Close

We went for a walk in Hitchcock Wodds today, not just any walk either, it was our inaugural attempt at geocaching. I had loaded about 7 geocaches into the GPS, but we printed out the instructions for one that was accessible from a road that took us to a woods entrance for start. I started down Coker Springs road, even after it turned to dirt (well, actually mud with yesterday’s rain), but stopped a hundred yards down when I came to a berm across the road that looked high enough to strand a Miata. So I backed up the hill to pavement and parked.

We walked back down the road with the GPS in hand and it led us right to the Coker Spring House. We were right there, but after 5 minutes of fruitless searching, we were close, the GPS was reading under 10 feet away at times. I talked Donna into stop looking, go for a walk in the woods and try again on the way out because we had to pass right by there.

About a half mile into the woods I looked at the GPS for the next closest cache and it showed one about a half mile away, but the direction it was in was straight down a trail that had become a shallow stream because of the rain. Next closest was .9 miles away, so we opted to try and find that instead. Trying to follow the directional arrow on the GPS and stay on a trail that took us in the right direction was interesting. When we got within a 1/4 mile we realized that the cache was on the other side of a swamp area and the only way to get to it to go in 3/4 mile circle around the wetland. Close, but because we had already gone almost 2 miles, with about a mile to go to get back to the car, we decided to save that one for another day.

On the way back we took a slight detour to try and find the second cache because we were coming from a drier direction. Until we got close. A short squishy walk on Sand River and the GPS pointer locked hard left – up a 15′ cliff like bank. Retreat down river and then a short walk along the trail (current stream) led to a trail that took us to where the cache should be. With the GPS reading distances in the single digits we milled about for awhile and I lobbied for moving on, Donna would have nothing of it. And it was as if she knew she was that close, because less than a half minute later she shouted, “I got it.”

Fresh from our success we tried for the Coker Springs cache again and another 5-10 minutes of beating bushes resulted in a no find again.