Geocaching – Page 3 – State of Wilderness

GC19

We were looking for epic caches, and we got ’em. This hunt led us to the Spanish Peaks Wilderness area in San Isabel National Forest. We were looking for the 24th oldest active geocache, called simply “Geocache“. This one was hidden within the first couple months of geocaching, before hiders knew to give their hides classic and original names.

Several online logs state “this is what geocaching is supposed to be”, and it is true. We used the instructions on the cache page to determine where to turn off the main road and where to park. From there, the cache page states it is about a 0.6 mile walk to the cache.

First we found ourselves walking on a trail through the forest. Gradually, the forest thinned out and we were ascending an open plain, from which we could see the Sangre de Cristos mountains in the distance. It was a bit high in altitude; the cache sits at around 11,400 feet.

I especially got a kick out of seeing a personal greeting for us in the cache log:

A couple we know from the Houston area found this cache a little over a week before us. Their travels as a couple intrigue and inspire us. I hope to be like them when we get older!

My older son particularly enjoyed the hike, and was in good spirits. He really got a kick out of having a solo moment with a stellar view, as per the top photo. The little one did not so much. He decided he hates mountains and doesn’t like the altitude and didn’t want to go hiking. We heard about this pretty much the whole way there and back and tried to not let it ruin our fun. It’s not like he could sit in the car while we went, despite his request for that.

This is one I would do again, just for the fun of it and the view. It was very enjoyable, despite the whining we had to endure. Afterwards, when little son realized how special this cache was, he was excited to have found a “legendary” cache and I hope in the end that is what he remembers; that, and the spectacular view.

Setting Forth: Dallas area Grandfather Caches

We thought we had a good system. We thought we had figured things out. J is an expert packer, and he had a four day weekend to think it through. When we finally got the Subaru loaded up, though, with the kids, dogs, us, our camping gear, and clothes for the next few weeks arranged tetris-style on the luggage rack and cargo basket, it seemed that we were just a little overloaded.

We tried to make it work. We made it about twenty minutes down the road before J decided he needed to test out some parking lot speed bumps to see if we were so low that we were riding on the bump-stops of the car. Turns out we were, so while we stopped to feed everyone dinner, he called his parents to help bail us out by passing off what we could most do without…the dogs.

So now we were headed south instead of north, to drop the dogs off in Sugarland. Then we had to head home to rearrange the entire she-bang. We got rid of the luggage rack entirely and lightened up the vehicle’s load by about two hundred pounds or more when it was all said and done. So, my initial plan was for us to leave right around four in the afternoon and find a hotel in Arlington, having put some good hours in between us and Katy. It was very late by the time we actually left, and we only made it as far as Fairfield.

The next morning, the youngest child lost a tooth over a pastry at the continental breakfast at the Days Inn. There was some anxiety over the Tooth Fairy, who was actually short on cash at the moment, and we assured him that the Tooth Fairy would eventually find him. I need to remember to ask when he gets back from visiting his dad, because we thought maybe the Tooth Fairy could find him there. J struggled with the cargo bag in a hot parking lot, and everyone was a little grumpy and frustrated by the time we set out to make it to Caprock Canyons that night.

The good thing about being behind schedule was that it meant we were pulling into Arlington in time to have an early lunch at Chophouse Burgers, a place I read about on a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives information website. We think it was worth the hype, very good. J and I both ordered the signature “Chophouse Burger”, while the kids got just regular stuff.

The reason we were headed to Arlington was to find this cache: GC62, Tombstone, the 35th oldest active cache in the US and the oldest active cache in Texas. It’s a short multi-cache located in a park/cemetery area just outside the University of Texas-Arlington campus. Even though it was 92 degrees outside, it wasn’t too bad going after this one, because we approached it from the campus side, which was quite shady.

After this, there were some hiccups getting out of town (gas, bathroom break, cache stop etc) and then we finally started to head northwest, with our sights on the next “grandfather” cache in Texas on our agenda: Texas Double. This cache is the 59th oldest active cache in the world, and the second oldest in Texas. It is located in the LBJ Grasslands, which I sort of imagined to be some amber-waves-of grain benign meadowlands. It wasn’t like that at all. It was hot, rocky, prickly, and full of scrubby trees and chaparral style foliage. It was quite a bit of a deviation off the main highway, too. We did enjoy the backroad journey out to the location, and the solitude of the adventure. We didn’t see any other vehicles out that way. There was a trail, and it didn’t seem that far to the cache from where we parked, but with the afternoon sun beating down and the bit of a climb up a hill, it was more difficult to get to than we anticipated.

On the way back down the hill, my younger son hit a mental roadblock in figuring out how to deal with the terrain. There was a long period of time where we were all trying to teach him how to walk sideways and make his way down, and during that time I got bit by some bugs and got an unexpected sunburn. This was around the time that we first started to realize that the Single Most Valuable Item that we packed was one I incidentally just grabbed on the way out the door – Band-Aid brand Anti-Itch Gel, providing “immediate cooling relief” as the label says, to all our bug bites and plant-induced itches.

Finally we were on our way to get to the state park before nightfall, stopping just one more time to grab a cache and some drinks. I will post later about what Caprock Canyons State Park is like. It was such a cool place that it deserves its own post.

Michigan moments

I had been in Texas in the morning, Georgia midday, Illinois early afternoon, then driven through Indiana to here, near Kalamazoo, Michigan.

I was on a mission; I have been trying to fill in my calendar on gc.com of days I have found a cache, and this was a day I needed. Finally I had a minute to take a short walk in the evening and see what I could find.

I came upon a herd of deer, about a dozen altogether. They were grazing in a field about five hundred feet from the hotel, just across the street from where I needed to look for the cache. A couple of young ones in the herd were curious about what I was doing, and turned to watch me. One couldn’t stand it, and finally had to cross the street and make attempts to graze at the grass near me, watching me. I tried to see if he would let me approach him (foolish girl – but he didn’t have antlers with which to gore me, and I was curious how close he would let me get), but this only resulted in the whole herd taking off for the safety of the woods, as if I meant to hurt them.

I didn’t find that cache, but I did find one on the other side of the hotel. I saw several Canadian Geese (#86) honking in the grass along the way, and the morning I saw them again in the back of the hotel.

This is the view from the back of the hotel in Portage. I didn’t get to explore much because I was sort of at the mercy of the sales guys, who had the car. I spent some time here, though, armed with binoculars to see what I could see. Most of what I saw were the same birds I had been seeing in Texas, except for a pair or two of Mallards (#87) that flew low near the trees on their way to some other water source. There were blackbirds, robins, and sparrows out there, others too that I can’t think of right now.

In the drive through Indiana, though, I had looked over and seen a glorious site of several sandhill cranes covering a field of beaten down golden stalks of some crop, probably corn. I also saw cliff swallows (#88) that had made a mud nest along the front of the building of the client we had come to visit. I thought I would have a chance for more wildlife observations when we returned to Chicago, but we stayed in an area full of tall buildings, and clubs and restaurants.

As much as it is nice to get away, it was also really nice to come home, return to my boys and my bike and the gorgeous spring we are having this year.

Spring Creek Nature Center Goings-On

There are so many reasons to love the Spring Creek Nature Center. Inside the center, displays dazzle young children with live and preserved specimens, coloring areas, quizzes, fun worksheets and nature journals.

Outside, there is the forest, which is practically enchanted; filled with lichens, mosses, big trees and little trees. Mud sucked at our shoes at some parts of the trail, while monarch butterflies fed at flowers at other parts. Birds trill and flit from branch to branch. Could have spent hours identifying species but only had a few minutes in between geocaching, hanging out with friends, having a picnic lunch, and learning in the center. Belted kingfisher was the new species of the day (#75 for the year). Eastern bluebird flitted from a feeder as we walked up. A ladder-backed woodpecker showed us his hidey-hole. The best part of the day we could have spent hours on, but had other commitments – Merriwether, a research chemist who spends his weekends exploring Houston’s edible plants, was teaching a (free!) class today on foraging edibles. We were able to stay for about an hour but could have listened all day. There were just too many things pulling at us – our friends who were going to meet us at the playground, the other friends we have promised to drop a kid off after, a child’s hunger for his sandwich, and a soccer game in the afternoon that all needed to be fit in there somewhere.

This was my third visit here this year, and still so much more I feel I want to see. Every second Saturday, there is a bird walk from 7:30-9. There will be another foraging class in the fall. And, there are always more caches to find and more birds to see.