Geocaching

Travel Bug Fun

James Brown ArenaFirst up is Hockeyhick’s and Cache-n-Kerry’s Road-tripping Puck which is a souvenir puck from the Greenville (SC) Grrrowl minor league hockey team. The team has since folded and the TB owners want this puck to be their proxie fan and to “take it to pee-wee games, high school and college games, minor league and pro games, all around the globe!” We feel for the Greenville hockey fans as just last year the team over in Augusta pulled the same folding act. Coincidentally the Growl and the Augusta Lynx played against each other frequently because they were in the very same league. Sunday before last we drove over to Augusta to take a picture of the puck in front of the home of the Augusta Lynx, James Brown Arena.

Cole Bros CircusSecond is Simba from Disney’s popular 1994 animated feature film The Lion King. Simba’s goal is to see as many zoos, circus’ and habitats as he can before returning home. We found Simba in one of the caches from our big loop on Sunday and when we got home and read the goal, Donna said, “Hey, there is a circus coming to Augusta next weekend.” I checked the interweb and it turns out the circus was in town right then and the last showing was already well underway. We hopped in the car and drove over anyway. Turned out it was perfect timing. The crowd was almost entirely gone and the roustabouts were just starting to strike the big top. Walked in, Donna held Simba in her hand, I snapped the photo and we left. We might swing by the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia this weekend for another photo op.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 390

17% Done

When I said there were 63 pages to the South Carolina DeLorme Challenge I was wrong. The last map appears on page 63, but the first 15 pages of the book have other information, the first map page is #16. That means there are only 48 pages to find caches on.

We already have eight of forty-eight done, so we are almost 17% finished. Well really, if we stick to having separate caches for each of the challenges, we are only 7 of 48 because the one lonely find we have over in Summerton, Woodside Wonder, is eligible for use in Clarendon County and DeLorme Page #47.

It probably won’t be lonely for long though, got a breakfast meet at the Cracker Barrel in Florence with cousin Laurie on Sunday. I predict more counties and pages will be gotten this weekend.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 388

Brian & Donna Buy A Lottery Ticket

We needed a renewal on Retirement Plan B, so we made a trip to Georgia to buy a chance at the next ten drawings of Mega Millions. Augusta is about fifteen miles away as the crow flies, but our round trip was 200 miles long.

It included a route that took us through the South Carolina counties of McCormick and Edgefield. You can guess why the long circuitous route, geocaching, but what was the significance of the counties? It was because of the South Carolina County Challenge. If you find a cache in every one of South Carolina’s forty-six counties, you will get the coordinates to this bonus 47th cache and then you can add this “prestigious” goal to your caching resume. Eight down, thirty-eight to go.

On our way home we stopped in at Books-A-Million to buy something that will help us accomplish a sister challenge to the county one, the South Carolina DeLorme Challenge. You buy a $20 book and you have to find a cache on each of the 63 pages it takes to cover the state to get the coords for the final mystery cache and another trophy for the mantle.

The rules don’t disallow using the same cache in both challenges, but to us that would seem like cheating, so we will be getting at least 109 more caches in South Carolina. I’m willing to bet it will be a lot more than that.

I only wish we knew of this stuff back a few years ago when we were going on those Post Office Photography Safaris.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 388

Boyd Pond

Boyd PondWe spent a pleasant morning traipsing through the woods surrounding Boyd Pond today. Boyd Pond is a recreation area slash park that is southwest of Aiken and when we first moved here it was available only to employees of the Big Bomb Plant, but now it is open to every Tom, Dick & Harry (I think.) There is a switchback laden trail on the east side of the lake for hiking and biking along with a straighter, shorter nature trail. On the west side is a park with a boat launch, picnic tables, playgrounds and softball fields. We did all 5 caches here, 3 east and two west while walking 4-1/2 miles.

Lunch was outside at Moe’s watching the Whiskey Road traffic zoom by and the afternoon was spent watching Season 7 Disc 2 of West Wing. Only 15 episodes left…

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 386

Really Expensive Pedometer II

Have I mentioned lately that my GPSr isn’t working? I thought so. We are approximately 4 days into the 12 to 15 working days before our repaired unit is scheduled to be returned to us.

Two working days into the process we knew we wouldn’t be able to make it that long. We bought a new Garmin eTrex Vista? HCx from Walmart online and had it shipped to us. The UPS man dropped it on the doorstep this afternoon.

This is a slightly upgraded unit compared to the one that is broken and in for repair. It has a micrSD slot so there can be a lot more stuff stored in the unit, like gigabytes worth instead of just 24 Meg. It has an electric compass, so when I stop befuddled in the middle of the woods while looking for a cache, the needle will still be pointing at the cache instead flopping around. It has a barometric altimeter, so I will know how high we are above sea level (which the Venture does too when the topo maps are used) or maybe when there is an approaching storm. It also has the ability to give point to point on road directions like a Tom Tom or similar, but we probably will never use that feature.

There are ammo cans shaking in there hiding spots just knowing we are back in the game again.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 386

Yucca Valley

Yucca ValleyWe saw no yucca plants on the Yucca Valley trail in Hitchcock Woods when we traveled it yesterday. I would tell you how far we walked in the woods, but I can’t because our GPSr is broken and hopefully in Olathe, Kansas by now.

This morning we got up early-ish and rode a big loop ending up downtown to pay bills. Unfortunately the New Moon wasn’t open so we couldn’t get a muffin for breakfast. Ended up at Waffle House.

After breakfast we drove over to Augusta to take a picture of a hockey puck in front of the James Brown Arena, which is as close to geocaching as we could get. Have I mentioned our GPSr is broken?

On the way home from Georgia a line of birds started to waltz out out in front of us way out on Pine Log Rd. They got part way and turned around and then as soon as I got by they came back out and completed the trip.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 382

Covey of Cachers

I mean that not in a avian way, but in a Deadhead or Phish Followers way. These are a few of ingredients that were stirring around in my subconscious leading to last night’s final dream:

  1. Attending the June CSRA Geocachers meeting where there were 60-70 people.
  2. Reading the logs of caches where it seems like some folks travel in packs from 6 to 12 or more and do big quantities of finds in a day.
  3. A brief conversation with a cache owner when I returned his banished from SCDNR land ammo can.
  4. A short scene from the last movie we watched, Invisible Circus.
  5. I ate too much junk from the Ryan’s Mega Bar the night before.
  6. Waking a 4AM to go to the bathroom, thus leaving enough time to get back into deep REM sleep before…
  7. …being jolted awake mid dream so the last snippets were fresh in my brain.

We were out caching on a South Carolina back road and had just logged a find. Donna was sitting in the car planning our next destination and I was walking the short distance into the woods to replace the ammo can. Donna shouted, with a slight bit of alarm in her voice, "Brian!" I hastily tossed some pine straw over the cache and started out of the woods. I can see what caused her state. There parked on the other side of the road from where we were was a bus that looked like it came from a scene in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. And out of the bus piled dozens of people aged from 8 to 80 in odd dress that looked like it was borrowed from J.F. Sebastian's manufactured companions in Blade Runner. There was juggling, a unicycle rider, tambourine playing, etc. As I got closer I recognized the faces, they belonged to geocachers from the local Club. Just as I was crossing the street to introduce myself to one of these characters with a Cyrano de Bergerac nose when the alarm went off.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 380