked me if I was hiking. Yeah, just hiking. The ground was very muddy in this area, but the good news is that I was now on the horse trail and was able to hike out via it.
I was only 0.5 miles from Stars and City Lights by LuckyoneinAR (GCXKGA), but it was getting late and I figured since it was close to a main road outside of the park, I'd drive around to it and save some time. Once I left the park, though, my auto-routing screwed me and I ended up just driving north to Wynne.
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I arrived at Wynne, AR around 5pm. After wasting some time at a caboose cache, I hunted TB Hotel and More by razormarsh (GC1K6NW) and 280 ft... by LuckyoneinAR (GCXRX9). The TB Hotel was outside of a fenced in yard. When I got to the area, there was a vehicle parked next to the cache spot. Normally, I would have driven off - but I took a chance and after finding the cache, the owner's family came out and said hello before driving off. The second cache was outside of a ball field - empty on this day. This turned out to be my last find of the day. I had dinner in an empty KFC before heading home.
Notes about Village Creek State Park:
I had visited the website for the park earlier and had printed maps of the park. They helped a little as most of the caches were along one trail or another. The trails, which included a lot of wooden stairways, were lots of up and down legwork - tough if you aren't in shape. There were benches for resting along the way - if I had started earlier, I would have rested more...
October 18 was a cool day. I carried no water on my hikes and there were practically no bugs!
The south half of the park was almost empty. No people in sight - anywhere - other than the two rangers in the Visitor's Center.
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