Lichterman Nature Center - 5/21/2011

About two weeks ago, I saw six new caches pop up in Lichterman Nature Center in East Memphis. Prontopup has been maintaining about a half dozen caches in this park for years. Every so often he archives them and puts out new caches in different locations throughout the park. I am assuming that this is (in part) to minimize the creation of geo-trails in the park. In October of 2009, jbgreer and I hunted the last batch of caches that were in this park and had a great time. It was my first visit to the 65 acre nature center and I had wanted to return in the Spring. These new caches provided a great opportunity.

It was another one of those weeks where the weekdays are sunny and the weekend was forecasted to be rainy. On Tuesday, I emailed jbgreer about the caches and he was willing to go with me to hunt them on Saturday. On Friday night, the rain began. We had agreed earlier that if it was raining Saturday morning, we'd save the caches for another time. I set my alarm to wake me at 7:15 am Saturday morning. When I woke up, it had just stopped raining. I figured that it would start up again, so I didn't get out of bed. My phone rang at 8am and it was jbgreer waiting for me to come down so we could leave. I quickly got dressed and headed outside.

The first order of the morning was breakfast. We had plenty of time to eat because the Nature Center didn't open until 9. We made it over to the Nature Center by about 9:30. There were few cars in the lot, which meant that few people would be out on the trails.

[ Lichterman Nature Center Visitor's Center ]

We paid for admission and picked up a sheet with the coordinates for the six caches. After spending some time putting the coordinates into our GPS units, we began the hunt for the caches. The sky had cleared up nicely even with there still being a 40% chance of rain.

Our first cache of the morning was Seasons In The Forest (GC2VW80). This involved passing through the Backyard Wildlife Center and out onto an elevated boardwalk. The cache was an easy find as it was designed to be.

[ The boardwalk provides an excellent view of the forest below. ]

The caches were distributed in a circular fashion, so we were a little confused where to go next. We decided to hunt Stair Steps (GC2VW6N). After we did a cursory search of the area, I pulled up the cache description to read the hint. Unfortunately, I pulled up the wrong page, so we were even more confused. The coordinates were good, though, and jbgreer made the find.

[ Stair steps that we passed on the way to another cache. ]

Our third cache was Big Root (GC2VVKH). I knew from looking at the cache page earlier, that this one had a suggested a trail waypoint as where to start. This was due to a bridge being out on one of the trails. "Big Root" might have been the toughest find of the day. This cache was also not far from where a previous cache had been.

[ Spotted shortly after leaving "Big Root". ]

The other three caches were across the park from where we were, so we took what we thought was the shortest way over.

[ I think we go this way... ]

The fourth cache we hunted was Trail Junction (GC2VW61). It wasn't where I imagined it to be, but the hint, and the fact it was visible from a few feet away meant it was eventually found.

[ One of many trail junctions. ]

[ Spotted near the boardwalk that crosses the lake. ]

[ Ahhh... sunlight! ]

[ The droplets looked cool on the lilypads. ]

[ There were lots of lilypads. ]

[ Beautiful habitat for birds and turtles. ]

The fifth cache we found (after taking lots of pictures off of the boardwalk) was Fence Post
by ProntoPup (GC2VW30). The name pretty much describes the landmark we were looking for and the cache was a quick find. At this point we say three men carrying camera equipment down the trail. They were the only people we came across all morning.

[ A nice view from one of the last caches of the day. ]

The final cache of the day was Split (GC2VW50). It was a nice easy to get to cache to end the morning on. We decided to head back to the Visitor's Center using a different path than the way we came so we could see a little more of the park before leaving.

Rambling Around NE Shelby County, TN - 5/15/2011

On this particular weekend, I found it difficult to get out and hunt geocaches. There were lots of dark clouds on Saturday and I had to be at a birthday party on Sunday. I decided to hunt a few easy caches on the way to the party. I had some problems with the maps on geocaching.com Saturday so for Sunday I picked a starting cache and then let my GPSr decide what was next on the list.

I left the house late on Sunday only giving myself a little over 2 hours to cache and get where I was going to in Rosemark, TN. The first cache of the day was It's "S" "O" .. "G" "double O" "D" .. "GOOD" .. by Dragon9981 (GC2MND7). I knew it was behind a restaurant, but I was surprised by which one. I didn't until later match the cache name with the jingle for KFC. The only problem I had with this cache was its proximity to the drive-through window. I waited until a van pulled up to the window before making the grab.

The second cache I found was LBC's Movie Night by jbgrissom (GC2P4VY). This was not far from the entrance to the Malco Summer Drive-In theater. Afternoon is a good time to hunt caches like this. I parked at the adjacent shopping center before quickly finding the cache.

[ Retro-looking lighting at the entrance ]

After signing the log, I continued northeast to takin out the trash by jamey1 ( GC2BF95). This cache was in a nicer area than the name implies. It was also out of the way for any possible passersby.

I was running out of time, but I wanted at least one woodsy cache that wasn't a park and grab. Madera de Azucar by thefamilybush (GC2VA3J) fit the bill. It was very green in these woods and I regretted my lack of bug spray. The coords were very good, though, and I found the cache and got out before I could get too eaten up. I liked the creativity in the naming of this cache and several others by the same cacher.



I had time for one more quick one before I had to finish for the day. Achtung! by thefamilybush (GC2VAG0) was a short distance away and like the description says, is right where you would expect it to be. The cache used a BIC stick pen as a container, which could work well enough until the log gets wets and swells up.

I had to be satisfied with five finds for this day. I was my own fault for leaving the house so late. At least this time, I made it to the party on time!

Arlington, TN Redux - 4/30/2011

I had big plans for this weekend. I had planned to drive to Oxford, MS and participate in Thacker Mountain Trails CITO Event by SniperChicken (GC2N387). I signed up for this event on April 6 and was thinking I'd CITO and cache on Saturday and stick around Sunday and cache some more. As the days passed, I kept watching to see if anyone else would be attending the CITO. I watched the Mississippi forums for talk and saw little. The week of the event, we had terrible storms with tornadoes and flooding. Oxford appeared to get worse weather than we had in Memphis, but as far as I knew, the event was still on. The night before the event (Friday), I checked the logs and saw that I was still the only one who had signed up. I decided at that point to cancel my plans and go some other time. The event went on as scheduled with only a few people showing up.

[ calm after the storm ]

In the meantime, my buddy jbgreer called me up Friday night and asked if I wanted to get together for breakfast and some caching. This worked for me, but I had to scramble to get together a list of caches to hunt. It didn't help that a lot of the good caches were underwater due to flooding.

Saturday, we got together for breakfast and I pulled out my map of caches. We decided to hunt a few on a line between Bartlett, TN and Arlington, TN. Most of these caches were simple park and grabs, but sometimes you just have to get out of the house and do something.

The first find of the morning was MMEW #7 Deathly Hollows Part 1 by sskaysee (GC2KGJB). It was part of a series based on the Harry Potter books and placed at theaters where the HP movies were shown.

We had a lot of DNFs. Some were due to the presence of muggles, others because... well you know. One of our DNFs was at The Hidden Park Treasure by SniperGuy (GC1C42X). This was a cache that I hadn't gone after before because, I suspected I'd have trouble finding the park. On this day, we found the park, but not the cache.


A lot of the caches we found on this day were placed by new cachers. Some were really nicely done, like most of the caches put out by kasitay. Others were not so well done. Altoids tins do NOT make good outdoor cache containers.

[ the coordinates were also waaaay off ]

We had to replace two logs with new paper and ziplock bags. I had the bags, but I had to resort to tearing up some pages that I had printed out puzzle solutions on. Fortunately, I was able to make logs without the parts that had coordinates on them.

Since jbgreer had in his possession a TB that needed to be put out, and we were hunting park and grabs, we made a quick stop at I.H. Managerial Park in Lakeland, TN and placed it in an ammo can cache that I had logged last weekend.

We went back to the Arlington Sportsplex and picked up The Heart of the South Loves Juliette Low by kasitay (GC2TQYY) . I was at this park last week, just before this cache was published. It was a tribute to Juliette Low, who was the founder of the Girl Scouts. Our last cache of the day was a few miles away - still in Arlington - called Honoring Arlington by dneedham (GC2KPXT). This park looked kind of creepy in the aftermath of the storm, but the cache was nice and in great shape. The next tree over, however, was not in great shape.

This was enough caching for us on this day. It was starting to get a little cloudy, in preparation for the next round of storms. We saved plenty of park and grabs for another day.

Lakeland-Arlington, TN - 4/24/2011

Easter weekend looked good weather-wise for geocaching, but I hadn't gotten around to taking my car to the mechanic and didn't really want to do much driving until I did. Saturday, I got an invitation to have Easter dinner with my family in Rosemark, so I picked two nice parks along the route (roughly) to hunt a few caches before dinner.

On Sunday, I ended up leaving home later than I had planned. To complicate matters, I didn't have an up-to-date pocket query loaded on my GPS, so I had to print a couple of the cache pages to take with me. At least the weather was nice - and my car started.

My first stop was I. H. Managerial Park in Lakeland, TN. There were three recently placed caches in this park. My first find was fairly close to where I entered the trail system - CWL012.2 Lakeland Stash by CWL (GC2RF3R). I had found a number of CWL caches back when I first started geocaching (late 2004). He hadn't been out caching much in recent years, so I was surprised to see this cache come out. Nice first find of the day, though.

[ The entry to the trail system - at least it was one entry...]

The second cache I went after was She hates nature by kasitay (GC2TB9M). Getting to the area was a little tricky. My GPS needed recalibrating and it took a while to find an open spot in the woods. The trail system is also very strange. I crossed a number of trails, looking for the right one. When I got to the right area, I struck out. Lots of poison ivy kept me from getting too close to some of the possible hiding spots. I decided to catch a breather at the nearby lake before moving on to the next cache.

[ The lake was a pretty shade of blue. ]

[ One of many trails... ]

The last cache I went after here was Fairies Treehouse by GoreJess (GC2EN1J). It was designed to be easily spotted, but getting to the area was tough. I was tempted to cross a big ravine using a convenient fallen tree, but my experience told me to keep looking for a better way. I found the better way and the cache.

Afterwards, I wanted to avenge my one DNF, but I was running out of time. Fortunately, I did not get lost (unlike my previous visit) and managed to find the quick way back to my car.

After leaving the park, I headed east to Arlington to pick up two caches at the Arlington Sports Complex. It was quiet here as well. I was running behind on time, but managed to find both No squirrel's home. . . by 5sunds (GC2R9PR) and Girl Scouts Forever by 5sunds (GC2RPJK). The latter cache was a nice lock-n-lock with plenty of goodies to trade.

[ I only got to explore the southeast part of the trail. ]

Whew! Now it was onward to Rosemark, TN where I was supposed to be at 4pm for Easter dinner. I was only 5 minutes late!

Howard McVay Park - 4/10/2011

I was in the middle of making plans to hunt some caches on the Ole Miss campus in Oxford, MS when I received a note that Howard-McVay Park by Canadian Bear (GCM4TG) had been found and that it had no logbook. I adopted this cache from Canadian Bear in 2005 and aside from replacing the container and changing the hide slightly, have had no maintenance issues since March of 2006. Recently the logbook had been reported as wet and finally missing, so it was definitely time to revisit this cache.

[ previous hide spot ]

I had considered archiving it. 6+ years is a pretty good run for a cache. Before making any decisions, though, I wanted to see what kind of shape the container was in and how much the landscape had changed since my last visit - 5 years ago. I made plans to hunt a few caches in the Cordova/Germantown, TN area and then fix up my cache in Howard McVay Park (in Germantown).

---

I woke up early on Sunday, but it was tough getting out of bed. None of the caches on my list for this day seemed particularly interesting on paper, and I knew that half of them would be simple lightpole caches. Still, one was at a Wal-Mart and since I needed a few things from there, I managed to hit the road by 9am.

My first group of caches were clustered by the Wal-Mart. I started off with Tracks by aschrack & cwiggs (GC26PXH). This was along a grassy area that will eventually become part of the eastern end of the Memphis Greenline. It was nice to get to see the area before it gets paved.

[ The east end of the Memphis Greenline is about a mile away. ]

I followed this up by T.D.D. #8 by dragon9981 (GC2QF6H) at a nearby CVS pharmacy. The T.D.D series are lightpole caches in the parking lots of CVS/Walgreens/Rite Aid stores. No problem, except most of these are within eyesight of each store's drive-thru pharmacy.

Wall-E # 2322 by dragon9981 (GC2QF6V) was at the Wal-Mart in the area. After signing the cache log, I went in to buy two pairs of blue jeans. I entered the store at 10am and didn't get out until 10:30am. My holdup was the check-out line. I got in the "20 items or less express line" with my two items. There were two women in front of me. The first one had all of her items rung up and then realized she couldn't pay for all of that stuff. It had to be unrung up one item at a time until the lady could pay her bill. For some reason the cashier had to shut down the register and look for a manager in order to do this. Meanwhile, I noticed the the other woman in line in front of me had at least 40 items in her cart. I ended up having to change lines - not an easy task. Why am I telling you all of this? Because it took more time standing in line then it did to hunt all of the lightpole caches I did on this day (four). Plus, it was more interesting.

Anyways, my next two cache hunts were at the eastern corner of Shelby Farms. Ahhh, the woods! I found NIPPON POKEMON by NavyBryants (GC2QF3K) easily after a short hike. The other cache Kidz Kache by polikkronos (GC2MENF) was a no find, in part because the hint told me an obvious spot to search, but the cache description (that I failed to read) said that they had changed the location of the cache. I had looked at the spot where the cache was actually hidden and said "Naaah, it couldn't be under that big trash bag."

[ Ahhhh.... the woods. ]

[ No bikers today. ]

[ Not far from the "dog park" section of Shelby Farms. ]

After two more T.D.D. caches, I made my way to Howard McVay Park and parked in the lot near a kids playground. Surprisingly there were no muggles as I made my way to the cache in a wooded area 300 feet away from the playground.

The cache was clearly visible, with little available greenery to hide it. I had read a few logs pointing out how easy it was to spot, especially in the winter time, so it was a miracle it lasted as long as it did. I added a new logbook and then had second thoughts about leaving the cache in the spot it was in. I ended up taking it down and moving it 20 feet (or so) south where the vegetation was a little thicker. If it survives the summer, I plan to go back and improve the camo on it.

Once I exited the woods, I decided to take a walk around the nearby man-made lake. This is a cool spot, with two fountains and assorted geese and turtles in the area. It seems to be a popular fishing spot as well.

[ The "Lake" at Howard McVay Park ]

After getting back in my car, I figured I'd hunt a few more caches. I had problems getting my car to start, though, and took that as a sign to just go home and log my finds.

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.

---

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.