Geocaching FUNdamentals - 3/19/2011

My caching partner jbgreer called and asked if I wanted to go caching on Saturday. In particular, he was interested in hunting 346 Cubic Inches by bitbrain (GC2Q6HD), a new cache in the Wolf River Wildlife Corridor. I instead convinced him to go with me to Geocaching FUNdamentals by Prontopup and Tiger130 (GC2MNCR) and as a bonus, I e-mailed him the GC numbers of three decent puzzle caches in the area of the event. I figured we could go after those before or after the event and have an enjoyable day.

By Thursday evening, we had both solved the requisite puzzles for Saturday's hunt. As I looked around for an additional cache to hunt, I spotted ANGLES AND DIMENSIONS by magicrock (GC2P9YF). This mystery cache was released earlier in the week and as of Thursday, had no finders. There were parts of it that I knew the answers to right away, so I forwarded jbgreer the link to the cache page and went to bed.

While at work on Friday, I got a call from jbgreer. He had the day off and was out hunting down answers to the puzzle. I couldn't leave work, but I was able to do my share of the puzzle using my computer during lunch. At some point during the day, I noticed that the cache had been found. I read over the logs and viewed some pictures that turned out to be spoilers for the cache location. I posted a note about the pictures on the cache page and the cache owner had the pictures removed. Since the location was only part of the puzzle, I focused my energies on solving the "Opening Secret". By early evening, we had all of the information necessary to hunt the cache on Saturday.

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Saturday morning jbgreer and I got together at 8am to begin the day's hunt. I got very little sleep the night before, because I was anxious to hunt ANGLES AND DIMENSIONS (GC2P9YF). We skipped breakfast in order to hunt the original three puzzle caches on our list before heading to the geocaching event at 10am.

First on the list was The Truth is Rarely Pure and Never Simple by Dr. Eckman & The Lightman Group (GC2JE9C). I really enjoyed the puzzle on this one. The cache itself was a quick find in an area where jbgreer had once worked.

Second on the list was Little Fib by GC4EVR (GC2KBMH). Having a background in Math, the puzzle wasn't hard for me. I liked it, though. The terrain on this cache was fairly high and earlier logs suggested water in the area. We encountered no problems, though, and enjoyed the placement of the hide. There was a "Celebrate Summer" geocoin in the cache. I wrote down the tracking number for discovery, but later learned that the coin hadn't been activated, yet. [ I waited nearly a month and then activated the coin, myself. I then logged it as dropped within this cache. ]

[ The first and last obstacle ]

[ Dry today, wet tomorrow ? ]

[ My camera was focused on the ground, apparently, instead of the coin. ]

Next up, was The Ghost In The Machine by giardia_boy (GC2PH7Q). The puzzle was of a type that I had encountered before and jbgreer and I ended up using two different techniques to solve it. The cache had both an easy approach and a more difficult one and we tried both before eventually finding the cache.

[ A view that I have seen many times in the last year. ]

We were pretty pleased with ourselves by now, and we managed to find our way to the event with about 10 minutes to spare.

The event was interesting even though I'd heard the material before. I went mainly to socialize a little with other geocachers. I was a little uncomfortable because I was hungry, but the two hours passed quickly enough. I met a few of the newer cachers and talked to a few of the veteran cachers.

[ The host - prontopup talking about cache containers]

We didn't hang around too long after the event because we had a cache to find. After a quick lunch, the first thing we did was visually verify that I had solved the "Opening Secret" correctly. I would have been extremely upset if we had found the cache and made a mistake on the "Opening Secret".

Once at the location of the cache, we located the container and took it aside to sign the log and perform another task described in the cache description. I took a number of pictures for my personal records before we left. This was an excellent cache and I am highly recommending it to my fellow geocachers whenever possible. That was the end of our caching day. I went home and took a nap before taking another trip to visit family.

Return to the Delta Heritage Trail - 3/11/2011

I had Friday off for "Spring Break" and because the temperatures were cool and the forecast was sunny, I made an almost last minute decision to revisit Delta Heritage State Park and the 13 mile rails-to-trail project that happens to be lined with geocaches. There are 114 caches along this trail and on two visits last May, I managed to find 77 of them. Here is a link to the blog entry from my first trip.

Thursday night, I reviewed my pocket query for the area and printed out a list of the 37 caches I had left, as well as the hints for them. I didn't know how many I'd be able to actually find, since these were all caches that I had looked for on my last trip. Factors on my side this trip would be 1) cooler weather, 2) no bugs!, and 3) better GPSr reception with few leaves on the trees.

Friday morning, I left around 7:30am - not as early as I would have liked, but an old man needs his rest. I skipped breakfast and just took a cold fountain soda with me for a caffeine boost. I headed west to Forrest City where I took advantage of the rest stop before heading south on Hwy 1 towards Marianna.

[ Forrest City, AR - rest stop gardens ]

Once on the highway heading south, I had to be more careful about not speeding. At one point, I was going a little fast when I saw a police car parked off in front of me. I slowed down fast before passing him, and he ended up pulling over the car behind me. That was about the most excitement I had that morning. There was very little traffic in this mostly rural area.

I arrived at Delta Heritage State Park around 9am. There was a truck parked at the office, but other than that, I started the day alone. Because it was cool outside, I decided against renting a bike. I had also read while skimming the cache pages, that there had been reports of dogs chasing cyclists around the halfway point of the trail The Park is located 2 miles south of the beginning of the trail. I began the hunt by heading north. There were five caches on this section that I couldn't find on my first trip. As fortune would have it, I couldn't find them on this trip either. A couple had been reported in need of maintenance, but I was disappointed in not finding any. I got back to my car at the Park around 10am and loaded up with the Gatorade I had brought for the trip. I wished I had brought a snack or two as well.

Heading south now, I managed to find the next three consecutive caches that were on my list. On this day, they seemed easy, but I was invigorated nonetheless and hoped to find more. There are many different hides along this trail, but most can be summed up as on the ground or hanging from a tree. I had pretty good luck on this day and the previous trips with the ones on the ground. The hanging ones were a different story. Since I had found a few on my last trip, I had some idea what I was looking for. Since the trees were bare this time of year, I expected to have an easier time. I ended up finding three or four different examples of the hanging ones. They were all great hides, and I am glad I came here when I did.

[ Pretty sure this is south of the state park and facing south. ]

[ A view to the east of the trail. ]

[ Not sure which direction I was facing here. Looks like south.]

[ A view to the west of the trail ]

I found my last cache around mile 8 of the trail. It also happened to be the only non-micro of the trip. I think I'd found 2 or 3 similar-sized caches on my last visits to the trail. About this time, my friend jbgreer called me up to confirm we would be caching together that Saturday.

After I found my last cache, I sat down on a nearby bench to think about my long hike back to the car. I heard a rustling in front of me and when I looked up, I saw a small deer wearing an orange collar. It was in the fenced-in field that was east of the trail. It followed me for a bit as I started heading north. I tried to get a good picture of it, but the deer was a little camera-shy.

[ This deer may be someone's pet. ]

Moving on, I had a small number of caches that I wanted to make a second try to find so even though I spent a lot of time admiring the beauty of the area, I still had to be mindful of the beep from the GPSr letting me know it was time to hunt.

[ One of the many bridges that spanned small streams. ]

The 6 miles back to the car was pretty tiring. I managed to find two caches that I had missed before. I think approaching them from a different angle helped a lot. I finished the last of my Gatorade early on the return trip, but wasn't overly thirsty (unlike the last time). I got back to the car around 4pm and had hiked a rough total of 15 miles on this day.

My first find was Delta Trail SP#19 by BackpacknJack (GC2746P) and my last was Delta Trail SP#64B by BackpacknJack (GC27A12). I had found a total of 12 caches. I didn't see another person the entire time I was on the trail. After I got home, I realized that I should have worn sunscreen.

I thought about making a return trip on Sunday to hunt the caches at the south end of the trail, but my legs were still a little sore. Maybe next weekend.

GPS Adventures Arkansas - ASU Museum - 3/5/2011

The GPS Adventures Arkansas Maze Exhibit is a smaller, regional version of the nationally touring GPS Adventures Maze Exhibit and prominently features Arkansas State Parks and geocachers. The exhibit will travel to 7 Arkansas museums over the next 3 1/2 years.

[ Arkansas State University - Jonesboro ]

I found out last Fall that the Arkansas State University Museum in Jonesboro, AR would be hosting this exhibit from October 9, 2010 through March 6, 2011 and was hoping to make a trip out to see it. Time flies and before I knew it, it was March 4th! The weather forecast for March 5 was bad, but even though the exhibit lasted through the 6th, I knew that I had to go Saturday. Friday night, I made plans that included hunting additional caches in Jonesboro and packed my gear - including my umbrella.

On Saturday morning, it was tough to get started. It was raining pretty hard in Memphis and I could have used more sleep. I ended up waiting until just after 8:30am to leave, and by then the weather had calmed down a bit. There wasn't much traffic out, and the trip went pretty quickly. I had made a decision to not make any cache stops before I got to the museum, and I kept to that decision. It was also nice that the rain stopped before I got to Jonesboro.

I arrived at the Museum around 10am. After looking at Dinosaur exhibits on the first floor, I went up to the second floor where all of the other exhibits are. I was given directions to the GPS exhibit, which was in the back of the museum, and headed straight there. It was set up as a maze with educational displays in different spots. There were also profiles of some Arkansas geocachers (including some that I have met) and information about geocaching in the State Parks. My favorite part of the exhibit was the display of cache containers and assorted TB's and geocoins. I wrote down lots of tracking codes to "discover" these items on geocaching.com. Maybe it was because it was the next to last day of the exhibit, or maybe it was because I was early, but I had the exhibit all to myself the entire time I was there.

[ entrance to the maze ]

[ display of geocoins ,TBs and cache containers ]

[ Magellan Explorists ]

After leaving the exhibit, I toured some of the other exhibits which included Native American displays as well as some history of Arkansas. There were also some cool wildlife displays.

By the time I had finished touring the museum, it was beginning to fill up with kids - so I knew it was time to leave. Before leaving the museum, I stopped in at the Gift Shop and bought two geocoins that were related to the GPS exhibit.

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There were four caches on the university campus and I found all of them while doing a walking tour. Most of the campus was empty, but there were busloads of students from Lonoke that were touring the campus. The first cache I found was Rocky by ASUMuseum (GC2FJH8) and was right next to the museum. The other three were part of a series by tkfuller and were For the Love of Science: Research it (GC2CEY7), For the Love of Science: Apply it (GC2CEYC), and For the Love of Science: Calculate it (GC2CEY9).

[ the former entrance to the administration building ]

After leaving the University, I drove around Jonesboro hunting about a dozen caches. Because of the weather, most of the logs were wet and I tramped around on a lot of wet ground. It didn't take long before I had wet socks. It was a good time, though as most days spent caching are.

By 2:30pm, I had finished up all of the caching I planned to do while in Jonesboro. There are still a lot of caches to find, but I decided to save them for a drier day. I had a quick lunch at KFC and began the drive home. I made three stops, each for a single cache, in Turrell, Marked Tree, and West Memphis and got back home by 5pm.

[ memorial in Marked Tree ]