Geocaching – Page 12 – State of Wilderness

W.G Jones Forest: “An Urban Wilderness”

Today we went hiking at W.G. Jones Forest Recreation Area. This park is located off 1488, just east of I-45, north of the The Woodlands, Texas. It offers 1722 acres of multi-use trails for hiking, biking, or horseback riding.

Today we were on foot, with our GPS in hand, looking for geocaches. In the past year, about fifty new caches have been hidden out this way, mostly in this series of caches hidden by LogDawgs named for presidents. We found five of these today, and a couple of others in the park that were not part of the series, one of which has been on my “radar” for a long time.

This last one I mention, “Woodpeckers Retreat”, was a tough one to get to, but not a tough one to find. It required about 350 ft of “bushwacking” – the term for going off the trail and having to force your own way through to an area past overgrowth. On our way back to the trail after finding this cache, J was a little ahead of me and I was trying to keep an eye on his moving figure in the woods ahead of me when something large and brown flew past me. I watched it briefly, then caught up with him, where he was standing with his binoculars out, trying to get a good look. We didn’t get a picture, and it is hard to say for sure because we never got a good look at its face, but I think at this point (after wasting an hour or more googling owls tonight) that it was an Eastern Screech Owl.

This weekend, the weather in Texas finally turned from the scorching hot drought conditions to something akin to fall, with cooler temps and a nice good wind, brought in from Tropical Storm Lee. Unfortunately, when you combine the drought conditions with a strong wind, you get wildfires. And Texas has gone wildfire-crazy this weekend. We are ON FIRE down here! The eastern side of the state has been hit hard. The past two days, firefighters have been battling blazes in Bastrop, where a 16 mile long fire is sweeping in a southernly direction from the state parks down. Little fires have been cropping up in Magnolia, just east of where we were today, and there was a controlled burn going on north of us, in the Lake Conroe area. This forest we were in today, in fact, had several controlled burns recently. We saw the evidence of that. Mostly, though, we felt the evidence of all these fires, past and current. The air was warm and a little hard to breathe in, feeling heavy in our chests.

Today we were getting our “nature therapy”. I’ve been reading this book, Last Child in the Woods, about the importance of nature in the lives of children, and in all of humanity, really. I spent a little time discussing that book today, and the restorative effects of a walk in the woods. I am preaching to the choir, though; my partner here is the one who states on his Facebook page that “Nature is my Church”. I thought about that a little, today, too; how when I go to church, I feel like my soul is wiped clean, but when I spend time in nature, it is like my mind is wiped clean. Maybe that is what he means – that feeling – or maybe it is the feeling of awe at the complexity of God’s creations.

Today, the wind was spectacular. It was whipping the tops of the trees around, creating this glorious, relaxing music that needs no musical accompaniment or vocal melody. When I was looking at our mystery bird through the binoculars, I was watching it whip this big tree around in the background, green leaves flying in a complicated dance. I never can record it to share it with others, but here is a picture of the scenery, so imagine for yourself the sound, feel, and sight of the wind making these trees dance.

Yay for the smell and feel of fall in the air. Boo for wildfires and drought. The pond at the front of the park, where I usually see people fishing, is all dried up and cracked. But the weather is turning crisper, and hopefully we will see some rain down here soon, and camping season is coming right around the corner, and I am very excited for the chance to go on long hikes, bike rides, caching adventures, and camp out weekends with my wonderful partner and young sons.

HILL COUNTRY HEAVEN Part 3

After the high terrain hike we took in Garner State Park, the dogs and Jason were all wore out. I wanted to go find one of the great swimming holes of the Frio River, but the river was just about dry this year due to the drought and they were just too tired. We headed back to the cabin, made some dinner, and then took a brief late night walk.

We were hoping to see some wildlife along our walk, as it was around dusk and we were near the “swimming hole” – a part of the Sabinal River near Foxfire that is used for this purpose – but nothing was stirring. J was taking some pictures of this part of the river when something swooped over it…must be an owl. I didn’t see where it went after but I saw an oddly shaped something on the ground between two trees, and starting creeping towards it to investigate, thinking it was probably a tree stump, but maybe it was the owl. As I got closer, the something lifted into the air, and landed on a pole for the volleyball net. Definitely owl. I called J to come over to get a picture, and at that point, the great bird flew to a tree, then another. We got a few shots before it flew off for good; not terribly great ones, but at least enough to identify that it was a Great Horned Owl.

The next morning, I was really tempted to go hiking again in Lost Maples SP. The problem with that was, the only trails, and geocaches, we have left to explore in that park are the high terrain ones, and we had two hikes already scheduled for today, plus we were sore from the day before. Also, J wanted to get home sooner rather than later. So instead, we made an odd breakfast involving potatoes, and then checked out of the cabins, heading to Hill Country State Natural Area instead.

We were still working on our Texas Parks and Wildlife Geocaching Challenge – Hill Country Passport, where we have to find the specific geocache in ten of the eleven state parks in this particular region. It’s not like you can choose which trail or geocache you want to find, based on how you feel that day or how hard the difficulty or terrain is. Like preschool children are taught, “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit”.

This particular one was a little daunting, in terms of terrain (rated a 3.5 out of 5), and at eleven am in August in Texas, it was HOT when we got out of the truck. Still, this is what we came for, and so we set off.

This park had a lot of equestrian action. Of course, it didn’t help that the trail to the cache was, in fact, an equestrian trail. As we set off on foot with the dogs, we were soon tailed by three horses and riders. The whole hike we spent trying to make sure we were walking fast enough to stay out of their way, or dodging them once we got to the rough hilly spot and cedar thicket where the cache was hidden. I want to say it was about a mile or two round trip hike. Great views, hot sun, little shade, lots of rocks. See for yourself:

After this, we drove to Government Canyon SP, and got the TPWD cache there. Well, I got the cache there, Jason sat in the truck and waited for me, he was worn out, and the hike was not far…although it was frigging hot out there at 1:30 pm. I felt like I was melting. We also found ten other caches along the way between the cabin, the two parks, and home. The coolest one was the last one. I had been eyeing this cache for a long time but I never could figure out how to get to it. J figured it out with his mapping software, backroads style. The cache was an ammo can about 500 feet down the top of an outcropping, about 50 feet away from a fence around an exotic animal ranch. I scored this picture of one of the zebras I saw:

How’s that for Texas? Also, when we were driving around the hill country, I snapped this not-that-great snapshot of some exotic undulates, which, after much researching later, I discovered were scimator horned oryxs, which are extinct in their home country of Africa at this point due to overhunting, but are thriving in Texas, where they often end up at the losing end of a gun at an exotic animal hunting area. This is sad to me. Here is the picture:

TEXAS HILL COUNTRY HEAVEN Part 2

After a brief rest and lunch at our little cabin at FoxFire Cabins, we decided to make a drive around the area. This decision was spurred by his need for painkillers for a backache, none of which we had. I had read in the cabin’s journal (I LOVE how cabins like this leave a journal for people to write their experience in. Reading these journals is always how I end up spending our leisure time) that the best place to go for gas and pharmacy needs was Leakey, a town about thirty minutes away over the hills.

As it turns out, we didn’t make it that far without getting distracted by a geocache (GC2RBDW, or “Hummingbird Haven in Lost Maples”) that also had two bonus features: it was located near several hummingbird feeders that were very active, and near a general store, albeit more pricey than buying Ibubrofen in Leakey. J stayed outside with his camera and tried to get pictures of the 5-6 different types of hummingbirds around the feeders, but the pictures didn’t turn out that good. We really need to win the lotto or make some good bank to buy this guy a decent lens for the camera. The cache was a quick and easy find, although of course I made it take longer than it should have.

After this, we headed out in earnest, west along 337 to Leakey, geocaching along the way. Several of the caches we stopped at went like this: park along the shoulder on a pull out, walk a short distance up a rise in a hill along a fenceline, find a small cache, sign your name, and look at the view. Take a picture if you remembered the camera. Here is my obligatory “I can see for miles and miles” picture.

When we got into Leakey, we experienced a little bit of caching frustration. We had stopped to find one that seemed to not match the hint and be on some form of private property, turns out the coordinates were like 1000 ft off and the cache was actually two blocks away, how annoying. On this annoyance, and on a quest for gas stations and other interesting diversions, we came into the main intersection in town and immediately got distracted by the prospect of interesting wood working and sausages on a stick.

We had stopped to find a cache at this location featured in this photo, at a place called the Hog Pen, and the smell of meat slowly cooking in a pit was too much for us, although it had only been a couple of hours since our peanut butter and jelly time. He ordered the sausage, and I could not resist trying their boudin balls, although he commented later, and now I agree with him, that they always look and sound interesting but really, they aren’t that good. While we were waiting for the food to cook (apparently the balls needed to be warmed up), we walked the dogs across the street to Catahoula Woodworks, where we each took turns going in to look at the shop, and the shop owners took turns coming out to pet our dogs.

After, or as we, ate our naughty snacks, we found a cool quick geocache over by a popular bikers’ hangout. Apparently this area caters to their tourist niche – motorcycle enthusiasts who call this area we stopped at “The Three Sisters“, for the three roads around here that offer spectacular rides. It’s actually been voted #1 ride by Ride Texas Magazine.

We put gas in the truck here in Leakey, then headed south, to Garner State Park. Here, our mission was to get a second leg on our TPWD Geocache Challenge Passport by finding the special cache here. We used our state parks pass to get our day admission (during which ANOTHER park ranger flirted with my man, I swear they all want him. This turned into a long standing joke about “mounted park rangers” that has amused us for some time) and then headed down to the main parking lot by a visitors center and camping area to access the Wild Horse Creek Trail. Our TWPD geocache find was 0.20 miles up this “moderate” trail. Nice, quick, fun, easy. But then, we both wanted to hike more, so when he suggested we continue another 0.20 to another cache, sure!

What neither of us realized, I guess, because we didn’t have a park map with us, was that in order to get to this other cache, we were going to have to continue to the end of the Wild Horse Creek Trail (about 0.48), then turn left on the Foshee Trail, which was not a moderate trail, and especially not at this intersection, but a “difficult” trail. That trail kicked our butts! It was steep, with loose rocks, and a heck of a climb for us lowlanders. We stopped to catch our breath several times there towards the end. But finally, we reached “Diane’s Patio”, and the cache we were looking for.

Here are some photos of that hike. Story to be continued later, kids are awake and whiny.

TEXAS HILL COUNTRY HEAVEN part 1

Now time for a more recent adventure…

We had one weekend left until the children came back from vacation with their father, and we had opted to sneak out of town for one last romantic adventure until we were a family of four, and not just the two of us. The weekend was wide open – I was cruising getaway airfares, contemplating different destinations – but we were also considering making a geocaching event south of San Antonio, so we had concentrated some attempts in that general direction. We also had some ideas about returning to Lost Maples State Park. We had been there last summer during this great road trip I have slowly been writing about, and promised ourselves we would go back. We were also very interested in finding a dog-friendly destination, as the dogs had been cooped up a lot lately.

He asked me if I had “that list of cabins near Lost Maples” that he had sent me at some undetermined time last year, even though he was unsure if he sent it via email or during a chat session. I had no idea what he was talking about, but was obsessively googling pet-friendly cabins near San Antonio and Lost Maples, and I found the website of something that sounded just like what we were interested in. I sent it to him over chat, and he says, “oh, you found it!”. Coincidence? Or some kind of hidden meaning…whatever it was, I decided to go with it, and that is how we ended up at FoxFire Cabins for the weekend.

After a long drive the night before after work, in which we saw at least two dozen whitetail deer along the backroads, we ate our breakfast, then hurried out for a morning hike in Lost Maples State Park. FoxFire is just one mile down the road from the park , so it was a short drive, but we had to do it almost twice because I forgot our Texas Parks and Wildlife Department passport. See, we’ve been working on this little geocaching challenge they got going on, where if you find the special cache hidden in each of the state parks, and prove it by marking your card with the special marker in each cache, and answer a question about an indigenous animal from the parks by using a clue card in each one, and then send the passport in when you have found ten of the twelve in each region, you can get a nifty coin and bragging rights. We finished the Houston region a few weeks back, and didn’t want to miss the chance to work on the Hill Country region.

The hike to this particular cache in Lost Maples was about two miles round trip. Along the way, we had to cross several streams, which we remembered last year as being much higher. This area of Texas has been hit very hard with this year’s drought. We saw evidence of this all over the region. This park had more water than any of the other parks we saw, though. When we got to the “ponds” section, there was enough water in the pond to go swimming in, if you didn’t mind a marshy entrance. We saw little trickles of water along the creek banks.

After we found the cache, we sat for a while on a bench near the ponds and watched the birds with the binoculars. There were several very large cardinals, males and females, flitting about. Two birds lingered in the branches above us, and were very curious and unafraid, even with our three dogs near our sides. They came within a few feet of us, watching us quizzically from the ground or branches right above us. After much discussion and comparison later, we determined that these were olive-sided flycatchers.

After this pause for reflection, we walked back to the truck, then drove back to the cabin for lunch and brief lounging before getting back in the vehicle for more exploring. I will have to write about those adventures later, though. I have the cold nose of a dog nudging me to go for a walk, and my baby to snuggle, before my kids get home in a couple of hours. I hope to post more regularly soon about not only this trip, but the ones that came before it, and the ones that will come after.