Geocaching

CREEK XING


You found [Traditional Cache] Victoria Bryant State Park
The water didn’t seem too high as the Miata made it through fine with just a touch of belt squeal post creek crossing. This is our favorite park so far out of the 17 we’ve visited. We took a heart shaped BB game and left a Gingerbread Man watch. Dropped Mickey Mouse TB. TFTH


You found [Traditional Cache] Froggy
Our GPSr led us right to a likely spot. We searched and searched and came up empty handed. We read the clue, well, this spot certainly fits the description. Oh, wait, the clue applies reasonably well to the other side of the trail too. Bingo! There it was. Took nothing and left 3 frog shaped erasers. Found as part of the Georgia DeLorme Challenge (GCZ8XQ)


You found [Multi-cache] The King of Bridges!
We found this in spite of ourselves. First off, read the whole page through and secondly pay attention to what you read. I thought we needed ABCD to fill in the coords for the final so we figured with the clue included in the last paragraph we could wing it without having one of the digits. Sure enough we located the final stage only to be greeted with a combination lock! Huh? Re-read the cache description page and discovered that ABCD is for the lock and the final coords are right there on the cache page. Well we have three of the numbers, we’ll just try those and ten tugs on the hasp with the ten numbers on that last dial. Didn’t work. So we walked back to read the missing number off the green sign for B that we didn’t get on our first try. Turned around and walked back to the cache again. Entered our four numbers and it didn’t unlock. Now we are questioning our counting of reflectors on the bridge. My wife then read the questions out loud to me and when she got to D I had to do a Homer Simpson forehead slapping, “DOH!” That was the ticket. We took nothing and left a Matchbox car and a couple of pencils.


You found [Traditional Cache] Shaking Rock
We almost didn’t stop as we were tired from a long day of caching and still had many miles to get home, but boy are we glad we did. What a neat place. Left a book and took a Travel Bug. Thanks. Found as part of the Georgia County Challenge (GC1B074)

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 968

119,000 Drops of Water

The Emperor passed the 119,000 mile milestone just outside Thompson, GA this afternoon on his way home from a geocaching adventure in northeast Georgia. We marked off three State Parks, three Counties and two DeLorme pages in two days on one tank of gas.

RE: The picture above, “What were you thinking? Where are you driving to?”

Started up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 967

Dam

Donna and I piled into Joan’s car this morning and drove back to up to the Modoc Trail in McCormick County to find the one that got away last weekend. We had received an unsolicited hint from the CO after he read our DNF log. We might have just chalked this cache up to a loss and moved on, but this is the first stage of a multi with about 16 stages that takes you on a tour all around the state of South Carolina. We figure we have lived here long enough that just maybe it is time for us to explore the place a bit and see what this state has to offer.*

*Imagine this sentence rendered in the sarcasm font.

The hint turned out to be no help because it told us to look somewhere we had already looked, but we had to give it try anyway. Seeing as we drove all that way and came up empty handed we tried a couple more caches over by Thurmond Dam. The first one we looked for was listed as kid friendly, so we figured we shouldn’t have any trouble with it. Wrong, apparently it was adult un-friendly as we came up empty handed.

There was one other cache, a short three stage multi, that was also on the South Carolina side of the base of the dam. Stage 1 was easy, but at stage two you needed to get a date that was to be found on top of a stone column for the coords for Stage 3. Unfortunately there was no plaque on top, just a metal lid with a padlock covering the column. We got the north coordinates by counting the flood gates, but still needed the two digits of a day in July 1980 to add to the last three digits in the Stage 1 west coordinates to get the final stage’s west coords. Being patriotic Americans we started by plugging in the number generated by using July 4, 1980. That took us to the middle of the parking area for a boat ramp. Hmmm, no good. So I created a waypoint for the first of July and then another for the 31st. Because we had the north coordinates the cache had to lie somewhere on a line between July 1st’s waypoint and the 31st’s waypoint. Knowing that, and reading the clue, it allowed us to make the find, with Joan making the actual grab. Time constraints sent us home after this so we could up our Find/DNF ratio.

This afternoon the Emperor got a transfusion and had his socks swapped with his gloves (oils change and tire rotation.)

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 956

Summer’s Here

Tomorrow it is going to be 81° and on Monday even warmer at 83°.

Surprise, surprise, we ate breakfast at Dunkin Donuts and then did some geocaching. The real surprise was that we didn’t roll out of bed until 8 o’clock. And that made DD quite busy, but we did luck out by just missing one onslaught of customers and ended up right ahead of another. While we dined, we read in the Aiken Standard about a local nominee for the World’s Stupidest Criminal – Robbing A Bank Is Thirsty Work and the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal reviewed one of the 16 contenders for the Bogardus’s new car – Hyundai Elantra by comparing it to the new 2012 Ford Focus (which will now be added to the list replacing the previous generation’s coupe).

Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 956

Your Geocaching Name Is Tag-a-Long

In a scene eerily not at all reminiscent of Larry Kroger and Kent Dorfman getting their Delta Tau Chi fraternity names of Pinto and Flounder, Joan received her geocaching user name today, tag-a-long.*

What started as a simple couple hour trip, with a mile and a half walk, to grab 5 geocaches along a new, not completely finished, section of the North Augusta Greeneway, turned into six hours, 6.2 miles of traipsing hither and yon, nine finds, 2 DNFs, meeting seven geocachers, one of whom is the local “godfather”, and lunch.

On the first pass we couldn’t find one of the five, so we got in the car and drove down to a different parking area to look for a few new caches located on the original section of the Greeneway. We were signing the log when a couple of folks walked up and one had a GPS in his hand. As is tradition, when meeting a cacher who is a stranger, you introduce yourselves with name, geocaching handle and then fall into discussing common finds, hints for DNFs and an invitation to the next group gathering.

With a hint hot in hand, we walked back to the car, drove back to the original destination to look for the one we missed in our first pass. As we walked up the gravel pathway, we saw up ahead, four adults, a loose kid and one in a stroller milling about at a spot that held one of the caches we had found earlier. Again we introduced ourselves around. One of the women looked at Joan and asked what her geocaching name was. I said, “She doesn’t have one.” Joan answered, “I’m just tagging along.” The woman said, “See, you have your name, tag-a-long.”

*She’ll have to add a number on the end though to differentiate between the other user who already has that name.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 948

A Bridge In The Woods

Just on the other side of this bridge is a new cache on a trail in McCormick County. We were the second folks to visit it in the 3 weeks that it has been active. The only thing is, that bridge is a little over 4 miles along the trail from the parking area. We are not totally insane, we didn’t walk all the way out here just for this one cache. There were 5 others along this trail and we found four of them (5 of 6 total for the day.)

We used to mountain bike on this trail way back in the early 90s and there were lots of places that were familiar. We didn’t ride this trail as much as the others in the area because it was a lot more technical, but there are lots of nice scenic riding in between the several rocky creek crossings we remember having to get off the bike and walk.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 948

Barnwell State Park

Today Donna and I, along with friend Joan, headed to Blackville to have lunch at Miller’s Bread Basket, a great little Mennonite restaurant there. Of course we did a little geocaching too. After we ate, we headed south to Barnwell State Park where there were two ammo cans crying out to be found. When we got to the park we were surprised to learn we had been here BC (Before Caching), when we had circled the lower lake on the Dogwood Interpretive Trail. We didn’t even know there was another trail in the park until we discovered that there were a couple of geocaches there.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 941