Last year in June (’10), we were making our “maiden voyage” together, driving 5000 miles across America. I have told the story in past entries of making our way across Texas, spending the night in Palo Duro State Park, checking out the Cadillac Ranch, driving through New Mexico and into Colorado, some of the our favorite caches in Colorado. After spending a night in Colorado Springs, Rocky Mountain National Park, and then Fort Collins, we were finally able to make our way into Montana. Pics of RMNP forthcoming….
Ah, but first we had to get through Wyoming. Why, oming? Why you so boring? It was a long day of travel before we got near the former Indian lands near and north of Custer’s Last Stand. We actually STOPPED by the scene of this famous battle, and it was mildly interesting, but our favorite stop was by the cache whose title is that of this entry.
We were not far from the highway, but it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, and the last people on earth. As I opened the truck door to find the geocache, I spooked some antelope, which bounded off into the distance. It was so peaceful here, and no sound except us. It is a place in my mind I will go to time and again, a little memory treasure.
This past weekend, we went camping at Lake Texana State Park and had a great time. This park is about two hours southwest of Houston, off of Hwy 59 in Granado.
We wouldn’t normally go camping back to back weekends, but this trip was a special one. We had committed ourselves to helping with the boy scout troop of a co-worker of mine, members of which were working on their geocaching merit badge. Some of the boys had not heard much about geocaching, and some needed help with certain items on the the requirement list.
Example of Lake Texana Geocaches
Our family of four helped out by giving an hour long introduction to geocaching, as well as loading the troop’s donated GPS units with the 17 caches in the park we wanted to find. After the talk and explanation of how to use the units was over, we headed out on a hike with this troop to find some of the ones we loaded for them together, so we could give them helpful hints along the way.
There were about eleven boys in the troop, plus three adult leaders, myself and J, my two boys, and three of our dogs along for the trek. We started on the Bobcat Tracks trail near the park headquarters, and headed north. Eventually, we came to a turnoff for the Alligator Cove trail heading southeast, then hooked up with the southern end of the Texana Trail. Caches we found along the way included: Bobcat Track, Matthew 7:7, Corner Post, Gimpy’s Cache, Big Man Pig Man, TxGCC11 Texana, Ha Ha Charade You Are, Head Down a Pig Bin, and R U A Texa”CAN”. It was a lot of fun watching new people get all enthusiastic about the game.
Before the last cache, my co-worker had to turn the younger boys further on down the path to complete a five mile hike requirement. My little boy and some of the dogs were worn out, and so we stopped here for the day, after 2.5 miles and about two hours worth of hiking around.
After this, we went back to the campsite. The boys and I wandered down to the waters edge and looked at animal tracks, trying to figure out the stories of the wildlife who passed this way. On our walks to the bathroom, we got to see some of this wildlife for ourselves: a few armadillos and white tailed deer.
The lake had shrank considerably since last time J was here (this was our first time here). He asked a ranger, who said the lake was at 30% capacity, following this year’s drought. Normally, the waters would have been up to the platform edging of our campsite, but now we had more than 500 feet of marshgrass and sand to explore. A short time later, we grilled hamburgers, played Uno, and roasted marshmellows over the flames of the camp stove J gave me for Christmas (burn ban was in effect, so sadly, no campfire) for our s’mores. After a couple of s’mores and Sasquatch sighting stories, the boys were ready to lay down in their tent for the night, and I in ours. A barred owl or two called in the night as we nestled in our sleeping bags for the night.
The morning arrived wet with dew and mist. Birds came fluttering around the campsite, making little bird tweets, calls, and coos. We cooked a warm breakfast of bacon, spam, , warmed tortillas and eggs while a brave cardinal fluttered close by, watching. A Carolina Wren sang a morning song for us in the brush. J spied a Forster’s Tern dive into the waters for a fish and awed.
My favorite part of the weekend, the part I keep replaying in my head, happened after breakfast. The boys and I went down to one of the fishing piers, hoping we could drop a line in there (no such luck), and as we started to walk up the pier, a huge bird, which had been perched on the pier railing, took off and flew right past us, then swooped down into the marsh grass below for a kill. It was a beautiful specimen of a red shouldered hawk, a dark red along the body, with sharp black and white striped wings.
We had seen a great number of hawks on the way in to the camp, and we are still not sure what kind they were. Road hawks, maybe, red tails or coopers hawks possibly, and one we stopped to take a long look at I am almost certain was a ferruginous hawk, but this was the most amazing of all of them. My only regret is that J didn’t get to see it, as he is the one who would appreciate it even more than I did. I was being annoyed for petty reasons and had not invited him, necessarily, to join the boys and I down at the pier. Because of my petty selfishness, he missed out on an experience that certainly would have burned in his memory the way it has in mine, and for that I am sorry.
I was also sorry that we didn’t bring rain gear with us when we went on another geocaching hike a short time later. We found a few more caches, but more than half a mile from the trailhead, it began pouring down rain. Our idea of letting the tents dry out in the morning sun proved to be futile, as we ended up having to pack wet gear in a hurry to get home.
What I am not sorry about, though, is insisting we go on this campout, even though it meant missing an annual geocaching party that J and I have not missed in the several years we have been caching. I am also not sorry we went to this park – for Lake Texana is full of natural wonder, birding pleasures, awesome geocaches, and now, fond memories.
We celebrated New Years Eve weekend at Huntsville State Park, located in (you might guess) Huntsville, Texas, which is about an hour drive north of Houston. This park joined the state park system in 1938, yet much work remained in the park at that time. Most of that work centered around the building and then re-building of the dam, which caused the two creeks in the area to combine to form what is now Lake Raven. The park officially opened to the public in 1956.
This park encompasses 2083 acres and offers visitors recreational opportunities that include fishing, hiking, biking, boating, canoeing, some swimming, and horseback riding (provided through 2E Stables). And also, geocaching! This was what we were there for, of course, and we found six of the remaining eight caches in the park we had not found yet while there for this campout. Most of those were ammo cans hidden along a trail that require a little bit of a hike.
Here are some photos displaying the natural beauty of this park:
We arrived at the campsite Friday night, set up and then spent some time around the campfire with our friends who were already there. Saturday, I made up some breakfast burritos on my new campstove, composed of eggs, sausage, cheese and tortillas. As a group, we ended up taking a four mile hike along the Chinquapin Trail and finding some caches. This hike had us all sore afterwards, but probably not as sore as Brian, one member of our group, who took a spill down the spillway. The best part of this hike was a sighting of a bald eagle flying over the lake.
That night we had a potluck dinner, the highlight of which was the crockpot lasagna made by our friend Diane. In the morning, we made some eggs and Spam on our stove, and also I finished cooking the black eyed peas I had started the night before, haha. They were actually quite good, even though I cooked them oddly. I ended up taking a horseback ride with one of the girls in the group this morning. My horse was named Festus and he was a nice ride, if the boy in front of us had not been a very whiny unattended seven year old, we would have had a great ride.
We also went for another hike, down the other section of the Chinquapin. This park did not offer First Day Hikes like some of the other parks, but we enjoyed making our own.
After this, it was time to break camp and head home. We were pretty exhausted and we still had to stop by my parents house for gift exchanging. It was a great group outing and I am sure we will go back to that park again.
Last summer on our road trip vacation, we had some specific high-value targets in mind: “grandfather caches”, which is a term cachers use for oldest active caches. Specifically, ones hidden in the first year of geocaching, 2000.
The first morning we were in Colorado, we were in pursuit of one of these: Paul Barclay, the 36th oldest active cache in the world. I was very excited about the prospect, because this particular one looked like it was just southeast of where I used to live when I lived in Colorado back in the late nineties. We reached an access area to the Bear Creek Nature Area, I think it was called. The roads began to get a little more windy and scenic as we made our way up Gold Camp Rd, and we stopped for a couple of cursory caches before continuing on.
We actually missed the turn off to High Drive, which is where we needed to get to in order to access the closest parking spot to Paul Barclay, the first time around. We ended up at Helen Hunt Falls, which was spectacular in itself, but not something we had time to get out to explore further, because we were on a mission and trying to figure out where we went wrong. We ended up coming out of the park, getting gas, and then trying again, retracing our “steps” until we found the sharp right turn we missed the first time around.
Now it was time to make the hike up. It doesn’t really seem that far, as the crow flies – it is only 0.19 from parking ;-), but when you start at around 5000 ft and go up to 8299 ft, that 0.19 really is tough! Also, since it is a mountain cache, you aren’t really going directly up – there are a hiker’s least favorite word to contend with – switchbacks!
During this time period in my life, I had been exercising regularly, so the tax on my cardiac and lung function was not unbearable, but J wanted to stop towards the top of the climb about every 100 ft or so to catch our breath, and I didn’t mind. We finally made it to the top…what a view!
We didn’t immediately find the cache, which I think it is because the coords may be slightly off – in 2000, gps units didn’t have the kind of chip that a lot of them have now that makes them more accurate. It didn’t take us very long to find it, though, when we started using our caching senses. Then we took lots of pictures. Here are some below of the view at the top, and around the cache site:
Signing the Log
After this began our long descent. We took a different way down that took us further away from the truck at first, but was a slightly easier path in terms of elevation changes and steepness of trail.
We hadn’t brought water with us on this hike, which was foolish of us, so when we came down, we were a bit dehydrated. In high elevation areas like this, you get more dehydrated than at lower levels, mostly from what I understand because your seat evaporates before you notice you are losing water, so you don’t think to replace it sooner like we do in the salty south. I knew that back when I lived in Colorado before but I had forgotten.
We had to race back to our hotel to check out at this point, because we were behind checkout schedule. In fact, the maid had already cleaned our room, throwing away the only thing we left behind, but what was a critical element of our trip: the dog food bowls. After getting them back, we headed for a delicious lunch at Meadow Muffins, and some well-needed ice tea.
This was the end of our trip to Colorado Springs this time around, but we’ll be back. There are still some grandfather caches close enough for us to make this home base for a drive or two later on, and we have a lot of exploring left to do in this area. For this day, though, it was time to get on the road and head to Rocky Mountain National Park.
Here are some more photos from our drive into, through, around the Bear Creek Nature Park area and Paul Barclay:
The first morning we were in Colorado, we were in pursuit of one of these: Paul Barclay, the 36th oldest active cache in the world. I was very excited about the prospect, because this particular one looked like it was just southeast of where I used to live when I lived in Colorado back in the late nineties. We reached an access area to the Bear Creek Nature Area, I think it was called. The roads began to get a little more windy and scenic as we made our way up Gold Camp Rd, and we stopped for a couple of cursory caches before continuing on.
