Road Trip

One Hundred and Three Thousand :-)

We were gone for 12 hours, basically from dawn to dusk. A couple miles out of Aiken the Emperor passed by the 103,000 mile mark. Drove 325 miles total, probably 45 with the top down, and spent $22.50 on gas. We ate breakfast at Hardee’s, lunch at Jack’s Cosmic Dogs and dinner was chicken salad sandwiches Donna had made and we took with us. Walked around 2-1/2 miles of the West Ashley Greenway. We found 12 caches (a personal best) and DNF’d 2 (pretty much average.) Crossed off Charleston County and Pages 59, 60 & 61 from our South Carolina Challenges.

So were the hot dogs worth the trip? Yes and no. They were My-T-Fine and if I’m ever in the neighborhood again I’ll definitely stop by and try another variety, but I probably wouldn’t hop in the car drive straight there, eat a dog and drive right home.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 529

Cosmic Dog Run

How far would you drive for a hot dog for lunch? 135 miles? We would.

Saturday we are going to take a road trip to Mt. Pleasant, SC to visit Jack’s Cosmic Dogs. Now the timing of our trip may be a mistake, this place was recently featured on the Food Network’s The Best Thing I Ever Ate (which is the reason we are going), so there might be a crowd, but after driving that far we will probably even wait a bit before giving up.

You know now that I look, if we were to swap the rotation of our loop, we could hit a second place featured in the same show, a BBQ place in Orangeburg. But we won’t be doing that, we’ll just save that for another day.

Of course we will be doing some geocaching too. I’ve picked out almost 40 along the route, but 3/4 of them are if we feel like it on the way there and back. The important ones will be in the middle around Charleston where we hope to get 3 Delorme pages and 1 county for the SC Challenges.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 527

North, Paxville and Manchester State Forest

Geocaching By The Numbers:
1 New County
1 Tank of Gas
2 DeLorme Pages
2 Bags of Lance’s Peanuts
6 Caches Found Today
8 Hours Away From Home
247 Miles Driven
303 Total Caches Found So Far

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 515

3 Gargoyles and a Potato

It came down in buckets all morning, so we watched some DVDs to pass the time, TDTVS Season 5 Episodes 2 & 3 and Disc 1 of Series 1 of an English police show called Blue Murder.

About mid afternoon we couldn’t bear to stay inside any longer and hopped in the car with GPS in hand. There were several new caches on the north side of town that were begging to be found. And we found 6 of the seven attempted. One was in a magnetic key holder, another in a Jack Daniels bottle, three in small gargoyle statues and another in plastic potato. The one we missed must have been hidden using a Romulan Cloaking Device.

Tomorrow a road trip is planned to continue our state challenges. We are aiming to fill a couple of holes by bagging the elusive Sumter County and DeLorme Pages 45 & 47.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 514

101,000 Gator Fans

Pardon My WakeReturned from home Florida today in a marathon 13 hour 607 mile drive, making 8 pit stops along the way. Two for meals, one for a snack, two for gas and 3 just for driver changes. Somewhere south of Orlando the Emperor passed through the 101,000 mile mark. Total mileage for the trip – 1608 miles.

We are always careful about checking for Clemson home football games before heading into the SC upstate, but completely forgot to check for a University of Florida game before planning our route home. We were “forced” off of I-75 near Ocala by the rapidly multiplying Gator fans on their way to the game. Turns out it was for the better though, as we got to retrace some of our route down along some fantastic rural central Florida roads in the opposite direction.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 499

Black Friday

Jolly Mon SongDid the sane thing and avoided any place that had anything to to with shopping today.

We went 1 for 2 in local Palm City geocaches in the morning. There is another that we started after, but we aren’t counting either way – it was 120′ into a swampy area that neither Donna or I could see a non-watery path towards.

In the afternoon we went sailing the St Lucie River around Palm City, Stuart & Port Salerno aboard Jolly Mon Song the 34 foot “yacht” of Sandy and Paul. It was a 3 hour tour with a stop at Finz Waterfront Grille for lunch in the middle.

The evening was spent playing a variation of Oh Hell and watching JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek in Blueray on the Tomlin’s ginormous flat panel TV.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 497

Made It

Lakeside InnWe arrived at our destination in Palm City by lunch time today. A slight mis-turn in the town Okeechobee and two trips to the local Publix put our mileage for Wednesday at 203 miles instead of the 160 Google maps advertises. This brings our total mileage from Aiken to Palm City at 958.

It rained pretty much the whole day so the closest we came to geocaching was a virtual one in Okeechobee, but it was coming down so hard that we did not even get out of the car to answer the questions. I’m not going to count it as a DNF.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 493