Palmetto Pocket Pickers

Today was not a great day of geocaching. I had planned on getting about six caches in the area, and also to move one of our hides so we can get it published. My nephew, Joel and his wife, Coral, new geocachers named SaMJaC, have been wanting to go geocaching with me to see how it is supposed to be done. They have just started geocaching, and were having troubles with their GPS, and finding caches, so once I decided to go here and cache, I chatted with Coral on Facebook, and we planned to meet up at the entrance to the Florida Trail on Lockwood, in Oveido at 8 am. Coral said that she had loaded in the caches in the area onto her GPS, so I only loaded the caches that I have not found.

We met up this morning at 8, and while chatting, They told me they did not load their GPS, and in fact, they hated it so bad, they did not even bring it. No problem, I say, I got some loaded in my Colorado, and I know where a few others are, so I will try to get them close so they can find the caches. Off we trekked, down the trail entrance, Coral was taking pictures, so I didn't. I can get them from her later. I stopped on the bridge and they found one cache, and as we headed down, I could not remember where the next cache was, so I did not stop until we got to the trail turn, and they quickly found the cache there, and off we headed north on the trail. To my pleasant surprise, the trail has dried considerably since we were last here, and even though I tested the new boots in the water, they were able to stay dry all the way to the two north caches, Sputnik, and King Kong's Ball and Chain. My plan was to find the KK cache, and then do the Sputnik multi.

This is when things start to get a tad strange, OK, a lot strange!!Did I mention that Coral has been taking pictures of our hike the whole time, so I still have not taken any pictures, I will get them from her later. Oh, never mind, here's one of mine, I can't wait any more!! Here's the happy couple on the trail.

I let Coral lead us with my GPS as we head down the trail, and when we get to within 120 feet or so, I convince her that we need to go a different direction, and off I go across the creek, towards GZ, only as I got closer and closer, it kept showing 84 feet over a barbwire fence, into the thickest palmettos we have seen in quite some time. We backtracked a little bit, and found the fence ends, so off into the palmettos we go. It is NASTY! The Colorado is seeming to settle in, and I head towards GZ and finally we get within 12 feet! Whoo hoo!! I do the logical thing, and put down the GPS and start looking for the huge cache. Only we all roam through the brush for about 15 minutes, and there is no cache to be found. I pull out the GPS, and look at it and it is now showing .13 miles away. WHAT???

After a thorough look at our track, we decide to just head back toward the trail by the fence, which should be pretty close, the key word here being "should". As I dragged them through the thickest palmettos yet, I look at my GPS and see that the black wheel that controls it is now missing. GREAT! We all start looking for the wheel, but we all know it is futile, so after a few minutes, I tell them the heck with the wheel, lets just go for the cache. I head towards the cache, or at least where the Garmin says the cache is, until we get to the creek again, and I walk in the creek for a bit, and now I can see the Trail, I get out of the creek, and Joel and Coral find a dry way across, (they do not have the nice waterproof boots like I do), and we get back to the Florida Trail, walk down it a bit, and get to within 40 feet or so. We see a geotrail, head in a ways, and instantly spot the cache. We sure made this easy cache tough! But we happily sign our names on the log, and I head back to the trail to get my GPS to show the next cache. About this time, Coral wants to take a picture, but guess what... her camera has been picked from her pocket by those thick Palmettos who also stole my Garmin wheel. We backtracked back to the creek to see if we could find the camera, but no luck, and there was no way we were going to try to see if we could find it in the thick palmettos!

I could not get the Garmin to change fields so I can load another cache, so I do the next thing and restart it. Not good, because now all I can do is look at the map... We are done, we cannot geocache without coordinates and a GPS to get us there. I get out my Droid for some pictures now that I realize that the camera is now MIA. Coral found a flower and put it in her hair for a picture.

We head back to the geovan, and then we went across the street for Magnetix, another cache I had found a long time ago, chatted awhile, and took this group shot before heading on our way.

I had a great time visiting with them, and I was especially happy to be able to show them how an experienced geocacher handles himself in the forest. The bad part of all this is that they are planning a move soon, and I will not be able to go caching with them to show them that I really do know how to find a cache! LOL!! Here's the group after the fiasco. I love you guys! Good luck in PA! This day has been quite costly for you, I just hope I can fix the Garmin!

Undaunted by Terrain...

I have not been blogging like I should, but I just have not been motivated to share much. Our caching has been mostly urban park and grabs, mostly newer hides near home, and most of them, frankly were what we label "platitudinous". I found a few in Arkansas while on a business trip, and went geocaching with my brother, and my son, in the Atlanta area, while my brother got used to his new Oregon he got for his birthday. I had a fun day there, as well.

My daughter recently moved back into town from living on the beach, and Mimi promised her that she would go with her to help do a final cleaning of the beach apartment, which was going to leave me "alone" for a day. I decided to find a good bushwhack cache or something different that I know Mimi would never go with me to find. Thats when these two geocaches, the two closest unfound caches to our house, came to mind.

The caches are both located in a Cypress stand that has been surrounded by roads and homes. When they first put caches out there in this area, you could walk to the caches, and actually they were hidden on the ground near the cypress trees. The area was wet on occasions, but it was walkable. That is until a couple of years ago, when we had three hurricanes in one season, which filled the area up with water about three to five feet deep, and caused many of the trees to fall over into the water, hundreds of trees. I went to try to find these caches over a year ago with another geobuddy, but when we got to the water, we decided to wait until the area dried out. In the cache logs, someone complained to the cache owner, and their response was that the cache was intended for those geocachers who were "undaunted by terrain." The multi-cache had not been found for nearly two years, and some cacher had visited the traditional cache about a year ago. I was tired of looking at those ugly green boxes on my local geocaching.com map, so I decided that I wanted to find these two caches and replace the green boxes with those cute little yellow smiley faces!! But... I did not want to go alone!

I posted on Facebook that I wanted to go for these caches on Wednesday, and was looking for some geocachers to go with me. I was really hoping that a friend of mine, Kleetus, would go, because he is truly "undaunted" by terrain. I have been with him in some really thick, wet bushwhack areas, but he was the first to respond, saying that he really wanted to go with me but he had a commitment to take a boat load of Boy Scouts up the St Johns River that day. After that I got a series of posts from other geocachers saying how they wanted to go, BUT! I shot an email to another cacher, Eye of the Seeker, asking him if he wanted to go with me to get these caches, and he replied that he would go but he had to work until eleven, and could meet me nearby the caches at 12:30. Woo Hoo! It was on! Then Jarrod88 kept messenging me asking questions abut the caches, but he kept coming up with reasons he could not go. I was kind of confused because of all the other cachers who wanted to go, BUT! Wednesday at 11:00 Jarrod88 called back again, so I gave him the meeting coordinates, told him I would have a hiking stick for him, and that I would see him at 12:30. Then I hung up. I felt bad because I knew he really wanted to go, but he was working, too. As a side note, the best reason given to me by a geocacher who "wanted to go really bad" was when I sent her a text message at 11:00 am giving her the meeting coordinates, she texted back that she really wanted to go, but that her husband was buying a new car, and he couldn't decide what kind to get!! Come to think of it, they bought an "Escape"! To all of you who "chickened out", it's ok, I totally understand!LOL.

Anyway, we finally met up at Reflection Park in Lake Mary, where we could park and we headed to go for the caches. We decided to go for the Cache Collector Multi cache first, so we just went straight in to the swamp to head to stage one, rather than to try to walk around and then go in. We bushwhacked through dry land for awhile until we came upon this...
As as we come upon this wetland, the mosquitoes started hitting us by the swarms, reminding me that I had forgot to use the insect repellent, and had even left it in the geovan! I told Keith and Jarrod to wait for me and I headed quickly for the van to get the repellent. By the time I crossed the road to go back into the woods, Jarrod and Keith had been chased out of the woods by said mosquitoes, saying that it was just too bad to stay there!

I wanted to get a picture of the guys at the onset of our journey, so I shot these two pictures while they were still smiling. Below is Jarrod88 and Eye of the Seeker! Both of them still wondering what the heck they were doing in this swamp!

We had all loaded up the coordinates for stage one of the multi. but as soon as we started going towards it, they both lost satellites, so it was up to the Colorado to get us to GZ. We tromped in three feet of water, all the way to stage one, a tromp of about 750 feet, only to get to GZ and find no cache as we scoured the area . Here is a picture of the guys at stage one of the multi. Jarrod decided to get out of the water and onto a fallen tree to get out of the water. As we were there, we kept hearing gators, one about 100 yards north of us, and another one a bit farther to the south. The northern gator seemed to be getting closer and closer with each grunt, and I kept telling the guys that the gator would not come close to us, all the time wishing to myself that that better be true!

It was at this point that Jarrod says, "call Bob, I know you have his phone number!" As the gator grunted a little closer again, I agreed and then I had to reset my damn Blackberry because the software had jammed. So out comes the battery, back in, I wait for it to load, and now I can dial Bob. It rang several times, and I was sure Bob wasn't going to answer and it was going to go to voicemail, when I heard, "Hello!" It was Bob.

For you who are not familiar, Bob of Jackie and Bob has been caching in our parts for ten years or so, he was here when geocaching was only a few caches and a few geocachers. He also did this cache when it first came out, and hurt himself pretty bad when a fallen tree threw him to the ground and made him bleed. This was before the flood though, and he eventually came back and did the multi cache. However that was three or four years ago!

No problem, Bob also has a memory of an elephant, and never forgets a cache he has found. NEVER! I told him where I was and he told me what I suspected, that the cache was at the base of the big cypress, which is now three feet under water. As I was talking to him, the gator is getting closer, although we still can not see it, and now we are all getting a bit nervous. I think that Bob is sensing my nervousness, and feeling sorry for us out in the swamp, because I asked him if there was anyway he might have the coordinates for stage two of this multi, since I could prove by picture on Facebook, that we were indeed at stage one. He agreed, and we quickly loaded the stage two coordinates into the GPS and quickly made our way AWAY from the gator grunting! We sludged through the primordial ooze for about 320 feet, and arrived at the final. We started searching and moving out from GZ, and Jarrod hollered out, "I see it!" For us mere mortals this would have been tough to retrieve, however Jarrod is a big boy, and with his new hiking stick, he had the cache in his hands in a few tries. The cache was a plastic container that was in a metal hanging device with greenery glued all over it, hanging about 15 feet up in a tree.

The only good thing about this location is that the water there was below our knees, so we had a short time to be out of the water. Jarrod put the cache back and I pulled up the traditional cache located in this area, Out of the Office 3. The Gps is showing that we are .12 miles away. Off we go! As of this moment, we have been in the swamp about an hour and a half, but we have all managed to not trip, and only get wet to about our butts. Not as bad as we thought, but that was soon to change!

As soon as we got our bearings for this next cache, we started on our way. The water started getting deeper and deeper, and the downed trees and branches were much more numerous, and it was actually getting harder to just walk. The bottom was muddy in a lot of places and would grab your foot when you stepped. By now, my wallet was soaked, and I moved my Blackberry up, and clipped it inside my shirt collar to keep it dry. The water height was now over our stomachs, and my boots were full of water, and getting very hard to lift over the fallen trees that we came upon. About half way to GZ, Keith said he needed a break because he had hit his shin one too many times on the hidden branches. Jarrod was having leg cramps and sounding like a gator, so I found a fallen tree that was leaning out of the water, and was dry for us to sit on for a few minutes to regroup. Keith and I sat down on the tree, and I was able to drain some of the water out of my boots, however, I do not know why I bothered, and we talked about whether or not the cache was even there anymore, as the water was so high now. Jarrod stood the whole time, stretching his calves so the cramps would stop, his size 18 shoes filled with water were a tad heavy!

After a few minutes rest, we headed out to look for this cache. As I passed a large cypress tree. I heard a sudden noise which turned out to be a large mother duck who had been sitting on a nest of eggs and was terrified to see humans in her area. Since Mama was gone, we looked in the nest to see it full of eggs. We were careful not to touch anything, but we did get a picture of the eggs in the nest.


We weaved and dodged as we went, and as we were getting nearer I stepped over a high log, and slipped on another log underwater that my foot settled on, and did a plop into the water, keeping only my head dry, and because the branch my foot was on was so slippery, I could not get my balance quickly, and my phone got wet. Now I am getting a tad angry! The phone appears to be OK, so I tried to dry it off on Keith's shirt, and clipped it back on my shirt.

We arrived at GZ, and as I would get close to GZ the GPSr would jump, so we just all started looking. We spread out from tree to tree, but no sign of a cache. Thats when I heard Keith holler out, "Hey Warren, do you see that odd looking thing over there?" I did not see it, but we headed over to where he was pointing, and sure enough, there was an ammo can floating upside down in the water about 50 to 60 feet from GZ. Below is the cache as it was floating and the proud finder pointing it out to us.

We opened the cache up to find a wet mess. The can was full of office supplies, but we decided that we would just leave them there. The log book was soaked, but we were able to write our names down on it, and we took a couple of pictures of the log, one showing some of the finders, and the other picture to show that we had signed the book.

We put the log book back into the ammo can, and closed it up. There were two high cypress knees that were out of the water so we wedged the ammo can between the two knees for the next victim, I mean geocacher to find.

By now we were all wet, and the water no longer bothered us. We were ready for the slosh back to our cars, and when we brought up the parking coordinates, we were only about a tenth of a mile away, and the water ended about half way to the van. As we got out of the water, we all got together and took a final picture of the three of us, all of us glad to be able to claim finds on both of these caches. I took my Blackberry out to get the shot, and it was dead! Oh no! I didnot want to lose the picture I had taken of our swamp romp! Jarrod took this shot below with his Blackberry.

We headed back to the parking area, peeled off our wet shoes and boots, and enjoyed a clean bottle of water, as we reflected on our caching adventure. This is definitely an experience I will never forget, and I DARE you to go find these two caches!!

Since I was the last to leave, I quickly peeled off my wet pants and headed home in my undies! I was OK until I got home and had to run into the house.

Thank you to Jarrod (Jarrod88) and Keith (Eye of the Seeker) for coming with me on this caching trip and I hope we share a few more adventures together!