Geocaching

Ducks On The Water

The lower lake in Barnwell State Park.

Started down, went went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1110

12,000 Men in Blue and Gray

On the way back from HHI we grabbed a cache in another State Park in the Sandhills Challenge, Rivers Bridge.

Easy walk to the cache. We swapped out a couple SC Parks items for a couple of McToys and a coveted South of the Border bumper stickers.

After finding the cache we walked the mile straight trail to visit the battlefield. I guess because we are close to the anniversary of the actual February 2nd & 3rd battle there were a group a Civil War re-enacters touring the site as well. We stopped and listened as one gentleman read a letter from a Confederate survivor of the battle.

Thanks for bringing us here.

On February 2, 1865, a Confederate force under Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws held the crossings of the Salkehatchie River against the advance of the right wing of Sherman?s Army. Federal soldiers began building bridges across the swamp to bypass the road block. In the meantime, Union columns worked to get on the Confederates? flanks and rear. On February 3, two Union brigades waded the swamp downstream and assaulted McLaws?s right. McLaws retreated toward Branchville after stalling Sherman?s advance for only one day.

Although historically not a large battle, the Battle at River’s Bridge was significant because it is the last defensive effort of the Confederates against the march of Sherman’s army to Columbia. Actually, only in total, approximately 6,200 soldiers were involved in this battle – 5,000 Union soldiers, and 1,200 Confederate. 262 men were killed – 92 Union and 170 Confederate.

Somewhere on I-95 North this morning the Purple Whale passed over the 12,000 mile mark.

This Looks Familiar

Donna and I have criss-crossed the state of South Carolina several times. First just to get acquainted when we moved here, then chasing every post office in the state and more recently searching for geocaches in every county and on every DeLorme page. There is hardly a SC numbered highway tat we haven’t traveled, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that we had been to Lake Warren State Park before, but it did.

We had even walked the entirety of the nature trail before on a previous journey. This time we were here for the Caches, of which there were two. One cache, the one we were really there after, one our current obsession, the Sandhills Regional Challenge, was on a small loop trail near the lake. The second was on the previously mentioned nature trail. The Sandhills Challenge was was a quick find, but the Savannah’s Tin Hat Treasure was another story:

Our GPSr has been giving us fits recently. I think the Electronic Compass is affecting the directional arrow, when following the arrow to caches it has a tendency to suddenly point askew, while the distance slowly ticks down correctly. When using the map feature the pointer that represents our direction does the same thing. Twisty trails don’t help at all. This has us wandering in circles quite a bit.

This trek was a fine example, we ended up getting turned around several times and when our distance got down below 300′ we charged into the woods bushwhacking away, figuring it was our only chance. Fortunately the water level was winter low or we probably would have gotten our feet wet.

We made the find and took a McToy Panda Bear while leaving a bunny and a South of the Border bumper sticker. We walked the opposite way we came in, thereby stumbling on the trail a mere 40′ away from GZ. We walked in the direction we thought would take us back to where we parked, but as it turned out we found the trail end where the bench overlooking the pond is. Dang, the trail is not a loop and we had turned the wrong way. We could see our car, it was so close, but there was no way to get to it except to retrace the entire trail back. Meh, not us, I lead another bushwhacking expedition towards the road I could see. Probably would have been shorter to go back on the trail…we managed to turn what probably is a 1 mile walk into double that.

Thanks for the cache!

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1104

Off The Hook

While sitting on the couch last night using the laptop to plan today’s geocaching adventure to Columbia, Donna was watching Diners, Drive-In and Dives. We were thinking of eating lunch at California Dreaming, but our plans were changed by the 10:30 episode of Triple D, which featured a place called Pawley’s Front Porch.

First stop though was Sesqui-Centennial State Park in northeast Columbia that has 10 geocaches. Looking at the map at home it seemed like most of them were on the shorter loop that closely circles the lake. Turns out I was wrong, they were scattered all over the place, on and off, some of the dozen or so miles of trails. We ended up spending 3 hours and walking 6.4 miles finding 8 of 8 of the caches attempted.

After driving to 5 Points in downtown Columbia, we circled the block, asked directions and still got turned around. We ended up walking the last block before finding the restaurant around 1:30. After a 30 minute wait we were seated and ordered our burgers. I had the Wadmalaw (chipotle BBQ sauce, fried pickle chips, applewood smoked bacon and cheddar cheese), Donna had a Rockville (sauteed Vidalia onions, wild mushrooms and gruyere cheese) and Joan opted for the Front Porch (cheddar cheese.) The fries and onion ring sides were alright, but the burgers were awesome and worth the wait. Three hours later I was still full.

Fledgling Snowbird

Dad was an only child and Mom had one sister, so the sum total of my first cousins is quite small. The woman on the right in the photo above represents exactly one half of them, meet Cousin Louise, fledgling snowbird.

When we received her annual Christmas letter this year she mentioned that she was tired of the winters in Maine, so she was going to rent a house in Florida from a friend for the months of January, February and March. She had gotten her nurse’s license for FLA and planned on finding some work to keep her kind of busy and recoup some of her rent money. Turns out the town she was renting in was a mere 15 miles from where Donna’s sister Sandy lives, so we told her we were going down in February to visit Sandy and some of Donna and her cousins when they returned from a cruise* and we would stop in and visit. We also offered up a free night of room and board at Casa de Bogardus if her drive down brought her our way.

*Maybe we should check on those plans, as they may have decided on something different after the Costa Concordia thing.

And at the beginning Louise was going to pass right by here as she traveled from Virginia Beach to Atlanta visiting friends, but when we checked in with her the day before her scheduled arrival, she mentioned that she was getting anxious to get to her destination and was going to keep the car pointed south instead of jogging west our way. Seeing as she was going to have to pass right through South Carolina on the way. We plotted a likely point for her overnight stay on Friday and because we had that afternoon off we’d drive over and meet her for dinner.

Serendipitously, it turned out to be a town that we are intimately familiar with meeting cousins in. It is the same city where we usually meet Donna’s cousin Laurie at a Cracker Barrel in Florence, SC. So we made some reservations at a hotel that fit our one important criteria, be within walking distance of a restaurant that served wine. We each agreed to ask at the front desk to see if the other had checked in yet so we could get together.

Donna and I took our time on the way east on I-20 doing a few a few park & grab geocaches. When we got to the hotel I told Donna we would first circle the lot looking for a car with Maine plates before checking in. We didn’t get very far, there was a red Toyota Prius under the entrance awning. We did some catching up, then a lot more family stories over dinner. There was a bit more chatting at breakfast on Saturday in the hotel before Louise continued flying south for the winter and we geocached home vowing to meet again in February.

Demise of the Tin Man

We dined at our favorite breakfast joint (DD) this morning and when we were done eating, instead of driving through town like normal, we took the bypass. This took us right by the location of one of our geocaches, Tin Man.

He wasn’t there! Dorothy, he and the Scarecrow must have continued on their way to the Emerald City.

The building he stood in front of has been empty for a few months now, but it has housed several businesses in its lifespan, most recently a Cowboy Church. All I can think of is that the owner may be trying to find a new tenant or even sell it, so the “eyesore” that was a muffler man had to go.

Goodbye Red Envelope, Hello Redbox

Our Netflix account has been on hold for a while…and we have not missed it at all. We were certainly not getting our moneys worth from the $8.55 a month we were paying them because we barely watched a movie a week.

🙂 BTR & D2! found [Unknown Cache] Right of Way QR
We walked over from Right of Way Medical after we couldn’t find it first off. We just followed the RoW and it led us on a looping path to near GZ, but it didn’t seem *too* long because we took turns kicking a half dead exercise ball that we stumbled on behind Hitchcock Rehab/Family Y.

We made the find rather quickly here. Thanks to the previous finders who left behind a buck and some change, which we took, and who left behind a band aid, which we didn’t take, but will certainly be useful to someone in the future with all the thorns surrounding the hide. TFTH

A few weeks ago I opened up an account on Redbox thinking that, that might be an option. At a buck (actually $1.30) a night, the price is right, about 5 bucks for those same 4 rentals a month. But that buck a night counts for every night you keep it, so there is a big incentive to watch it now, instead of leaving it on the coffee table while we wait for a good time. There is one right in the entry at our favorite store, so it is convenient. But we have yet to try it.

🙂 BTR & D2! found [Traditional Cache] Right of Way Medical
After finding Right of Way QR we came back for another try on this one. I made the find, but truth be told, I got lucky. We left a small necklace and took a quarter. With that 25 cents and the buck we got at RoW QR we had now completely paid for the Crazy Stupid Love DVD we rented just a little while earlier this morning at the Redbox in front of Walgreens…TFTC

Until now.