Long Walk in a Big Woods

There are 5 geocaches inside the boundary of Hitchcock Woods and we had found only one of them so far. Today we thought we might try and get the remaining four. That goal took a severe hit when we couldn’t find the first one we came to – Cuthbert Cache. It is shown as a regular sized cache, meaning we were looking for something the size of a box of Kleenex at least, and the clue limited the search zone to between the trail and a stream, but we couldn’t find it. We moved on vowing to give it another shot on the way out of the woods.

Next objective was Hitchcock’s Mystery which was the one we were 1/4 mile away from once before, but it was 1/4 mile of swamp called Barton’s Pond. Ahhh, an ammo can, we are good with these and because the bushes are still somewhat barren of leaves this was a halfway easy spot for Donna. We left behind the small rubber chicken travel bug we found in yesterday’s Graniteville cache and took out a Blue’s Clues coin purse.

From here we headed over to The Cliffs of Cache.* But now that we were, where we were, getting there, was going to be a long walk because of that pesky Barton Pond again. This time we had already decided to make the long walk, so off we went. We came at this cache from the correct direction according to the clue given, but couldn’t find it. We then figured that when it said approach from the left, they must have meant our other “left”, so we tried from the other side of the cliffs. Followed the GPS to right back where we were the first time and found the cache. TNLNSL.

*This cache was made famous when 2 college kids from USCA were hunting for it one day several years back. They found bones of a body instead. A mystery was solved that day and a family now knows answers.

Next up furtim unus meaning “The Stealthy One.” This one was different from all the others in the woods because it was off the trail a bit, about 100′ into an area that was sparsely treed with pines. We almost gave up on this one, but I spotted after walking in a big circle and getting a different angle on it. This one had another travel bug in it, a green beanie baby bear, so we took it and left behind that coin purse from 2 caches back.

That left our one miss of the day for the walk out. We came at it coming from the opposite direction and the GPS said I was right on it again, but I was 40 feet further up the trail this time. The find zone was even slightly narrower, because the trail and the stream were closer together, but it didn’t help, we came away empty handed. Maybe next time.

According to the GPS that green loop you see above is 6.1 miles long and we spent a little over three hours in the woods. Partly because we were in there so long and partly because it was a glorious spring day we crossed paths with the most people ever, 20 or so horseback riders and and a little more than half that many people walking their dogs.