Four Guys and a GPS

Today, we had an absolutely beautiful December day to get out and do some caching. There was little wind and the temperature was a balmy 50 something degrees. Can't complain about that in mid-December ! I swung by and picked up a friend and his two boys. He wanted to introduce them to geocaching after he and I went caching last weekend. We started the day off by going to the "Little Haikey Creek" cache. After arriving at the parking area, Jeff showed Ethan and Zak how to use the GPS. Both of them seem to be quick learners and picked up the basics of navigating with the GPS easily. After the short GPS session, we were of on our hike to the cache. It was a fairly lengthy walk and required crossing the creek. The location that we used to cross the creek had been in the shadows for the last few days and was still snowy and icy in spite of the warmer weather today. Someone had placed a steel I-beam across the creek so we didn't even get wet or muddy crossing. Once we were across, we had a pretty good idea of where the cache was located. Once Jeff and I located the hiding spot, we let the kids find it. It took a few hints and a little guidance, but they were able to sniff it out. Once I placed a travel bug and trades were made, we headed back to the car.

Our next cache was "Capture the Flag #8". Again, this was a regular size cache and required a bit of a hike. It was along a biking/walking trail and about 200 foot into the woods. Once we got throught the initial brambles, it was easy going. We got close to the waypoint and Zak eyeballed the cache. We made our trades, left a travel bug, and signed the log.

Next, we were off to find "Bluetoo". This was our longest hike of the day. The GPS showed that we were 0.2 of a mile north of the cache when we parked, but it was obviously on the south side of the highway. We started in Hunter Park and followed a biking trail to the east. After a while, the trail forked and we followed the fork under the highway. After crossing under the highway, the trail turned back to the west. Once we reached the top of the hill, we were about 40 foot north of the cache and it was an easy find after a short trek into the woods.

Our last cache was a return to "Lunchtime Cache #9". We wanted to take the boys by to see the fossils embedded in the rocks near the cache. I think they enjoyed seeing them, but they seemed to have more fun jumping from rock to rock : ) I did get a good photo of a crinoid stem that was mostly exposed. The rocks are full of crinoid stems, shells, and various other fossils.

That pretty much wrapped up our day. I had a blast. It's always more fun when you have other people along. I especially enjoyed introducing the hobby to two new people. We logged 34.2 miles in one hour and 54 minutes.