Road Trip

The Exact Opposite of Yesterday

Where yesterday was gray and rainy, today was blue and sunny. If it weren’t for a very stiff breeze it would have been a picture perfect spring day. Where yesterday we spent much of it indoors, today was spent mostly outdoors.

We had a 5 for 5 day geocaching. Last Saturday in Graniteville we picked up a Travel Bug who’s goal was to travel to state parks (why it got to Graniteville is a mystery) and we planned on dropping it in the Aiken State Natural Area. After reading the logs for that cache, Donna and I agreed there was a low probability of us finding it. It also wasn’t a high traffic cache, so it might be a while before it got picked up again.

A change of plans resulted in our deciding to go to Barnwell State Park instead. The park itself is closer to Blackville than Barnewll, so I found a couple easy caches in and around that town to give us some other things to hunt. There was even a Virtual Cache that was so easy that you didn’t even need a GPS – The Healing Springs.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 158

89,000 Raindrops

We made the trip east this morning for Breakfast With Laurie. For grins I decided to look for an easy geocache in Florence somewhere near the Cracker Barrel where we meet to maybe entertain us after eating Pecan Pancakes and Eggs in a Basket. Much to my surprise there was one real close, like so close it was actually at the Cracker Barrel. Q is for Quackers. How did I know? For one, its location on the map placed it right at the intersection of I-95 & US52 and secondly this phrase from the description: No rocking chairs were injured during the making of this cache. Looks like we wouldn’t even need the GPS for this one.

And it was a good thing we didn’t need it, as for some reason this morning I couldn’t download the data from the web site to the unit. I tried from both geocaching.com and the Garmin site with no luck. I tested the plugin and it said it was fine. I rebooted the PC. I turned off the GPS a couple of times and it still didn’t work. When we got home from breakfast I finally got it to work by reinstalling the firmware on the Venture HC.

About 4 miles east of the thriving metropolis of Salley, SC the Emperor crossed the 89k miles in service mark.

Oh, yeah, about that cache, we found it no problem. Thanks to the clue – Let this not wash you up for the day, the description of the cache – You are looking for a black magnetic key holder and the logs – I had to get over my shyness about sticking my butt up in the air. It was under an old timely washing bucket with a mechanical wringer in between two rocking chairs on the porch of the restaurant.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 144

Giant Metal Squirrels

On our little tour of Daufuskie Island there were several historic sites and a couple of art “galleries” that were highlighted for us to stop at.

When we left the General Store and Cart Rental place we started out following the recommended tour route. The first stop was a spot that held two historic places, an old church and an old school. Of course there were two other golf carts stopped there too, so we hung around until they left and instead of continuing on the “tour” we took the first left we could. From then on we almost never saw any of our ferry mates again. Hey we came here to get away from people.

We eventually rode on most of the tour route just backwards or coming at it sideways. There were a couple of historic cemeteries that we wanted to check out and in spite of traveling down the roads they were on, never did see any. We did find one of the artist galleries, The Iron Fish, and parked our golf cart under the tree in the side yard. It is a 100 year-old original island house that has a front porch that serves as the gallery and the front wall is covered with funky, yet appealing schools of metal fish. The are also metal crabs and mermaids mixed in. There was a note on the front door with purchase instructions: If you see something you like take it and slip your money under the door. For credit card purchases, leave a note saying what you bought and your phone number. A nice school of four small fish would be an awesome decoration on a living room or bed room wall, but at $85 per fish they were a bit rich for our blood.

As we got back into the cart to leave we both noticed several large metal squirrels stuck to the trunk of the tree and both of us went, “Coool.” I checked the price and they were $45 a piece and both of us went, “Naaah.” Just before turning the key to start the cart Donna said, “You sure?” I hesitated and then said, “Why not?” Chase, the artist, was in his backyard, so I walked over and gave him the cash. He offered to wrap it up, but we declined just sticking it in the bottom of our black travel bag.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 143

Daufuskie Island

The main reason for ferrying over to this small barrier island off the South Carolina coast was to take a picture of the Post Office, we also wanted to enjoy a place that the primary mode of transportation is a golf cart. There are cars & trucks on the island, but only the full time residents, of which there are only around 200, are allowed to keep one. We also wanted to try and find the one and only cache there, Life of Leisure. It is a micro, which we aren’t having too much luck with, but listed as “not at all hard to find.”

I’m sure we were right on it and with the clue given as eye level, it should have been easy, but we couldn’t find it. The location is right near the 18th fairway of one of the Daufuskie Island Resort’s golf courses, so we had to dodge golfers and balls. There was a dead tree right on the spot that looked like it was a woodpecker buffet line with lots of holes that a micro could have fit in, but I didn’t see one, nor did I find one hidden under all the chips. Dang.

We were now 0 for 3 on micro caches this trip with the two failure to finds in Beaufort yesterday. Not only didn’t we find this cache, but we didn’t find a full size one on Hilton Head that we tried before boarding the ferry. We suck at this. But we aren’t about to give this up yet, instead of being discouraged by the failures we are now more set in our resolve not to be defeated.

The round trip ferry ride is $23 a person and a 3 hour rental of a golf cart is $50, so we crammed quite a bit of traveling into our day. The boat arrived on the island at 11:00 AM and we covered a bunch of ground before heading back to the landing for lunch at the Old Daufuskie Crab company. After lunch with not much time left until our return trip, we decided to stay until the 5:15 ferry, if we could keep the golf cart. We I asked if it was alright if we kept it over the 3 hour limit the fellow told me usually they charge an additional twenty bucks, but he said don’t worry about it, just be back by 4:00 PM. I’m sure his answer would have been different had it been high season, but I thanked him and we set back out to poke around in some places we hadn’t been yet.

Most of the roads in the resorts and planned to be resorts were paved, but all of the internal main island roads are dirt. Donna, who is normally driving averse, actually loved driving the golf cart around the island because with traffic being almost non existent and with a top speed of 14 MPH down hill, piloting the cart is a blast. We will definitely be visiting again, may not be for another year, but a return trip is going to happen sometime. There are lots of little stories to tell, but my fingers are getting tired from typing, so maybe another time. The island is only 2.5 miles wide by 5 miles long, so just look up at the attached picture and note the green line, that is our track from the GPS and some of those routes we traveled more than once. We covered some ground.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 142

Almost Half Bad Day

I hope after 458 geocaches we are as good at finding them as we are Post Offices. The Beaufort and St. Helena Island POs were crossed off the list in short order, but neither of the caches I picked out in Beaufort for us to find were found. I know we found the correct spots from the descriptions and or titles, but locating the actual item we were looking for didn’t happen.

What kept us slightly above the 50% find rate today was a second look at finding the cache in Hopeland Gardens right in Aiken. This time, like the first attempt, we zeroed in on where the cache was and even though we both had ideas where it might be hidden and now knew exactly what the cache looked like (thanks to looking at the online comments) we still couldn’t locate it. That was until I decided to check the underside of a small birdhouse, the cache wasn’t there, but while leaning down to look I noticed that the hole didn’t actually go through the wood, it wasn’t a bird house, it was a cache house. The side panel was hinged. Ingenious.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 140

Wild Wild West

We are planning a two week vacation this year and heading west to do a giant road trip. We are flying and renting a car, so we can get further west than Dallas, which was the last two week Miata driving vacation we took (to go to Miata World 99.)

We are landing in Denver on a Saturday in April and heading north. The first week is pretty much planned out – Mato Tipila, Big Heads, Carhenge, Garden of the Gods and then four days in New Mexico (two here and then two here.) The second week is still up in the air, possible places we might go range from Roswell to Four Corners to the Bonneville Salt Flats (where I want to see just how fast our rental car can go.)

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 119

Opened The Box

I looked up that second Mount Pleasant location on the net last night and neither one of yesterday’s places were, as I suspected, the official PO. The actual CPU was about a mile down the road in another shopping center. Amendment 1 to the Post Office Photo Safari Constitution was created today. It reads: While still in the area of an unlocatable Post Office from the Big List, it is perfectly acceptable to search the USPS web site to find the updated Post Office and subsequentially photograph it. So first thing this morning we went back over the Cooper River Bridge, and like yesterday it was just as the sun was coming up. With only a slight bit of drama we found the Mount Pleasant CPU tucked inside a place called Smoker Friendly.

A ten mile dash on I-526 led us to North Charleston where our first originally scheduled Post Office of the day caused a real problem. 1050 E Montague Avenue had a regular blue box outside, along with a blue distribution box, but zero outward signs of actually being a Post Office. The sign hanging off the front and the gold painted letters on the window both proclaimed this was Aunt Bea’s Restaurant. I took a photo anyway, then we circled the block just in case, but no other evidence of postal activity was found.

The next Post Office, according to my Google map, was not too far away at the point where E Montague met up with US52, AKA Rivers Ave. When we got to there though the address numbers were in the low four thousands. Ack. We headed north in the hopes that the blocks were short, they weren’t, after about 5 miles we found the Post Office. Trouble was we now had to back track all that way because there was still one more PO in North Charleston to get. After that we needed to go back north further than that pesky North Charleston PO to get the ones in Goose Creek, Charleston Southern University and Ladson.

Once through with Post Offices the weather had warmed enough that we could drive home with the top down. About 15 miles from home I added Amendment 2 to the Post Office Photo Safari Constitution, to wit: It is acceptable to shoot a new Post Office not on the Big List when it was created several years ago or to retake a Post Office photo if it has been updated or replaced since the Big List was created, only if said Post Office is plainly visible from the driver’s seat while traveling the roads of South Carolina and as long as that travel wasn’t specifically for the purpose of taking a photo of said Post Office.

Almost exactly 5 years ago when we started this adventure, the town of Windsor was using a trailer for their Post Office, in the intervening years the trailer was replaced by a regular building.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 111