356 Cubic Inches

Still exhausted after a long day of hiking and caching with jbgreer, I was surprised to get a call from him Friday night asking if I wanted to hunt 346 Cubic Inches by bitbrain (GC2Q6HD) on Saturday morning.

We met up at 9 am Saturday morning and decided to forgo our usual breakfast in order to get out to the Wolf River Wildlife Area. We parked at the Bethany Road entrance on the northwest side of the wildlife area and began the hike towards the Wolf River. The trail was wet from recent rains and it was often easier to walk along side of it. It was also wind-y and caused us at one point to take a shortcut across a gully or two.

[ One of many views we had of the Wolf River ]

[ A bamboo thicket ]

Not far from the 1st stage, we ran across geocachers peanutpapa and shandrum who were also hunting this cache. They had just finished the second stage and were heading to the final. They decided to tag along with us a bit to watch us tackle the first two stages. Since this is a mystery cache, I have to leave out a lot of interesting details and pictures. While hiking around, we discussed the trials and tribulations of tackling the 5/5 cache - Purple Heart by Tiger130 (GC38YDJ) at Herb Parsons Lake.

[ heading into the unknown ]

[ Thorns were a theme at the final stage. ]

After everyone had the pleasure of locating the final stage, we took turns signing the log. We then all hiked back to the parking area where we parted ways.

[ Mission Accomplished ]

Queen of the Confederacy - 12/30/2011

This weekend, jbgreer and I were looking for a couple of good caches to hunt as he quickly approaches his 1000th logged cache find. I had a few already selected when I sorted my pocket query by difficulty and spotted Queen of the Confederacy by kailuasquid (GC1W51Q) a multistage cache in La Grange, TN. At our breakfast meeting on Saturday morning, we decided that this would be a great cache to go after.

It was a long drive that was mostly on two-lane highway to La Grange. Speed traps abound, so we were careful not to speed.

The first stage was near the house former residence of Lucy Holcombe Pickens AKA "The Queen of the Confederacy." The stages had not been found in a long time, and the first stage was largely hidden by mud. We did find it, though, and cleaned it off to get the information needed to get to the second stage.

The second stage was tricky and there were a few people in the area that noticed us poking about. We did finally find the stage and used the coordinates to take us to the final location.

[ La Grange General Store ]

When we got to the appropriate parking area, we ran into three hunters about to enter the area. They had killed a deer earlier, and had returned to collect it. We all walked together for a ways, with jbgreer explaining what we were doing out there. We split up about 500 feet from the cache and after they got out of sight, went into the woods and found the final ammo can. We left the woods the way we came in and left town.

[ We forgot our orange vests. ]

On our way back to Memphis, we decided stop in Collierville to try and finish FTF All Star #5: Along The Creek by rungeek (GC121CJ). This was a three stage multicache with a puzzle at each stage. We had attempted the first stage earlier with no luck. It turned out, however, that it was just well-hidden, so we were able to continue on this day with stage two. Stage two required some terrain crossing and we were lucky in that it hadn't rained in a while. We found the container with a big hole in the side and filled with a watery sludge. Inside was a laminated slip of paper with information needed to help get to the third stage. It was almost unreadable, but what we needed, we got.

[ Nonconnah Greenbelt ]

The third stage required solving a puzzle to get information to go with what we got from the second stage. The puzzle looked daunting, so we started to drive off. As we were leaving, I had an insight that allowed me to solve the puzzle and derive the final coordinates needed. After another terrain obstacle, we found the final stage - intact. We breathed a sigh of relief, signed the log and moved on.

We only found two caches on this day, but they were both memorable.

A Christmas Flash Mob - 12/25/2011

Normally, Christmas Day would be a bit too busy too do anything geocaching-related, but Holiday Flash..err...Twinkle Mob by Abiectio (GC393JE) was only 4 miles from where I live, so I decided to head over there before going off to visit family. The event started at 11am, so I got to Tom Lee Park in downtown Memphis about 45 minutes early, so that I could relax and watch the barges on the Mississippi River.

[ My vantage point while waiting for the event to start. ]

At around 10:58, I realized that I would be late to the 11am start, but headed over anyways, and was 3 minutes late. There were five people there, which was a fair amount considering the day and how far some of them drove to be there. We all enjoyed some cupcakes that the host, Abiectio brought along before going our separate ways.


It turned out to be a better day than I had expected, but I didn't hunt anymore caches during the day. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.