Mud Island Earthcache - 4/22/2012

It was a relatively cool Sunday and I had originally planned to do something else.  However, I had been wanting to tackle a new earthcache at Mud Island River Park - The Mississippi River @ Memphis, TN by Humulus (GC3846B) and figured that on this day, the weather would make it an enjoyable hike.

It takes about 30 minutes to walk to the entryway to Mud Island from where I work.  I headed out early in the afternoon and figured I would be done long before the park closed.  The monorail taking you into the park costs $4 to ride, so I opted to walk on the bridge above it.  There weren't a lot of people out on this day and it was only one week after the season's opening date.

I had a list of four questions that needed to be answered in order to fulfill the requirements of the earthcache.  It was pretty easy to find the information, so most of my time was spent walking around the park - from one end to the other.

The southern end of the park is an enjoyable place to relax with lots of things to see.  I was too cheap to buy food from the cafe, but I wasn't really hungry anyways.

I watched barges on one side of the river and riverboats on the other.  At the southernmost end of the park - past the areas that you are supposed to go, was the coolest looking sand beach.  I don't know if anything goes on out there, but it was cool to look at.

I left the park just a little before closing time.  It was a fun place to visit.  If I ever bring visitors with me, I'll try to visit the river museum.

Germantown, TN - 3/24/2012

The plan on this day was to go to an event - Who'd of Guessed 5 years later by lacey38655 and Prontopup (GC3BX46). The event was in the afternoon, so I picked out a few area caches to hunt beforehand. I left my house later than I had planned, but had plenty of time to stop in one of my favorite Germantown parks - Cameron Brown Park. It is usually a very busy park, so I parked near the entrance, not knowing that there were places to park that were nearer to my first find of the day. It didn't matter, though, because it was only a 1/4 mile or so to Field of Play
by prontopup (GC3DX2F). It was a quick find and on this day the nearby fields of play were empty for maintenance work.

[ The walk to the cache hinted at the possibility of wet grounds. ]

[ Fields of Play ]

Normally, to get to the second cache of the day, I would have had to cut through the woods, or exit the park and attach it from another entrance, but because a road is being built through the edge of the woods, I was able to use it to get within 200 feet of the cache - JBbaby
by jacobhenry (GC2PZ6B). Here I had to be careful of the wet ground, but I made my way to the cache and back out with dry feet.

[ Wolf River Blvd - extended ]

Afterwards, I walked along the southern edge of the park until I got back to my car. I did cut in to see the view of the cool man-made lake, though.

[ Plenty of ducks and people around. ]

Once I got back to my car, I realized that the event was a straight shot down the road from me. I got to the restaurant a little early, so I walked around the area to see what other businesses were there.

[ Most of the attendees ordered something to eat. ]

Once I went inside, I sat with chimps8mybaby and his family at a booth near the door. Peanutpapa and his wife soon joined us. As usual, I didn't do much talking or mingling, but I got to see a few neat coins and talk to a few people.

As the event was ending, I heard that shandrum was going with bitbrain, tiger130, and pippn98 to Herb Parsons Lake so that pippin98 - bitbrain's son could make the climb to reach Purple Heart by Tiger130 (GC38YDJ). Although, I was among the last to leave, I somehow made it to the park first, so I went out to take pictures of the lake and see if I could spot the cache since the leaves started filling in the trees.

[ The lake ]

Shortly after I failed to spot the cache, I met up with the others. We hiked to the spot and shandrum quickly got things set up. He demonstrated another climbing technique that got him up to the cache in less than 3 minutes. After coming back down, he rigged up the harness for pippin98, gave him some quick instructions and sent him up the tree. It took him about 10 minutes to make the climb. He signed the log and came back down. No one else wanted to make the climb on this day, so we packed up and headed back to the parking area where we parted ways.

[ pippin98 nears the cache ]

I walked over and visited the monument near the parking area before I left. The inscription at the bottom reminded me of bitbrain and his son.

[ "If you hunt with your boy, you will never have to hunt for him." - Herb Parsons ]

After leaving here, I picked up three more quick caches in Germantown before heading home.

My Favorite Cache Finds of 2011

I'm a little late with this list because I hunted fewer caches in 2011 that in most of the years I've been caching.

[ I'll clean this up a little and elaborate more on some of the finds. ]

Micro -Wisteria Gift Attic & Tea Room by magicrock (GC22539)
It was tough to pick a favorite micro, because they tend not to stand out in my mind. This one was interesting because of its unique camo.

Regular - Casper Creek Troll by poetintenn and alex layne (GC323K7)
This was one of three excellent caches placed in Edmund Orgill Park by this team. This one, in particular, was special because of its construction.

Multi - 346 Cubic Inches (GC2Q6HD)
This was a three-stage cache in one of my favorite wildlife areas in Collierville, TN. It was a cleverly-implemented design that provided us with a lot of laughs! Jbgreer and I ran into two other cachers while out there and it was fun to hunt with company.

Event - hdrider55 Rides Their Way to 1K by nelms3 (GC34GFP)
I went to at least 5 different events this year, and this one stands out because I met more people than I usually do at events.

CITO Event - None this year.

Mystery - Tough to choose a single cache in this category. Here are four that I hunted with jbgreer that all had interesting puzzles:

1) Princess Jasmine's Box of Jewels by Steve&GeoCarolyn (GC1XBBZ)
This was a lot of fun to work out even with Disney songs bouncing around in my head.

2) Flip Dizzy - Flip Out by Abiectio (GC1CW22)
This cache was the penultimate of a series that jbgreer and I started years before. The final hike gave us a chance to reflect on all of the techniques used to solve the various puzzles of the series.

3) INVISIBLE by MagicRock (GC24K70)
This cache had a unique quality that I hadn't ever seen before! It also taught me to carry additional tools with me on a cache hunt.

4) ANGLES AND DIMENSIONS by magicrock (GC2P9YF)
I got extremely lucky on what could have been an incredibly difficult cache puzzle. The container, itself, contained a special surprise. The cache taught me that everything you notice around you might become useful for solving cache puzzles.

Earthcache - None this year.

Favorite Power Trail: Diabetic Series Cache (DSC - 1) by EverywhereActs1:8 (GC2QTN9)
This was a relatively quick 20 finds, but it was interesting country to visit.

GPS Adventures Exhibit - GPS Adventures Arkansas - ASU Museum by Groundspeak (GC2GJM4)
This was my first such exhibit to attend. I got there on the last day it was open, so I was the only one there at the time. I bought a cool geocoin from the museum's gift shop.

Virtual - None this year.

Favorite Cache of the Year: This turned out to be a tough pick this year, because I found a lot of really great geocaches this year.

Jackson's Hole on Strawberry by Eldon, Denise Jackson, Kaylie Clark (GC1GZWF)
This cache was special because I hunted it with family. I got to hike in the snow in July with my Mom, uncle and aunt in a beautiful wilderness area. We got to hunt a lot of caches that day and had a lot of fun.

Abandon Hope - 3/10/2011

Abandon Hope by endorider (GC11A7E) is a cache that I have been wanting to go after since it was published back in March of 2007. Early finders reported that it had a lot of stages and involved around 10 miles of hiking, depending on how one approached it.

I got my first real look at the area in December of 2009 when I went after Home Away From Home by Berlan Eligab (GC1M5D5) prior to a meeting with some geocachers in Germantown for some night caching in Cameron Brown park. I also a one point used satellite imagery to get a feel for the size of the area along with identifying entry points. Reading online logs and viewing log pictures told me a few things about terrain and some of the things I would see.

Earlier this year, my caching partner jbgreer decided that he would like "Abandon Hope" to be his 1k cache. He had slowly made his way up to 999 finds and this would be the time that we would finally go after this cache.

Our first visit to the woods was on January 14, 2012. After hunting for another cache earlier, we only had a couple of hours to being our search. We made it to the first stage, and quickly learned the scale of the challenges we would be facing. We also discovered a trail system along the Wolf River which we later learned was the Shelby Farms Orange Trail. We made it to the second stage location after a bit of hiking and were stumped. Nearly out of time for the day, we left.

[ One of our first sights ]

Our second visit was on February 25, 2012. We headed straight for Stage 2, which jbgreer found immediately. The container, however, turned out to be one that endorider had replaced, but had not been able to find the original. We ended up calling him for assistance on this stage. The next stage wasn't a problem for us, but we ran out of time to proceed further, so we hiked out the way we came in.

[ abandoned vehicle 2008 vs 2012 ]

Saturday, March 10th would be the day we made our final attempt at finishing up the stages. It was forecast to rain that week, so we were uncertain that we would be able to get out there. On Thursday it rained two inches. On Friday, the weather cleared up, making a Saturday caching day possible. The weather Saturday was nearly perfect - cool in the morning and the high was predicted to be around 65 degrees.

After a nice breakfast, we headed to our proposed staging area. We figured that we'd save a little walking by entering the woods at a point nearer to the stage we were hunting. According to the satellite picture, it was a good idea. Things on the ground, however, were a little different.

It started out with lots of shoe-sucking mud. We didn't realize how bad it could be until jbgreer sank one leg in the mud, and had a tremendous amount of difficulty getting out - even with me trying to help. Thirty minutes later, he was freed and we were evaluating a different entry point.

[ Dangerous when wet ]

[ A better way to cross mud ]

Once in the area, we were back on track finding stages. Soon it became advantageous for us to exit the woods where we came in, and move our vehicle back to the original staging point. I mentioned earlier that the cache had lots of stages. In order to minimize further spoilage of the hunt, I won't mention anything else about the stages themselves. We continued on our way encountering mental and physical obstacles and having lots of fun.

[ This was dry on our last visit ]

[ A handy way to avoid bushwhacking ]

[ We relaxed here and listened to some bullfrogs ]

[ I couldn't believe he made it! ]

[ Sometimes, it was just a walk in the woods ]

Sometime around 4:30pm, we made it to the final stage. Certainly we were relieved, but we also knew that it would be a good while before we hunted a cache like this again. We took some time to write logs and then set forth on the journey out of the woods. We thank endorider for his help on two of the stages.

[ jbgreer signs log #1000 ]

Leapin' Lizards - 2/29/2012

I'm not really working to have a cache find for every day of the calendar, but because February 29 only comes once every four years, I figured I'd make an effort in case I do decide to try someday. That is why I was happy to see an event pop up for that day.

[ Interesting log for the event. I didn't notice the trackable coin at the bottom left until later. ]

For February 29th, there was supposed to be rain. It made me a little apprehensive about driving acros the county through busy rush hour traffic for an event. The rain had ended by the time I got off of work, so on to the event it was. I decided to hunt T.D.D. #7 by dragon9981 (GC2MJPH) (at a Walgreen's) along the way in order to make sure I had at least one cache find for the day. After that, I headed straight to the event location.

I actually arrived at Booya's in Collierville around 6pm, an hour early. I decided to walk east and pick up T.D.D. #11 by dragon9981 (GC2RA30) (again at a Walgreen's). I also walked over to the nearby Collierville Towne Center 16 movie theater to see what was playing, in case I wanted to catch a late movie before going home. It turns out that their last showings of the day were around 7pm.

Around 6:30pm, I returned a missed call from jbgreer, who it turned out would not be able to make the event. As I was getting off of the phone, I saw abiectio walk up, so I ended up following him into the restaurant. Team hdrider55 came in right behind us. I got to discover some cool coins while I was in line - of course, I forgot to bring mine.

As I got to the front of the line and paid for my meal, I saw one of the hosts, tiger130, heading for the room where the event was being held. I went into the room and found an empty table off to the side because I don't really like eating close to other people. Soon I was joined by bevofan. I was pleased to meet AmiteMaid, who told me that she reads my blog. I'm always surprised when I meet someone who reads it.

After I saw someone drop off a travel bug, I remembered that I had one in my pocket that was in a race - 2012 Great TB Race - CedarPointSpaz. When I had marked it as dropped off on the cache page earlier, the owner of the bug also left a message on the page asking people to help it out. The hosts of the event, bitbrain and tiger130 had read the note and very graciously took the TB around the room for people to discover - which was one of the ways it earned points in its race. They also arranged for another cacher to take it move it on. I thought that was pretty cool!

The rest of the event was spent mostly mingling with others, talking about caching and caching adventures. I had a lot of fun, and it didn't seem that long before it was over. I enjoyed the traffic-light drive back to Memphis.

----

For the curious, here is a link to the race that the travel bug I dropped is in: The Annual Great TB Race and the 2012 Race Rankings.

Purple Heart (GC38YDJ) - 1/28/2012

It was Friday evening and I was making plans to hunt caches along a "power trail" on Saturday, when I was contacted by geocacher shandrum. He was planning to try out some new equipment for the new 5/5 cache Purple Heart by Tiger130 (GC38YDJ). Not only was he FTF on the cache by scaling roughly 60 feet up a tree, but he had been helping others make the climb and was constantly trying to come up with easier ways of doing it.

I was apprehensive about going, because I had promised to do it on the same day as my pal jbgreer did it. Having tried it once before and failed, I knew that I needed more practice climbing and didn't want to go with jbgreer and then fail to do it. I decided to accept and invitation and agreed to meet shandrum at the parking area at Herb Parsons Lake at 10am on Saturday.

I got to the park a little early and met up with shandrum. He told me that nelms3 would be going with us, and he arrived as we were heading out. It was a cool and sunny morning. We arrived at the now familiar location and shandrum began to setup the climbing gear. He introduced us to his new method of getting the rope up into the tree. It was a pneumatic bean bag launcher.

[ Packing the bean bag before using a pump to compress the air. ]

It took two tries to get the starter rope placed properly. Pretty good considering it was shandrum's first time to use it. After the climbing rope was set up, I was rigged up in the harness and instructed on what I need to do to go up and down the rope. It was an easier system than I had used before and things started out fine. I made it up higher than I had the previous time with much less effort. As I got higher, I began to have trouble staying upright. As I leaned back to rest a minute I suddenly got a really bad headache. I knew I couldn't continue to climb, so I lowered myself to the ground. Once I got to the ground, walked around a little bit and had something to drink, I felt better. I'm pretty sure that my clothing and my position in the harness had somehow managed to interfere with the blood flow to my head.

I didn't want to waste everyone's time (including mine) by not making it up the rope, so I asked the guys to haul me up the way many of the previous cache finders had done. All I basically had to do was hold the rope to keep myself semi-upright and the guys on the ground would do the rest. It was still tough, as my weak and tired hands had difficulty holding onto the rope. Inch by inch they pulled me up. Just over half way up there was a large branch that I had to maneuver around. When I got above it, I got a chance to stand on it and take a short rest break.

[ Looking down from the rest point. ]

[ It feels good to rest. ]

I felt better after the brief break and the guys hauled me up the rest of the way to the cache. I should have approached opening it from a little higher vantage point, but I wanted to get a picture facing the container.

[ Purple ammo can surprisingly well in focus. ]

Finally, it was time to sign the log. I had to be careful to not drop anything including the ammo can lid, the logbook, the cache contents, or my pen. Oh - and my camera.

[ Signing the log with numb hands. ]

Before I came down, I wanted to get a picture of the ground from above. I couldn't move around in the harness, so I held out the camera, pointed it down and took a shot.

[ I couldn't actually see this view until I downloaded the picture. ]

[ Shot from the ground. ]

I made sure the container was closed and my pen and camera were in my pocket and proceeded to come down slowly. I had forgotten to put my gloves back on so the rope was a little warm. After I came down to earth, shandrum tested out a new harness that he had bought. He used a slightly different climbing technique than he had shown me previously.

After all of that, shandrum packed up his gear and nelms3 offered to carry it out. While we were hanging out in the parking area, another geocacher giardia_boy came up the trail. He had been after another cache that wasn't far from where we had been. While we were talking, shandrum demonstrated his new bean bag launcher.

[ The pneumatic bean bag launcher. ]

After nelms3 and giardia_boy left, I planned to stay a bit longer to let my headache subside and ended up accompanying shandrum to hunt a nearby cache. My drive home was uneventful, but I ended up taking a longer way than the way I had come.

On a final note: I want to thank shandrum for his help and patience, and I thank nelms3 for taking pictures. Hopefully at some point, I'll be able to make the climb successfully without being pulled up.

Bobcat (Lynx rufus) - 1/13/2012

Everyone needs to hunt a cache on Friday the 13th. If you fail to find it, you can simply blame the day for your bad luck. On this Friday the 13th, jbgreer and I chose a night cache - Bobcat (Lynx rufus) by bitbrain (GC38KQ5) to hunt.

Since night caches are best done in groups, jbgreer took to the GOWT facebook group to find people who might be interested in accompanying us. I would have asked myself, but I appear to have been blocked by the group admin, a geocacher named Titansfan, after I caught him making disparaging and homophobic remarks about me on facebook. What a pathetic skunk. Anyways, back to the cache hunt...

We arrived at the parking area for the cache, which is in the Wolf River Wildlife Area around 6:30pm. Waiting for us were two geocachers that we met at an event two weeks ago - Balls2thefloorgeocacher and ProudMother06. There was another car there with kids apparently engaged in pot smoking.

[ Three excited members of the team. ]

It was a cold night, roughly 30 degrees. Perfect weather for hiking. We checked to make sure that we had everything we intended to take with us, marked a waypoint to the parking area and headed west down a dark gravel road. Eventually, we made it to a point where we needed to cut into the woods and make our way to the first tree with two retro-reflective tacks on it.

[ Can you say retro-reflective? ]

It was fairly easy to spot tacks on the trees along the path, even though it looked like (to me) that I was the only one with a good flashlight, and I was leading from behind. It didn't take long before we discovered that a lot of the ground was wet. I was wearing running shoes, because they were less painful than my waterproof boots. Once I got used to the fact that my feet were going to get wet, I relaxed and enjoyed the hunt. According the the cache page there were 46 single reflectors between the pairs that start and end this cache. It was too easy to lose count, so we hoped that we didn't miss any along the way.

[ There were lots of small streams along the way. ]

[ It was very dark. ]

[ Success! ]

We arrived at the cache exactly one hour after leaving the parking area. After signing the log, the real fun began. I was aware of our position relative to where we parked and believed that I knew the correct direction to head in order to get back onto the gravel road the soonest. However, navigating in the dark using electronic compasses, we somehow managed to head in a direction 180 degrees away from the correct way.

[ This is how you know you are going the wrong way. ]

After enjoying some sights that we normally would have missed going the right way, we decided to simply aim for the waypoint of the parking area and essentially go back the same way we came in. There were a few differences, though, in the path we followed. Going to the cache, we crossed three small creeks. On the way back we crossed a lot more. At one point after crossing the same creek multiple times, I shouted "WTF?" in frustration. We eventually made it back to the road and a short while later back to our vehicles and parted ways.

I'm glad that we had others with us, if only to share the misery of walking through ice-cold streams again and again!