Weekend Geocaching

I’m pretty sure that I’ve been to just about every trailhead within a 1 hour drive, and with the temperatures as high as they’ve been lately, an early start is needed for hiking.  With that in mind, the options are either get up really early do an hour long drive to a trailhead, or find something different.  This weekend we decided to try something a little different:  Geocaching. 

We didn’t find our first cache, but this little guy watched us search.

The first couple of caches that we searched for were in the woods about a mile or so from our house.  The first one is called “Is Woody Home”.  The description of this cache had us thinking that it would be an easy find, but we were wrong.  We looked everywhere for this one, but had no luck at all.  We did provide some entertainment for a little rat snake that was watching us from a hole in a tree though.

The next cache that we searched for is called “Deer Crossing”.  I thought this was going to be the harder one to find, but it wasn’t too bad.  We had to bushwhack our way through a bunch of palms, vines, thorns and pines but once we got to the area our GPS told us to look, we only searched for a short time before Tina found it.  Mosquitoes were pretty thick back here, so it was nice to get back out of the swamp.

The next part of our geocache adventure took us to the Lockwood trailhead that goes into the LBE state forest.  The cache is called “Magnetix”, and can be found on the west side of the street.  This one was pretty easy to find, so we’re making some good progress at this point.  The cache itself is small, and is held closed by some electrical tape.   The tape isn’t doing it’s job anymore, but the log is in there and is still readable. 

Our next cache is “Wiley’s Walkway”.  Wiley’s Walkway was placed by one of the guys who helped to build the new footbridge that leads into the forest.  The old footbridge was due for replacement, and the Florida Trail Association (FTA) did a fantastic job.  Not only did they make the new bridge a little wider, they also extended the boardwalks to make it easier to cross some of the muddier spots. 

After finding this cache, we made our way to “Lockwood Knockwood”.  This one is a standard ammo-can type cache that is hidden pretty well.  We used the encrypted hint to find that it is near a campsite… the hint wasn’t much help, since there is no campsite nearby. 

The last cache that we searched for is called “King Kong’s Ball and Chain”.  This is supposed to be a large cache that is easy to find, but we had no luck with this one at all.  Someone else found it a couple of months ago, so I’m sure it’s still there.  After feeding a ton of mosquitoes back here though, we gave up. 

On our way back though we saw some Who flowers growing alongside Wiliey’s Walkway bridge.  If you listen real hard to these, you can hear the little Whos of Whosville singing their Who Songs!

Next weekend, we’ll probably go out looking for caches from the Barr Street trailhead into the same forest.  Should be fun!