[ 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 ]
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