Blytheville, AR - 11/24/2011

I had a 4-day weekend to do whatever I wanted, so I planned out a few possible geocaching trips. I was invited to have Thanksgiving dinner of Thursday and when I found out it wasn't until 3pm. I selected from my list a trip up I-55 to Blytheville, AR. I figured that if I got up early enough (a hard thing to do these days), I could hit Blytheville, AR and head north into Missouri before coming back down into Tennessee and to my family's house via Hwy 51.

I've been through Blytheville at least twice before, so there were only about a dozen caches for me to go after.

By a miracle, my alarm got me out of bed on time Thursday morning. The weather was cool and a little damp, but I wasn't expecting any rain so all was good. I was on the road by 7 am and traffic was very light. I had a few caches on my list to pick up on the way north to Blytheville but made a last minute decision to skip them for times sake.

My first find of the morning was Ring....Ring....Ring by Lancent | GC266F5 at the southern end of Blytheville near the point that I got off of the interstate. This place was the former site of a convenience store and I really wished it had been open as I needed some gas.

[ Ring...Ring... ]

Gas would have to wait until I got into town. I found Champion Trees of AR: MS County: Willow Oak by zcoach (GC2MPVR) without paying any attention to the tree (I think it was across the road). The cache was near a car lot that was thankfully closed on this day.

One cache I found near the center of town was Fountain in the park by flame897 (GC2FMJQ). The little park had some interesting monuments including one to the founder of Blytheville. This park was also near the town's Greyhound bus terminal.

[ Rev Henry Thomas Blythe ]

[ Go Greyhound! ]

Just good clean fun! by flame897 (GC2FNRV) was an interesting cache at an appropriate place. I had figured it would be at a car wash, but instead it was outside of a community center for young people called "Clean Fun Club". I made one more stop before heading west out of town. P&G Special by flame897 (GC2FNT6) was outside of a church. I stayed in the lot for a bit updating my paper map with my finds so far.


Next, I picked up four caches at the old Eaker AFB. I had been here before and am pretty sure that the first cache I found was near a spot I had found another cache two visits ago. It is an interesting area as some of it has been repurposed and still has activity.

Cold War Relic-The Terminal by zcoach (GC2HNWE) was an interesting spot with a hide that suprised me given what I had been finding most of the morning.


Cold War Relic-The Memorial by zcoach | (GC2HNW4) was near a memorial to the crew of a B-52 shot down over Hanoi in 1972.


Heading northeast towards the interstate I decided to skip Grandpa's Challenge by Doug&Di (GC1ARRA) and hit Leonarda 3 by LeonardaDaArtsi (GC2EAZQ) before leaving town. I had to cross a muddy area to get to the cache, but the mud was just dry enough that I didn't sink in it.



After leaving town, I headed north into Missouri for more caching fun!