Road Trip

Crooked River


The sun reflects off the Crooked River as viewed from the Georgia State Park of the same name. Six caches, five counties, one DeLorme page and one GA State Park.

How Low Can You Go

We went on a Georgia Geocaching run today. We needed to check on our cache in Santa Claus because of a recent DNF and while we were out, take a route to capture 4 nearby counties of Georgia’s 159 total.

Neither one of us could figure out how we had hid a cache in Toombs county (Santa Claus) without having a find there. So our first stop of the day was to change that. We found LIFE’S A GAME, HAVE FUN! in a park in the town of Lyons. Next stop was to check on the DNF’d cache. Usually one person not finding a cache is not a concern, but the folks who couldn’t find it had over 1,600 finds, so they probably should have found it. The cache was right where we put it last December. That’s the thing with geocaching, no matter how many you have found, you can still get stumped by an occasional easy one.

In some of these small rural counties pickings can be slim, so we only had a total of 11 caches on our list along the route through all 4 counties. One county only has two caches total and we really started sweating badly after we DNF’d the first one we attempted. It was all I could do to talk Donna into looking for the second one because in is #2 on our Most Hated Style Hide List, the guardrail magnetic (the lamp post skirt hide is #1.) We had kind of a rough day, 4 finds and 3 DNFs, but we made the four count, one in each of the counties we wanted.

I don’t know exactly how many miles we traveled today, because I didn’t reset an odometer, but the Google Maps loop I did last night said 268 miles. When we got in the Purple Whale this morning the nifty miles to empty meter read just over 250 miles and the gas gauge was reading one segment over half a tank. We figured we might have to buy a gallon or two of gas in Georgia so we could make it back to the Kroger in Aiken to take advantage of the $1 a gallon off we earned by buying a stove. As the day wore on it looked more and more like we might make it home without having to pay the higher price for gas in Georgia.

We figured we were home free when the miles to empty read 80 miles and the sign said Augusta 41 because Aiken is only, at most 25 miles from Augusta. When the low fuel light came on as we entered the southern part of Augusta I was unconcerned as I figured that meant we had a couple gallons left which was more than enough to make it back. At about 5 miles from Kroger, the Miles To Empty display flat-lined. The last number I remember seeing was 38 a few miles back. We were right near a gas station, briefly considered pulling in, but didn’t. Let’s summarize: the low fuel light has been one awhile, the Miles to Empty display is blank and now the last LCD segment of the gas gauge has started blinking. Visions of the car stalling at the very last light before Kroger were taking form in my mind.

Well, we did make it the Kroger, even waited for a pump to free up with the car still running. I filled the tank with 17.5 gallons of gas and it cost $38.38 or $2.19 per. We had traveled 502.5 miles on that 17.5 gallons so since the last fill up the Sonata got 28.7 MPG. While I was outside filling the tank Donna was inside trying to see exactly how much the car’s tank would hold, turns out it is 18.49 gallons. All that worry about running out of gas and I could have traveled over 28 more miles. As long as all 18-1/2 gallons are usable…

Beach View = No Internet

We took Friday off and drove down to HHI for a “working” vacation geocaching along the way. We managed to grab 5 caches on the way down, not many, but they were quality caches towards our Georgia Geo Challenges as they counted for 3 counties and one DeLorme page. The second half of the day was rained out so we headed to Hilton Head instead of looking for the other two caches in 2 Georgia State Parks. We figured we would get them before heading home on Sunday. Of course when we made it to the condo it was sunny.

This turned out to be a good thing in two ways. First, it allowed us to take pictures of 4 of the 5 condos that needed updating, freeing Saturday morning for a nap. And second, we found out when we got home on Sunday, we would have never found the cache in Fort McAllister State Park because it had been moved and I still had the old coordinates loaded.

The whole time we spend on the Island we had beautiful weather. Saturday morning we got in nice long walk on the beach and for most of the return trip we shadowed a dolphin as it fed in the surf. The above mentioned nap. Takeout lunch from Gruby’s NY Deli on the balcony of the condo. The last set of condo photos was taken in between one set of folks checking out, the clean up and another set of people checking. DTCQ took us out for a nice dinner at the Skull Creek Boathouse where we ate and watched the Kentucky Derby on about 12 big screen TVs. (How is it that someone who lives in a horse town could have no clue that the Derby was being run that day?)

Sunday morning we got going early as we wanted to get to Skidaway Island State Park near Savannah when it opened. There was a bonus cache we were eligible to find that was tide dependent. It needed to be sought at low tide because you had to cross tidal marsh to retrieve it. Low tide this morning was 06:51, the Park opened at 07:00 and we made the trail head by 07:10. And although we were only like 30 minutes past the listed time for low tide, it was a little scary crossing the marsh. Being total landlubbers, we understood the principles of how tides worked, but were not too sure that the sine wave profile usually shown for tides was 100% accurate and wondered if it was more digital looking (i.e. on|off|on|off) and we might be washed out to sea at any moment. In spite of our worries we did make the find and get back to dry land safe and sound. To say the official State Park cache was a let down after the bonus cache is not an exaggeration, but it was still an awesome cache in its own right with marsh views, palm trees, Spanish moss and a close encounter with a white tailed deer.

We then headed home to the usual Sunday evening drudgery of washing clothes, grocery shopping and getting ready for the work week ahead.

Today we drove the Miata to work and for the first time ever it seemed small. Tonight the big car got a bath for tomorrow’s appointment with the optometrist for some sunglasses (windows are getting tinted.)

Georgia State Park Geocaching

On the trip back from Robbinsville, North Carolina today we knocked off three more Georgia State Park caches, along with 2 Georgia Counties and one DeLorme page. We walked a little over 6 miles total in the three parks and in one place I thought for a minute we were in an Enchanted Forest. The trail kept going up and up and up, so it seemed like they had figured out how to make a loop trail uphill for the whole length.

We’ve had the Sonata now for a whole three days and there are 731 miles on it, 702 of which are ours. At this pace in the first year of ownership we will accumulate 88,938 miles.

Today’s “Holy Crap This Car Is Big” story came at a driver exchange in a Burger King parking lot in Commerce, Georgia. At the previous driver change when Donna gave up the driver’s seat to me, she didn’t move the seat at all and I had to squeeze in. So this time she thought she would do me a big favor and move the seat all the way down and back. Trouble was, once she got the seat in that position, she couldn’t reach the door handle anymore to let herself out.

Ain’t No Miata

But it ain’t half bad. After a brief visit with my sister and her husband in Hendersonville (where the temperature was 48°) and eating at our favorite pizza place, West One, we headed west to do a little research for our fall Gap Trip with the Miata Club. When we got to Robbinsville it was 30 degrees warmer than H-ville. After reconnoitering a couple restaurants, eating dinner in one, and a couple of motels, we decided to take an evening drive in the mountains.

The Sonata handles pretty well for a big front wheel drive car, the 45 series tires help, but being an automatic transmission it isn’t nearly as responsive as the Miata in the twisties. We didn’t attempt Deal’s Gap proper, but did run up 129 to the Tail of the Dragon Store, head back south on 28 past Fontana Dam and then cut across 143 back into town. The Sonata has a slap stick shift lever that you can use to manually shift the 5 speed transmission, but its placement is too awkward for good functionality. But the SE version we bought has paddle shifters on the steering wheel, so I thought I would try using them on 129 when the road turns sharply uphill at the Fugitive Dam. It lasted maybe all of 3 minutes. Donna told me she wasn’t so distracted by my activation of the turn signals when down shifting, so much as the wipers swooshing by on the dry windshield when I hit the stalk instead of the paddle when attempting to shift up a gear. I think I’m going to need more practice at that…

Don’t be alarmed at the lack of atop count, I’ve decided to not add it to the bottom of the post when the Miata hasn’t been driven on that day.

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