Geocaching

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

Long Walk in a Big Woods

There are 5 geocaches inside the boundary of Hitchcock Woods and we had found only one of them so far. Today we thought we might try and get the remaining four. That goal took a severe hit when we couldn’t find the first one we came to – Cuthbert Cache. It is shown as a regular sized cache, meaning we were looking for something the size of a box of Kleenex at least, and the clue limited the search zone to between the trail and a stream, but we couldn’t find it. We moved on vowing to give it another shot on the way out of the woods.

Next objective was Hitchcock’s Mystery which was the one we were 1/4 mile away from once before, but it was 1/4 mile of swamp called Barton’s Pond. Ahhh, an ammo can, we are good with these and because the bushes are still somewhat barren of leaves this was a halfway easy spot for Donna. We left behind the small rubber chicken travel bug we found in yesterday’s Graniteville cache and took out a Blue’s Clues coin purse.

From here we headed over to The Cliffs of Cache.* But now that we were, where we were, getting there, was going to be a long walk because of that pesky Barton Pond again. This time we had already decided to make the long walk, so off we went. We came at this cache from the correct direction according to the clue given, but couldn’t find it. We then figured that when it said approach from the left, they must have meant our other “left”, so we tried from the other side of the cliffs. Followed the GPS to right back where we were the first time and found the cache. TNLNSL.

*This cache was made famous when 2 college kids from USCA were hunting for it one day several years back. They found bones of a body instead. A mystery was solved that day and a family now knows answers.

Next up furtim unus meaning “The Stealthy One.” This one was different from all the others in the woods because it was off the trail a bit, about 100′ into an area that was sparsely treed with pines. We almost gave up on this one, but I spotted after walking in a big circle and getting a different angle on it. This one had another travel bug in it, a green beanie baby bear, so we took it and left behind that coin purse from 2 caches back.

That left our one miss of the day for the walk out. We came at it coming from the opposite direction and the GPS said I was right on it again, but I was 40 feet further up the trail this time. The find zone was even slightly narrower, because the trail and the stream were closer together, but it didn’t help, we came away empty handed. Maybe next time.

According to the GPS that green loop you see above is 6.1 miles long and we spent a little over three hours in the woods. Partly because we were in there so long and partly because it was a glorious spring day we crossed paths with the most people ever, 20 or so horseback riders and and a little more than half that many people walking their dogs.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 149

Breakfast and a Cache

For the second month in a row we combined the MMC breakfast event and some geocaching. We ate at a place that Donna and I have driven by hundreds of times since living here, but never ever thought to go in, the Hard Hat Cafe which sits on the hill going west out of Graniteville, SC. It is the sort of place that is just where one should eat breakfast and is what the originator of this idea for the club had in mind – Mom & Pop places with bottomless coffee for less than a buck (it was good too.) This one was a little different in that not only could you order off the menu, but they had a buffet and that is where the nine of us ate from.

After chow when everyone went their separate ways Donna and I went back down into downtown Graniteville to hopefully find a puzzle geocache – “Milling” Around Town which is sort of like the one we didn’t get in Waynesboro last month.

This one had 6 stages and at each one you had to read a sign or count something that gave a number that needed to be plugged into a spot in the coordinates for finding the next stage. We misinterpreted the very first clue, but didn’t find out until the very end because we had the instructions and are familiar enough with the town to know all the landmarks that the stages ended at. We got to stage 5 (pictured above) and solved the math problem giving us the last numbers for the coordinates, they turned out to tell us that the spot where the actual cache was 1.9 miles to the west. All the other clues were within a 1/4 mile of each other, so that just had to be wrong.

As we walked back to the car Donna was reading all the log notes that I printed out and noticed that someone a couple months back had missed the same clue as we did and sort of gave us the answer. Amazing how if you figure wrong on a clue and then reuse that clue in the addition or subtraction math of another clue, the check sum still comes out correct even when your numbers are off…

After refiguring out the math using this new information we were less than a quarter of a mile away, much better. When we got to the final coordinates, it was intimately familiar, we were just there. We walked around awhile looking for the described 6″ long cylindrical cache in frustration, then as we sat on a bench deciding whether to give up this whole geocaching thing entirely, I noticed in the bush behind us a green tube. Eureka!

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 149

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

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

One For Three

It was cold and windy in the morning so we did the sensible thing and stayed indoors eating Girl Scout cookies. But the call of the wild was too great and by afternoon we just had to go outside and try a couple local caches.

The one in Hopeland Gardens sounded pretty simple and we could get a short walk in wandering around the place before finding the cache. We got the short walk in, but the rest eluded us. Both Donna and I took runs at the location and we narrowed it down to about 20 foot of ivy covering just off a trail, but after a little more than 15 minutes we admitted defeat and headed back to the car.

A short drive up Whiskey Road led us to the library and a small park where objective number two was hidden. The GPS led us right to a back corner of the park, but when we came to the boundary fence we still had 13 feet to go, which would have put us quite literally playing in the traffic (if there was any on a Sunday afternoon.) Looking down there was a nice little pile of bricks. AHA! Sure enough there was an ammo can under them. TNLNSL.

The third cache was a 1/2 mile walk down Colleton Ave called Ye Olde Tire Swing even though the swing has been missing since like 2006. We found the marked Long Leaf Pine Tree mentioned in the instructions and the GPS led us right to what looked like a perfect place for hiding a cache, several minutes spent poking around a couple of shrubs left us with nothing but dirty fingernails and a small scratch on my cheek.

So far we are 2 for 6 in Aiken and 3 for 4 out of town, giving us an .500 average. Terrific if you are a baseball batter and not too bad for cache catching, but if we are going to find a lot of these things we better get better. Both finds in Aiken were ammo cans and on the other finds we were accompanied by Larry & Rita from the MMC, so it appears that we will have to only search for ammo cans or the Garners will have to come with us every time we go geocaching.

Started dow, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 127