They say that once you get over writer’s block that the words will just flow with you.  They aren’t kidding around.  I began writing my previous post on 12/30 and it took 3 and 1/2 months to get that posted (and it still isn’t quite finished since I have to update it with pictures once I find them all), and now I’m finding myself with tons of inspiration to get things caught up.  This post will be a bit out of character for me, as I am going to be running through quite a bit in this post.  I’m going to try my hardest to keep my long-windedness down…but we’ll see how well that goes.

If you’ve read previous posts, you’ll know that I am all about the group cache runs.  Whether it’s hooking up with another cacher to help them achieve a milestone goal, or a large group getting together to find caches and have fun, I’m all for it.  And it was because of this that I was finally able to realize the 1,000 find milestone.  But it took quite a bit of caching to reach that milestone.

MWGB 2012 ended up being our 800th milestone.  For those paying attention, MWGB 2011 was our 400th, so we were able to double our find count in a year…not bad, but not where I expected to be either.  Especially not after doing a portion of the HWY 127 power trail.  And after doing all the number crunching for the Mingo trip and the failed Toledo late night power run, I got the itch to plan some more runs.  And as it turns out, our geographical location puts us in a pretty prime spot for such runs.

In Louisville, just before GeoWoodstock X, a Geo Art project entitled the Big Blue Smiley appeared.  This was a series of puzzle caches (56 caches with clues dispersed between them to resolve the coordinates for 3 bonus caches) that formed a big smiley face on the map.  The puzzles were easy enough if you either know your UK basketball history or have some good Google-fu skills.  I fall squarely in the latter category (IU fan here).  I had actually solved all the puzzles prior to GWX for a run I had intended to do with the rest of the Minions, but due to temperatures that were just south of 100 and a faulty air-conditioner in the Minion Mobile, that was aborted after just 1 find.  So when a conversation between my brother (Team Duckman) and our partner-in-crime (TeamAdorkable) about a cache run, naturally the BBS was the candidate.  We chose a Sunday in November when all 3 of us were free.  The weather, as it turned out, was perfect for our trip.  It started out in the upper 40s but by the time we had finished the temps were just below 70.  I had spent several days routing out our trip.  Knowing full well that some of the neighborhoods were a bit rough, I made sure we’d hit those GZs first to maximize daylight and minimize the potential sets of eyes from watching what we’re doing.  All in all we found all 56 of the regular hides but skipped the 3 bonus hides as we kinda forgot to be on the lookout for the clues until about halfway through.  It took us a little over 8 hours to complete, not counting the hour we spent at lunch or the emergency bathroom run that took us 5 miles out of the way.  And the effort was definitely worth it, as the image below will show.

It went from all blue to smiley yellow!

While experiencing the high of grabbing that many caches in a day, I didn’t want to stop.  There had been talk of hitting the HWY 127 trail again to grab the balance of caches we didn’t find the first time, but since TeamAdorkable had already found all of them during a run a couple weeks after ours with several others, we scrapped that idea.  It was then decided that we should do another, new Geo Art project that had been published a few weeks prior in Indiana, called the Back Home Again In Indiana series.  This series consists of 125 caches hidden in The Middle of Nowhere, Indiana and would satisfy my craving.  Being Geo Art in a relatively populous area, naturally this meant all the caches were once again puzzle caches requiring Google-fu skills and I had them all answered within a couple hours.  But doing the math I realized that one of these caches would end up being my 1,000 find, and that just would not do.  TeamAdorkable were unavailable to do the series the following weekend so my brother and I decided we’d hit a puzzle power trail to the northeast of me that I had been meaning to do for some time.  This trail should give me enough caches to hit the magical milestone number on one that I actually wanted.  So the plan was set for the following Sunday to hit that trail, the PT-109 Puzzle Trail.

While the trail itself consists of 41 caches, we were unfortunately only able to find 25 of them as others were either missing or completely infested with muggles.  But that didn’t matter.  Those 25 put me just 3 away from find 1,000.  I already knew which cache I wanted to do for the 1,000 milestone, so that was where we headed, Indy’s Largest Cache.  The name is very apropos, as you can see.

Open says me!

Signing the log, literally!

Woo hoo!

It’s official!

With that milestone out of the way, nothing was going to stop the momentum of these runs.  The following week I spent most of my free time trying to figure out the best route for us.  Most of the groups that had attempted the series at the time were stating it took anywhere from 8-13 hours to complete.  A 5 hour swing was just too wide for me and led me to believe we could do better.  I know it’s never a race, but I just couldn’t shake that, with an optimized route, this could be done in 6 hours or less.  So I poured over the coordinates, and then calculated and recalculated the routes, optimizing as best as I could to minimize not only backtracks, but also the best starting point.  My last calculation told me that we could do it in under 5 hours, and with that I was satisfied.  I shared this information with my brother and TeamAdorkable, and the goal was set.  At the last minute another cacher joined us for our adventure, brcross95, and we met up at a gas station about 2 miles from the designated first cache.  The series itself is in some backwater locations I had never known existed.  All country roads, there were times when we didn’t see another car for close to an hour at a time, so to say this was pretty secluded is an understatement.  A couple times we ran across some hunters, and some far off gun shots could be heard, so we tried not to stay in one place for too long.  At one point we were running almost 20 minutes ahead of schedule, but one misplaced coordinate number caused a massive stumble that left us stumped on one cache for almost 30 minutes.  Our last-minute buddy had his own solved coordinates written down and it was noticed that I had superimposed a number and this caused us to be about 500 feet due south of the actual GZ.  But when we went to check that out, we came up empty handed too, so we went back to the original coords and looked some more.  Not satisfied, we split up and went back to the other coords and it turns out we just didn’t look hard enough and the found was finally made.  30 minutes and a fair amount of pride later, we were on our way, hoping to make up for lost time.  When all was said and done, we finished the entire series in 4 hours and 52 minutes.  Still a bit bummed that we lost so much time on that one cache, but still very proud of the fact that my number crunching was almost spot-on.  Plus, just look at that map!

Just gorgeous!

Now most of you are probably thinking that this would have been a good stopping point.  Doing the math, you already know that in the span of 3 weeks we had found a combined total of 209 caches, which is nothing to sneeze at.  Surely this should satisfy whatever numbers hunger I was having, right?  Obviously you don’t know me very well.  All this did was excite me more.  And I knew there was one more numbers run left in me.  And this one was going to dwarf the others.

A few months prior it had been brought to my attention that there was a power trail in central Illinois that I hadn’t heard about yet.  It’s called the I’ve Been Everywhere series (IBE for short) and is 185 caches split into northern and southern legs.  We had been discussing this run for several weeks and locked in 4 members of the CIA group to do it: myself, my brother, TeamAdorkable, and DynamicDs.  We decided to try for it in the middle of December. So far it had been a fairly mild fall with no real snowfall of note, so we knew we would have to do this sooner rather than later, or else we’d have to wait until Spring.  We chose a Saturday (12/15) so that we would have a buffer between our run and the next workday to rest.  The start of the run was a little over 3 hours away, and with my number crunching, it was expected to take about 10 hours total for the trip.  I ended up crashing at my brother’s house that night so that I wouldn’t have to wake up even earlier to drive to him.  We set out around 5, picking up the others at TeamAdorkable’s house just short of 6.  The day was shaping up to be rather miserable, weather-wise.  It began drizzling about 40 minutes into our trip and became a steady downpour just after we crossed into Illinois.  As we got closer to the first cache, things improved a bit, and the rain had finally let up, but a bone-chilling wind was beginning to kick up, and by the time we started our run, it became apparent that the original forecast of 50s and partly sunny skies were never going to happen for us.

It took us just over 2 hours to finish the first leg, and it was pretty obvious that had we not been such a well-oiled machine and easy to get along with, this would have been a brutal trip.  Jumping in and out of a car over and over gets old pretty quick.  The caches were easy enough to find, but with the ground wet and the wind blowing over 20MPH at times, with little shelter from them, it was easy to get a little frazzled.  So we stopped at a gas station to take a break, use the restroom, and grab something to snack on.  We then made the short trip north to the starting cache for the last leg and finished that one off  2 and a half hours later.  As you can see, this was quite a trail…had they been connected I don’t know if we could have done it without going insane and killing each other first.

The southern leg

The northern leg

“Ding dong the trail is dead…”

Stopping at such an odd number like 185 was not really something we wanted to do.  Since we were making such great time, we decided to grab lunch and then try to hit 200 for the day.  We made a bee-line for the B-dubs (see what I did there) and had a nice celebratory lunch and some alcoholic beverages before looking for a place to find some more caches.  DynamicDs had mentioned earlier that day about a cache we should try for, a 5/5 liars cache by the name of Forrest Stump.  Looking at a map of caches around this one, there appeared to be a cache series that ran along the road we were to take to get there, so we weren’t going to be hard pressed to find 14 more caches.  This was probably my favorite part of the trip, not just because it was impromptu, but also because our goal was simple and we had already done what we set out to do so there wasn’t any pressure to get this done as quickly as possible.  We ended the day with 203 finds.  To date this is my best day ever.  I’d like to think this is just circuit training for the inevitable run at the E.T. Highway Mega Trail.  Sick, aren’t I?

I thought it said Forrest Dump!

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that this has caught us up to December.  It’s mid-April, so certainly I have more to tell, right?  Actually, there really isn’t.  After an extremely eventful Fall, we’ve taken a bit of a break in regards to caching.  We’ve already gotten our major milestones out of the way, and managed to increase our find count by 564 since the end of July, so I think that it’s time for a bit of a break.  But this doesn’t mean I’m giving up on caching.  Far from it.  There are some interesting things brewing and I will be sharing some details shortly on the next CIA epic trip.  Also, there’s the Spring Picnic coming up in a month, and our annual trek to MWGB in July.  Things will be picking up again soon, and there also might be a guest contributor or two joining the ranks to add more to this blog.  So stay tuned.

I know it’s been some time since I last posted anything on here. Part of that was by design but most was just pure writer’s block. After a successful 3-part saga in the retelling of our Epic Road Trip this past August, I found myself struggling to come up with anything compelling to say about what was going on in our geocaching lives. That’s not too say we didn’t do anything, because that is the furthest from the truth. What I mean is that I have put so much pressure on myself to write good posts that I’ve pretty much made it impossible to live up to MY expectations. I’ve toiled with the idea of doing a group of posts to cover each topic of conversation, but while some would be worthy of my expectations, others would not, so I’m going to split this out over a couple of posts and just be done with it.  I need to get these thoughts and memories onto the site before they start getting fuzzy.  And, much like last year, I promise to do a better job of not waiting 6+ months to get it out there.  So here we go, the last 8-months worth of caching in review….better late than never edition.

Midwest GeoBash 2012
Once again the wife and I headed back to Wauseon, OH for our 2nd MWGB. We had such a blast last year that we couldn’t pass it up. This year, however, we were joined by our good geo-friends, TeamAdorkable. We snagged the same site as last year and then reserved the adjoining site for the Adorkables. This being their first time, we wanted to make sure they got to experience as much as possible, so we left on Thursday. This afforded us the opportunity to cache more, as well as participate in activities that even we couldn’t do the previous year as we showed up too late.

Given my experience in setting up cache runs and the number crunching I performed for the epic Mingo trip earlier in the month, I set about creating cache runs for each day of the Bash.  Beginning on Thursday, I hand-picked 50 caches that were north of the event site to focus on.  By giving us a large number to choose from, this allowed for us to cache as little or as much as we wanted.  For Friday, I chose another 50 caches that were located south of the event site.  Friday evening we had decided to do an all-night run through Toledo, which led to a selection of 125 caches that were scattered all around the city.  Saturday was a tamer day and the run I had chosen was for the majority of caches located throughout the town of Wauseon and totaled 32.  As for Sunday, I chose just 13 caches for the day, as we would be focusing our efforts on striking camp and making our ways home….or so I thought as you will see.

Each team drove separately to the Bash as we had a few odds and ends to tie up before heading out.  For us, that involved driving the kids up to Nana’s in Ft. Wayne to spend the weekend.  We headed out around 9am and made it there shortly before 11 and had lunch with Nana and then dropped the girls off.  At this point, we were still about 2 1/2 hours out from our destination, but since we were arriving a full day earlier than we did the year before, I knew that rushing was unnecessary.

The Summer of 2012 in the Midwest was the driest it had been in over 20 years.  While 2011 was one of the hottest in recent memories, this one was slightly cooler, but a whole lot drier.  All of Indiana was under some sort of a burn/water ban at this point…4th of July had effectively been cancelled due to multiple brush fires, and the ban extended all the way into Ohio and to the site of the Bash.  To say things were dry is an understatement.  I bet you can already tell where I’m going with this.  As we were heading east, the sky, which was cloudless when we left, had grown overcast and was darkening to the northwest of us.  When we got about 30 miles out, the skies opened up and it began to rain.  It wasn’t a major rain event, there wasn’t much wind, thunder, or lightning, but it was enough to moisten the ground at our campsite.  If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s setting up camp in the rain.  Fortunately for us, the rain let up as we were entering the town from the south and by the time we reached the fairgrounds, the clouds were beginning to break up and the radar (when we could get a data connection to bring it up) showed the rain was already passed with nothing on the way.  Even still, we quickly got to work setting up our site.  About 20 minutes later, the Adorkables arrived, and soon both sites were up and we were ready to hit the Event Store and check things out.

After we signed the event log, grabbed our swag bag, and looked around, we headed out to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple things we missed, and then dinner and caching.  As we had done the previous year, both teams decided that it would be easiest if we dined out for our meals instead of trying to prepare all our meals on site.  With the burn ban in effect, campsite cooking was limited to propane and electric stoves only.  What fun is camp cooking if there isn’t a roaring fire?  So after a quick bite at the local DQ, we made our way to the nearest GZ of the Thursday run.

Heading back from the final location of a puzzle cache.

We found a mini power trail northwest of the Bash that had about 20 caches along an “unapproved” road.

Silliness ensued!

After a couple missteps on one of the puzzle caches on the run, and some crazy backroads driving, we found 18 caches.  Yes, this wasn’t the big numbers I was expecting, especially with 50 caches to choose from, but we did have an absolute blast during the run so we didn’t let it bother us too much.  We got back to our site shortly before sundown and had to quickly fabricate some foil hats as it was Tin Foil Hat night at Area 51.  The Wauseon Fire Department were on hand so that we could have the requisite bonfires, so the night, as well as the following nights, were not a “washout” with no fires to stoke our frenzy.  We claimed our spot in the throng of cachers, set our chairs, and proceeded to ogle and giggle like children at all the tin foil creations.  For those that have never been, this isn’t a contest…it’s just a way to extend your creativity to something silly.  And while some, like mine, were uninspired and slapped together, others were simply amazing.  I don’t know why I act so surprised…look at some of the cache containers these people come up with.  Surely they can design a hat.

Wifey and I hamming for the camera. Obviously she put more thought into her hat than I did.

The Adorkables showing off their handiwork.

She is so creative…that’s why I love her.

The following morning began with a trip to Smith’s Restaurant for breakfast.  I don’t know what they’ve done in the year since our last visit, but the food was fantastic, the staff was very friendly, and the place wasn’t too crowded.  Afterwards we went back to the fairgrounds to get our game sheets for the Poker Run.  This was the one event I was upset we didn’t get to do the previous year so I made sure we were there.  The Poker Run consists of 7 stops at local businesses throughout the area that have individual barcode stickers that you have to affix to your game sheet.   All you’re presented with is the coordinates to the locations, so it’s up to you to figure out where they are and how to get there.  The run began at 10am and you had until 3pm to turn in your sheets so there was plenty of time to get to all the locations.  They took us to some pretty neat places.  The first we went to was a little gift shop that had various homemade trinkets and soy candles with some pretty awesome fragrances such as “One-Night Stand” and “Motorcycle Exhaust”.  Other locations included a flower shop, bakery, ice cream shoppe, and a winery.

Once we were done (and thoroughly lit from sampling some wines at the winery), we stopped for a quick lunch before dropping off our sheets at the designated table and began browsing the various vendor booths.  And the prizes were pretty awesome.  The top three poker hands each receive a GPSr and the worst hand also receives one.  All for the entry price of FREE!  At one point I held the 3rd best hand, but that was short-lived and, in the end, none of us won anything…but we did have a great time.

After they announced the winners, we were ready to depart to Toledo to begin our all-nighter run.  We went back to our campsite to grab a couple things and button up everything since we didn’t expect to be back until around 4am or so.  It was around this time that the skies to the west were looking rather fierce.  What was once sunny and hot had become dark and windy.  I was a little apprehensive about leaving before the obvious storm rolled through, but with everything closed up, it should have been just fine.  We had technically never been in a storm with this tent, and while reviews said it would do well in one, I wasn’t going to take that as gospel, so I grabbed all our clothes and threw them into the back.  We then made one final sweep to ensure everything was closed up, and headed east.  We raced away from the storm and made it to the first GZ of the evening just as the leading rain bands began to hit.  At first there wasn’t much wind and the rain was fairly light, so we figured this evil-looking storm had more bark than bite.  We grabbed another 4 caches before things got really ugly.  The wind was fierce and the rain went from a shower to a deluge.  We had to abandon our searching and began looking for a place to eat dinner so we could wait out the storm.  Originally dinner was supposed to be several hours later, but with it looking like it would storm for the next hour, there wasn’t much point in just sitting there.  We found an Outback a couple miles down the road so we stopped, had dinner, and was back at it 75 minutes later.  The sun had come back out by this point and it was beginning to warm up again, which basically meant it got really sticky outside, but we didn’t let this deter us from our adventures.  Unfortunately, lack of cache maintenance had caused us to DNF quite a few caches, and by the time the sun had finally set, we were almost 3 hours behind where we needed to be.  I skipped several caches and decided to head into Michigan to grab one more cache for the evening, which rounded us out at an even 20….a paltry number by any stretch of the imagination.  The trip home was relatively quiet.  I was deflated from such a bad run.  The Adorkables were awesome about the lack of caches found, but I was not happy at all.  But if I had thought I couldn’t feel any worse…that was about to be amplified by a factor of 10.

As we pulled into the fairgrounds, we saw quite a few people still out and about at Area51, but it was nowhere near as hopping as I expected.  This should have been my first indication that something was off.  It wasn’t until we headed into the campgrounds that I began to realize that this area got hit just as hard, if not harder.  I dropped everyone off at the bathrooms and drove to the campsite, where I noticed that our canopy was no longer in between our two tents, but in front of mine.  I pulled in and inspected things and was actually quite baffled at this.  A few minutes pass before everyone makes it back to the site and we start taking inventory of what’s happened.  The Adorkables discover some rain had gotten into their tent and begin the process of cleaning up.  ooGROSSYoo from an adjacent site came over to tell me exactly what went down.  Apparently during the worst part of the storm, a gust managed to uproot our canopy and sent it crashing into the road before pushing it into another site.  They had gone out and brought it back after the rain subsided.  It was then that I saw the damage inflicted to it.  Several of the bars had become bent and the fly was torn.  We had only used this canopy twice before so it’s basically toast at this point.  As we were buttoning things up, that’s when I heard dripping coming from the tent.  I immediately turned towards it and noticed that the rainfly that was to protect the open mesh of the roof was sagging.  When I put a flashlight on it, I saw that it was full of water.  This, in turn, was then dripping into the tent.  I immediately pulled up the rainfly to drain the water, and discovered that one of the hooks had come loose, resulting in the water collecting.  We then opened the tent and found that there was about 3 inches of water standing at the foot of the door.  There was water pretty much everywhere, having gotten through the breech in the barrier caused by the sagging fly.  We spent the next 2 hours pulling everything out and trying to dry the floor up as best as we could, using our dirty laundry and bed linens as makeshift towels.  We finally made it to bed at 2am, miserable, and without proper bedding.

When we woke up the following morning, the mood had lightened a bit.  We were alive and it wasn’t freezing, so it’s not like there was much we could really complain about.  We went back to Smith’s for breakfast and to figure out our day.  Wifey wanted to launder our clothes, linens, and sleeping bags, so we found out where the nearest laundromat was, went back to camp, grabbed our gear, and headed there.  We dropped her off and did some light caching.  We had found out that the Adorkables were going to have to leave that evening as Pa Adorkable had to be back on the road Sunday morning, so we were trying to make the best of everything.  We had gone back to the fairgrounds to grab some of the caches that had been placed in the fairgrounds that weren’t there previously.  At this time we had hooked up with DynamicDs and seekersearcher from the IAG group and planned on grabbing the Whereigo after picking up my wife.  Once we had done that, we made our way into the Arena for the closing ceremonies.  Sadness began to set in at the realization that we were going to be losing half our group as soon as the ceremony commenced.

We had decided to try to fix our tent while there was still light out so while the Adorkables were striking their camp, we tried to make the tent liveable again.  As we watched their tent come down, we began to joke about just leaving too.  I even jokingly mentioned finding a hotel somewhere on the way that we could take a shower and sleep on a comfortable bed with the A/C on full blast.  The joke quickly became more serious as I was told to pull out my phone and look for one.  Once the Adorkables had left, it was decided that we should leave as well, so we packed everything up as quickly as we could, said goodbye to ooGROSSYoo and his group, and hit the road.  We hadn’t actually found a place to stay yet, but we figured we’d drive until we came up with something.

We stopped at a travel plaza along the Toll Road about 20 miles west of Wauseon and looked up some hotels and found one about 20 miles north of Ft. Wayne that had vacancy at a reasonable price.  We called, booked a room, and hit the road.  We didn’t make it to the hotel until after midnight, but it didn’t matter to us.  We just saved ourselves almost 3 hours of driving in the morning to get the kids, and we were going to be washed and well-rested.  The free hot breakfast the following morning was the icing on the cake.

In the end, I wouldn’t say the trip was a failure.  Sure, we never made it south to find any of the caches I had chosen, we only found a 1/6th of the run I had planned in Toledo, and we didn’t even cache in Wauseon itself.  Our tent was flooded, our canopy was broken, and our friends had to leave early.  On paper (and looking at it on the screen), that sounds like a pretty crappy time, but we still had a blast.  We’re already in the planning stages for this year’s MWGB, and while there will be cache runs, we’ve all agreed that we will NOT be making unrealistic runs and will instead be focusing on the events and the caches both Wauseon and the surrounding areas have to offer.

**This post will be updated with more pictures just as soon as I can locate them…I’ve switched phones since then and the pics appear to be scattered between 3 different PCs.**

This is the third and final part of a multi-part retelling of a cache run of epic proportions.  Click here to read part one and here to read part two.

After Mingo we continued heading west on I-70, stopping shortly after at a rest stop to empty bladders and grab food from the back of the van for snacks and lunch.  We had decided at this point to skip driving into Denver and caching, then heading to Pikes Peak.  We were running pretty far behind schedule at this point and, by cutting going to Denver first and instead driving straight to Pikes Peak, which would shave almost 90 miles off our trip and save us about 3 hours by skipping the caches along the way.  This would give us plenty of time to get up to the summit and do the caches.  This was the jolt we needed to stay on target, time-wise.  This was never going to be a numbers run to begin with so, while sad to be missing out on a few caches that are well-regarded, we would still get our other goal for the trip.  After we entered Colorado, Chutch1035 stopped at the nearest gas station to gas up and switch from driving.  Since I had yet to drive any during this trip, I volunteered to take over.  I am most at ease when I am behind the wheel.  With everyone situated and Chutch now reclined in the middle row to take a nap, I put on my headphones, cranked up the tunes, and headed towards the ever-higher horizon ahead.

One of the reasons why I chose to go on this trip was to travel to places I had never been before.  Even before Pikes Peak was in the picture, the original map had us routed through Denver and up to Cheyenne, WY before heading back towards home.  These are places I have never had the chance to say I’ve been to and to pass up an opportunity to do that would be a regret I’d have to live with for a long time.  I am forever grateful that my loving wife let me go on this trip.  Her work affords her the opportunity to travel every so often and has gone to places like Austin and San Antonio, TX and San Diego without us.  Sure, it was for business, but it’s not like she was stuck indoors the entire time.  So it felt good for me to be the one to say I went somewhere this time.  But I sure did miss her during the trip and would have loved for her to be there with me.  If anything, we might just have to make this trip ourselves (although we’ll be stopping to sleep in hotels along the way ).

For anyone who has never made it out west in a car, I have to say that some of the most beautiful landscapes are in Colorado.  After the unbelievably dull views from Kansas, it was a refreshing change of pace to see the vast prairies of eastern Colorado, and as we headed down US24 towards Colorado Springs, seeing the foothills of the Rockies begin to rise from the ground and then, the Rockies themselves, was a true sight to behold.

We were greeted by some rain

Even with the ominous clouds and torrential downpours, the landscape is breathtaking

We were monitoring our elevation on the dashboard GPS at this point and noticed an almost 3,000 foot jump in elevation in the distance from I-70 to Colorado Springs.  Since it was gradual, we didn’t notice any ill-effects from rising to over a mile above sea level.  At least I wasn’t feeling it….yet.

We rolled into Colorado Springs shortly after 4:00pm local time, which meant we were now only about 90 minutes behind schedule from where we needed to be.  This was a great relief to me because that mean we had time to get to the summit and do what we came to do.  We had read up on battling altitude sickness and some of the common suggestions was to make sure you drank plenty of water and had a fairly full stomach of carbohydrate-rich food.  So we decided to stop at a Burger King and have a quick bite to eat.  Since I was still a bit funky from the previous night’s fail cocktail, I wasn’t feeling very hungry, but I still managed to force myself to eat a Whopper Jr.  I really should have done that sooner because within 20 minutes I was feeling great.  My brother, Team Duckman, volunteered to drive us up and down the mountain as he has the most experience on these sort of trips, so I handed him the keys and took a look towards the west and saw our target.

I think something’s back there

Oh there it is, all enshrouded in clouds and looking formidable

The road to Pikes Peak is probably the most visually-stunning stretch I have ever been on.  I was going through some serious information overload as we passed massive rock formations, deep rock-lined ravines, and huge houses built into the sides of the mountains we were passing through.  The pictures don’t do it justice at all.

I wish my commute to work looked like this

Looks like something straight out of The Flintstones

It’s hard to see, but there’s a house in the middle of all that

Just gorgeous

It took about 30 minutes to get to the entrance to Pikes Peak Highway from the Burger King we stopped at, but it flew by with all the stuff we could look at.  There is a cost to get onto the Highway and after we paid we pulled over to wait for the other van to get in.  During this we noticed that the guards were closing off the entrance to any more visitors so to say we made it in by the skin of our teeth is an understatement.  Good fortune was smiling upon us.  The road is about 19 miles in length and, because of some serious switchbacks and steep grades, it takes roughly an hour to reach the summit.  But as you can see, it’s not like we were in a rush with so much to gawk at.

Entrance signage

We passed this lake pretty early on our trip up

Pikes Peak looming over us

Well now isn’t that special

I love how the clouds just roll off the mountain peaks

Getting ready to pass the tree line

Breathtaking

Quite the winding road down there

There’s just a tiny amount of snow left up here, but with the temperature dropping nearly 50 degrees, it’s not surprising

Ugh…that’s enough to make my stomach flip

One of the big switchbacks you have to make heading up the mountain

Just as we were starting to approach the summit, we rolled right into a huge, thick thunder cloud

This is not a placeholder image. This is what it looked like the second I stepped out of the van once we reached the top

Once we reached the top of Pikes Peak, the visibility was very low.  At times it was completely white everywhere you looked while at other times you could make out things maybe 100 feet away.  Clouds move very fast up here and the wind can be unforgiving and brutal.  Oh…and it’s cold.  We are currently going through the hottest, driest summer in 50+ years back in Indiana so any temperatures under 80 are pretty chilly.  Try 38 degrees at the summit.  And we’re all wearing totally inappropriate clothing…some in flip-flops no less.  We’re such noobs.  There are several caches up here, 2 traditionals, a multi (that requires a multi-mile hike), a virtual, and an Earthcache.  Since the weather wasn’t really cooperating (I mean, there’s thunder coming from below and right next to us for crying out loud) and we could barely see in front of us, we decided to just go for the EC and the virt.  So I have even more incentive to head back to Pikes Peak in the future.

Now, remember that altitude sickness I mentioned earlier.  I totally thought that the sandwich I had helped as I didn’t feel any weirdness the whole way up.  However, the minute I stepped out of the van and opened the back to grab my GPSr, I became so dizzy I almost fell over.  The best way I can possibly describe this feeling is being drunk.  It was a chore just to walk, and even at a very slow pace I was finding it hard not to fall over.  We congregated to the spot for the virtual picture and got a few of those in.  It was sleeting and very windy so the pictures look painful for obvious reasons.  We are such boneheads.

I thought I was being cool but I almost bit the dust and fell over…serves me right

The qualifying group shot. It was way too chilly for shorts and flip-flops. I think we were all banking on sunshine and maybe 50 degrees. This winter weather stuff is for the snow bunnies!!

Ahhh…that looks warm and full of oxygen!!

Me and my brother, Team Duckman, outside the summit house and next to the Cog Railway Train

About 30 feet from the sign is this harrowing site….I wish the clouds weren’t there so I could see how far this goes down

This says I’m really high!

Walked into the summit house and came across DynamicDs and TeamAdorkable engaged in a little snogfest with some dummy. I think the altitude sickness has gotten to them.

After buying souvenirs, we stepped outside to snag a picture for the EC. The wind almost knocked the camera over as it started gusting to about 35MPH and the sleet really started coming.

Unfortunately because we got here so late, the “world famous” donuts were no longer available and once the Cog train passengers left, the place was pretty much deserted.  Taking that as our cue, we headed back to our vans and made our way back down the mountain.

Next time I’ll make sure to taste those donuts and will be the judge of how great they really are.

As we headed back onto Hwy 24, we noticed a lot of banners hanging up along the highway.  They were thanking the firefighters for putting the wildfire out and saving the city.  It was then that we saw just how close the fire came to this area, as you can see below.

All that up there was on fire less than a week ago

Banners of gratitude

It was really moving to see these touching signs thanking the firefighters lining the street

Now that Pikes Peak was behind us, it was time to head north to Denver.  It has been decided that we would have a big meal at Casa Bonita in Lakewood, a suburb of Denver.  Casa Bonita is a massive Mexican restaurant that is known for their all-you-can-eat deluxe meals, diving shows, roving Mariachi band, and arcade.  It’s like a Mexican Chuck-E-Cheese on speed.  The food isn’t anything to write home about, but the ambiance is something you’ll never forget.  We stopped on the way to change clothes and cleanup a bit because, by this time, we were all a little funky.  Since there aren’t any rest areas on I-25 between Colorado Springs and Denver, we had to stop at a town park and use their bathrooms.  Don’t judge…at least we WANTED to be clean.  Better than than traipsing in smelling of armpits and feet.

The entrance to Casa Bonita, the best mediocre Mexican restaurant in the world

The dive show during dinner was entertaining

We had to cross a bridge to get to our table

A post-dinner celebratory photo at the Casa Bonita fountain out front

There was a cache out in the parking lot of Casa Bonita that we naturally had to grab.  Yes, it wasn’t that great of a hide, but at least it wasn’t a LPC.  After everyone was back in the vans, we headed into downtown Denver to a travel bug hotel to drop off our travel bugs that we have set to race back home.  Unfortunately we chose the wrong time to do this as the cache is located in the middle of their bar scene and the place was packed with people.  There was no way to be stealthy at this point so we just did what we had to do and got out of there.  It was coming up on 11pm at this point and we were heading north into Cheyenne.  TeamAdorkable was at the wheel at this point with DynamicDs as the navigator while TeamDuckman, Lucky Chavez, and myself tried to grab some shut eye.  This would be the first time the entire trip that I felt ready to sleep, despite being a little woozy from motion sickness as well as dinner not quite agreeing with me (I told you it wasn’t very good).  Cheyenne is about 90 minutes north of Denver and I’d say I got about an hour’s worth of sleep during that time.  We stopped for a virtual cache just outside of town that was at a GPS calibration area and benchmark.  It was located on a hill just off the exit and was actually an interesting educational moment on the trip.  I will admit that I am not too aware of this whole benchmarking business that Chutch1035 and The Lawson Family are nuts over, but to have someone prolific like them explaining what the site was used for and how this stuff works was really interesting…even if I was half-asleep and it was almost 1am.

Since we are still running about 2.5 hours behind where we needed to be, and everyone was feeling pretty rough at this point, we decided to forgo any of the caches between the virtual and Amber’s Revenge II in Lincoln, NE.  While this was only 5 caches, most of them were well off I-80 and required quite a bit of driving to reach them.  With most of us sleeping and it being pitch black out here in the middle of nowhere, the caches wouldn’t really have much impact for us anyway and it would likely take even longer to find them since we’d only have a flashlight to guide us.  So eastward we traveled, on through the night.  Without a moon to light the sky, it was the darkest that we had encountered the entire trip, and I think this really helped with sleep.  Now this wasn’t uninterrupted sleep by any means.  During the night we had to make several stops to swap out drivers and get gas, so each time we stopped or pulled off the road I would wake up.  But I can say that I did get some sleep for once on this trip.

It was at the break of dawn that I woke up.  DynamicDs had taken over driving duties during the night and she couldn’t drive anymore so we stopped at a rest area about 160 miles into Nebraska and I agreed to take over.  I went to the restroom and splashed some cold water on my face to wake myself up, got a Coke out of the vending machine, and then waited in the van while everyone else finished getting up and readjusting themselves.  A group decided to grab the 2 caches at the rest area while we were there so we got to make up some of the numbers we skipped between Cheyenne and here.  My brother woke up and rode shotgun with me to navigate, but as I’ve said before, I am best behind the wheel when I put on my earbuds and crank out the jams, which is exactly what I did.  We were scheduled to be at the next cache by 9:40am and I was hellbent on getting as close to that time as possible.  The dashboard GPS was telling me that we would be arriving, barring any stops, at 10:04am.  I knew I could shave some more time off if I did 83MPH, so I set cruise control to that and we were off.

On the way towards Lincoln we passed under this thing. I had no clue what it was. Google tells me it’s “The Great Platte River Road Archway” and is a museum covering the Oregon Trail, nearby Fort Kearny, and the Mormon Trail. Very interesting stuff.

I was setting the pace for this leg of the trip and we were making good time, but unfortunately I didn’t take into consideration the rotation of drivers in the other van.  While DynamicDs did the bulk of the driving overnight, the other van rotated out several drivers, so they didn’t get nearly as much sleep as I did.  So while I was set to drive the entire 4 hour leg with no stops, the same couldn’t be said for the other van so stops were needed for them.  What really sucked was that, because we were in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, cellphone reception wasn’t the greatest so we weren’t finding out they were stopping until we were miles away from their stopping point.  So by the time we reached Lincoln, NE and the next cache, the rest of the group was still about 30 miles behind us.  I will admit I have never been very good at leading a convoy because I always tend to lose them.  Luckily we were able to use this extra time to find a way to reach the GZ and a place to park.

It was originally decided that DynamicDs and Yodaboyz were going to concur this cache together, but upon arriving at the GZ and realizing what was going to be needed, DynamicDs decided that there was no way more than one person could do this at a time.  So as the rest of the group was walking towards us, DynamicDs began her assault on the cache, which you can see was quite the undertaking in the pictures below.

What the hell is that?

There she is….holy cow that’s quite a fall

She’s almost there

Good job DynamicDs!!

After that daunting find, we left to fill-up our gas tanks and then headed to one more cache in town, this time a webcam cache.  This one was a fun cache.  Located at a roundabout in town, there is a traffic cam pointed at the road and your job is to get yourself perfectly positioned and wait for the cam’s website to update with your photo.  Luckily the site is able to be viewed from an iPhone and we were able to quickly get positioned (and repositioned) for the picture.  I’m sure it must have looked weird to all those passing us.  Here’s a group of 11 people, staring up at the sky, hands raised.  I bet to some it looked like the Rapture.

Once that was done, my brother took over driving and we headed off towards Iowa.  We just need one cache to claim the state, and Chutch1035 picked us quite the winner to finish off our trip.  The cache has the extremely rare distinction of being 9 years old, having over 600 finds and only 1 DNF.  It has never been muggled, and it is a regular-size container.  Yes, the cache is in the tiny town of Hamburg, IA, across the river from Nebraska and near the Missouri border.  Yes, it is located on private property.  BUT, it has still seen a LOT more cachers than most urban hides, and the fact that is has never been muggled and only one person has ever DNFed it they were very new to the game, only have 14 finds to their name, and quit playing shortly after not finding it) speaks loudly in favor of the cache.  Yes, it wasn’t anything remarkable and the hide wasn’t difficult at all, but it still capped off an amazing cache run and gave us the opportunity for one more group photo.

I like a town that can welcome you to it and point you in the direction of businesses all in one fell swoop!

Well spotted, Chutch!!

The last cache of the trip!

We left Hamburg just as quickly as we came, but not before stopping for another restroom break at a local gas station.  With nothing but road between us and home, it was at this point that we realized it was almost over.  Sure, there was still about another 10 hours and 2.5 states worth of driving left, but this marked the last time our group would do something together.  Along the way we’d stop once more for gas and for a quick bite, but not everyone ate and by the time we rolled into Indy, several members had already been dropped off at another location beforehand.  I know it’s lame to get all sentimental about something like that, but in this short period of time, I have grown closer to my travel companions.  I have laughed with them, complained with them, even learned a few things that probably had better be left unsaid .  In the end we traveled just under 2,500 miles.  We covered 8 states and netted 25 cache finds.  We did all this in just over 52 hours.  We never stopped to sleep, and only had one REAL meal together.  There were some tensions at times caused by sleepiness, but all-in-all, it was about as good a trip as you could ask for.  My only regret was not riding some in the other van.  While I forged a good relationship with everybody involved, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I bonded just a little bit more with those who were closely around me.  I can’t thank everyone enough for letting me be a part of this and for their participation.  These memories will last forever, and I am grateful that they are a part of them.  This blog series is dedicated to my fellow members:

Central Indiana Adventurers

Chutch1035 and his wife Amber
The Lawson Family
ScrappyT
Yodaboyz
Kemtek
TeamAdorkable
Team Duckman
DynamicDs
Lucky Chavez
Geo Minions

This is part two of a multi-part retelling of a cache run of epic proportions.  Click here to read part one.

The day of departure had arrived.  We had agreed on a meeting place and a time of 6pm.  Our cache list was finalized and we laid it out to allow one of our group to hit her 800th find milestone at Mingo. Below is the list of caches we set out to find during our trip and the time estimates I had made:

As you can see, I went ahead and set some lofty goals for how much time we’d spend at each cache, as well as stops for gas.  The caches we chose for this trip ran the gamut of types of hides.  We tried to focus mainly on regular and large-sized containers, as well as hides with high Favorite Point counts, an earthcache, virtuals, a letterbox hybrid, and webcam caches.  Noticeably absent are LPCs and guard rail hides, although we did end up doing a couple to help pad our numbers, as you will see that things didn’t quite go as planned.

As 6:00pm came and passed, everyone who was scheduled to be at the designated pickup point was there…except the 2 drivers of the minivans, Chutch1035 and his wife.  With it being rush hour, on a Friday, we weren’t too concerned at first.  Well, some of us weren’t.  I was nervous as all get out.  Being the one who ultimately set the route for our trip based on the caches we wanted to grab, I knew that each minute we weren’t leaving meant an extra minute was added to our arrival time at the end.  As you can see, after factoring in the amount of time it should take to retrieve each cache or take our pictures/answer questions, our trip time had increased from 43 hours to 52.5 hours.  Since we were leaving in the late afternoon, we were looking at a late-evening arrival, which would hurt for those of us having to wake up early the next day.  But I wasn’t panicking.  We already had a contingency to drop caches along the way to make up the time, so as long as we got underway shortly, we shouldn’t be in too bad a shape.  Unfortunately things weren’t working out for us in this department.  Our rides didn’t make it to our location until almost 7:00.  It was like everything was conspiring against us.  There was only one person at the rental place working the counter so it was slow as molasses in January.  Once they got the vans, one of them was low on fuel so they went to fill-up and noticed on the way there that the brakes were atrocious.  When you’re planning on ascending and descending one of the highest peaks in the lower 48-states, good brakes are an absolute must.  So they had to return the van to the rental company and get a replacement van, which they thankfully had available.  We finally headed out around 7:15, so we really only lost about 75 minutes.  “We’ll make it up on the road”, I assured myself.

Our first cache on our journey took us to a secluded cemetery.  This was the be the meeting point for the final member of our group, Lucky Chavez.  Since they live out this way, it made more sense to just meet them at a cache nearby than to have them drive east for an hour if we’re just going to head back their way anyway.  See, we is smart!  The GZ was not a long distance from the road, but years of growth had all but completely obscured the cemetery from view and there was a bit of a climb to reach it.  As there were so many of us, we decided to let a handful tackle this one while the rest of us got situated and chatted briefly about the road ahead, to save time.  About 10 minutes later, with the cache found, we said goodbye to Lucky Chavez’s husband and children, and hit the road….but not before making an unscheduled stop to grab a phone booth cache at the exit onto I-70.  You know, why not?  It’s just sitting there, waiting to be found….it would be a shame to pass it when it’s so close.

For the first leg of the trip, the occupants for the vans were as follows:

While I would have preferred to been all in one vehicle, this was about as even a split as we could make it.  None of the vehicles were overloaded and we were able to sit in relative comfort.  The trip to the next cache was about 2 hours so we filled that time with idle chit-chat, joke telling, and various conversation.  I can’t speak for the other van, but ours was filled with excitement and humor.  As the afternoon turned to evening, anxiousness built as we neared our next cache, The Cross!!!!!! (exclamations are the fault of the CO, sorry).  For some of us, this is the furthest west we had traveled strictly for caching, so this was something extra special.

Just as twilight was beginning to give into darkness, we arrived at the GZ.  I’m not a religious person by any means at all, but I must say that the sight of this massive cross is something to behold.  It’s sheer size makes you feel miniscule in it’s presence, and I can only imagine what it must be like to stand in it’s shadow during the day.  We made quick work on finding the cache, then huddled for our first group photo.

We were actually a good 75-100 feet away, so the scale is even more awesome!

Unfortunately, not everyone made it into this first shot.  The Lawson Family was feeling a bit under the weather at the time, to the point that he almost decided to pull himself out of the trip and head home.  We were very concerned for him, but he didn’t want us to fuss too much.  We stopped at a gas station nearby to fill-up (yes, we’re early on filling up…the stops listed above were merely estimates), grab some gas station snacks/drinks, and use the restroom.  We got some pain reliever into Lawson to hopefully help him out and got back on the road.  The next cache was about 45 minutes away, and with night upon us, time was melting away.

The next cache, Great Kaskaskia Dragon, was definitely a favorite of mine.  Located across the street from a liquor store, this steel behemoth stands at the corner of a street, menacingly staring at everyone who passes by.  The dragon is really cool by itself, but there’s an extra special surprise that hides within it’s bowels that grabbed the pyrotechnic youth in me…

FIRE!!!!!!!

Yes, fire makes everything cooler, and the dark of night really made it pop for the picture.  With the picture snapped, we quickly got the log signed and then headed back to our vans, but before we left, an art project began.

Might as well announce to the world what we’re up to

So far smiles are still intact!

By this point we were running about 2.5 hours behind schedule, which I didn’t harp on too much because I didn’t want to stress anyone out, but of course I was a little nervous as the math alone told me that, if we met no obstacles and hit everything that we were scheduled to, we’d be getting home just after 1am Monday morning.  But that’s a small price to pay for the fun we were having so I left it at that and onward we went.  We stopped in St. Louis at a gas station (Chutch1035 would have you know that it was no ordinary gas station, but a QuikTrip) and it was here I made my big blunder of the trip.  I technically hadn’t eaten anything substantial since the morning before we left and since I have a bit of an issue with motion sickness when I ride anywhere but in front, I didn’t want to chance giving myself ammunition, if you know what I mean, so at this point I was only taking in water and ginger root pills to help contain my motion sickness.  While I’m happy to report that the pills did the trick, I should note that the 5-Hour Energy I downed with a 1-liter bottle of Mt. Dew without any food whatsoever in my belly was the dumbest thing I could have done.  I promised Lucky Chavez I would stay up to be her navigator and this seemed like the best way to do this, but within an hour of this oversight, I was doubled over with some of the worst stomach pain ever.  It literally felt like someone was kicking me in my stomach every 5 seconds.  It was so bad that I had to wave off grabbing the next several caches and wouldn’t be ready to attempt anything until we were well into Kansas, which is a shame because apparently while attempting to find Supercache the group were chased away by coyotes and they had to grab another cache nearby.  And while they were off having a blast, I was laying in the fetal position next to the van…all because someone locked the van up before I had a chance to get back in.  So for the next 4 hours of the trip, I tried to get some sort of semblance of rest, hoping that the pain would dull itself.  I probably should have tried to eat something to soak up the insane amount of caffeine ravaging my stomach, but for some reason food didn’t sound appetizing at all.  It’s a shame that I was trying to be dead to the world because apparently I missed some amazing views:

They look like those alien ships from the crappy War of the Worlds remake

What a lonely-looking church

It was about the time that we reached the Fort Riley area near Junction City, KS that I began to come out of my funk.  Luckily, this was the location of a virtual cache, Atomic Cannon on I-70 Virtual.  On top of a huge hill overlooking I-70 and Marshall Field across the interstate, this cannon is a reminder of the nuclear arms race and the lengths we went to in order to protect this nation.  There was a switchback path up the hill to the top, and I attempted to reach the top with several others, but I only managed to get about 3/4 the way up before the lack of sleep and food reared it’s ugly head and I was forced to turn back around.  But those who did make it up there grabbed some breathtaking shots:

The truncated group at the Atomic Cannon

Chutch1035 cheesing for the camera

Love the peace sign next to a decommissioned instrument of mass destruction.

Marshall Field and Fort Riley in the distance

It’s waaaayyy up there!

TeamDuckman and ScrappyT (with me in the background trying, and ultimately failing, to climb up the hill)

Some decommissioned artillery on the way up to the Atomic Cannon.

As you can see in the top of the picture, some of the hill had recently caught on fire. I wonder if this was the culprit. We have had burn and fireworks bans in Indiana since late June…surely they were in effect here as well. So sad!

Some info about the cannon

As we loaded up to head to our next destination, it was discovered that another cache had been hidden in the park we were at (Freedom Park).  DynamicDs grabbed a GPSr and a pen and was there and back within 2 minutes.  We then made a quick stop in neighboring Junction City to pick up a Letterbox Hybrid and then made a stop at a gas station so people could freshen up as we were about 4 hours from Mingo at this point.  It was here that I mentioned to Chutch1035 that we were seriously behind schedule and that we were now jeopardizing our chances of getting to Pikes Peak.  The road to the summit closes at 6pm and, if we kept at our current pace and attempted all the caches we had planned to grab, we would be rolling into Colorado Springs just as they were closing the road.  So we decided to skip the next 2 caches and head straight for Mingo.  Luckily we only had to skip one, as a gas stop took us to the exit where Cathedral of the Plains was located.

Chutch1035 and wife at Cathedral of the Plains

After our stops, there was nothing between us and Mingo but about 39 miles of corn fields and blue sky (pretty much the only things you’ll find in Kansas).  Even though we’re all bleary-eyed and looney with lack of sleep, to say we’re excited is an understatement.  The past month of planning was about to pay off in a big way.

As you pull up to the GZ, you don’t really get a sense that something historic is nearby.  In a nondescript corn field in a nondescript part of western Kansas, it must have looked like a group of people had gone mad, congregating on this dirt-covered access road off of I-70, staring at the ground.  But once you near the actual hide, you really start to feel the importance of the cache.  We’ve heard and read the stories of the cache that would get muggled every couple hundred finds.  The near-archival of the cache after someone thought a dropped bison tube container would be an appropriate-enough hide to keep it going.  The actual cementing of the GZ that physically made it impossible to rehide the container the same way it was originally hidden.  Just 4 months prior things were looking very grim for this cache, and here we were, standing over it’s hiding place, about to become part of the relatively few to claim that we had found the oldest active geocache in the entire world.

I think we found something!

Yep, that sure does look like a cache!

DynamicDs doing her best Vanna White impression

Proof that we all signed it

Back row from left: Team Duckman, Geo Minions, TeamAdorkable, DynamicDs, Yodaboyz, ScrappyT, The Lawson Family, Lucky Chavez
Front row from left: Kemtek, Chutch1035 (and wife, who caches under the same name)

After we had signed the log and took our photos…things got fun.  The big inside joke for our group was always that we were going to Mingo not to find it, but to muggle it.  Since this thing is muggled so often, we thought it would be in incredibly bad taste to joke about muggling it…don’t judge!  So we took a series of pictures and posted them to the Indy Area Geocachers group letting everyone know what we had done.

First we have DynamicDs running away with Mingo.

Then we got Chutch1035 looking to hitch a ride after making off with Mingo.

Took container, left container, signed log….is that how this is supposed to work?

Luck Chavez really wanted to bring her family a souvenir

The window announces our intentions to the world

After all the fun and frivolity had died down, it was time to get serious.  We met our initial goal and found (and muggled) Mingo, but that was just the beginning.  We still had Pikes Peak to concur, and we were running low on time.  It was time to get back on the road.

To be concluded…

This is part one of a multi-part retelling of a cache run of epic proportions.

Yes, I KNOW that’s not how the song goes, but there’s an interesting story behind that play on the classic song “B-I-N-G-O”.  Obviously for those who play the game, Mingo is the oldest active geocache in the world.  Located near the small town of Mingo in western Kansas, the cache is a destination cache for many geocachers who want to be able to claim that they have found the oldest ACTIVE geocache, “active” being the key word here as it’s not necessarily the oldest ever hidden, just the oldest that can still be found and logged on GC.com.  The story of this cache is pretty lengthy and, in recent years, very interesting as the cache has been muggled multiple times and it got to the point where the reviewers were going to archive it as the location had been compromised and the hide, for a time, was no longer possible in its original position and the arguments ensued that, because the container and hide type would no longer be the same as the original hide that it could no longer claim the GC-code and would thus have to be archived and re-hidden as a new cache.  But as the argument grew more heated, the CO was able to create a new container that closely matched the original and managed to hide it in the same spot as before, thus retaining its GC-code and title of oldest active cache.

Now that I have gotten that little bit of background out of the way, I guess you’re probably wondering what this has to do with anything.  Well, let me get to that.  See, that parody was part of a post in our local area’s Facebook group.  One of the members had made a post that contained nothing but the rearranged lyrics of B-I-N-G-O that talked of a trip to find Mingo.  There wasn’t anything else to it, just the song lyrics.  Here is that post, in its entirety:

There was a cacher who hid a cache,
And Mingo was it’s name-o.
M-I-N-G-O
M-I-N-G-O
M-I-N-G-O
And Mingo was it’s name-o.

He hid the cache on May 11th of 2-0-0-0,
And Mingo is it’s name-o.
(clap)-I-N-G-O
(clap)-I-N-G-O
(clap)-I-N-G-O
And Mingo is it’s name-o.

The cache was numbered GC3-0,
And Mingo was it’s name-o.
(clap)-(clap)-N-G-O
(clap)-(clap)-N-G-O
(clap)-(clap)-N-G-O
And Mingo is it’s name-o.

The logged visits are nearing 3-0-0-0,
And Mingo is it’s name-o.
(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-G-O
(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-G-O
(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-G-O
And Mingo is it’s name-o.

The cache is the oldest active to go-o,
And Mingo is it’s name-o.
(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-O
(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-O
(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-O
And Mingo is it’s name-o.

We are gonna get Coy to his # 1-0-0-0,
And Mingo will be his claim-o.
(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-(clap)
(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-(clap)
(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-(clap)-(clap)
And Mingo is our goal-o.

Yes, that was tedious, but the impact was made.  Almost immediately people we’re responding with their interest in tagging along.  Shortly thereafter, another cacher (the one mentioned in the song that is going to get his 1,000 find) posted the following image:

The map that started it all

Almost immediately there was major interest in this trip.   The post dominated the Facebook group to the point that we were politely asked to take the conversation to our dedicated planning group page that had been created to spitball details.  It was on this page that things really started moving.

The first order of business was to determine a time with which the most people could join in.  Several weekends in late June through mid July had been tossed out and, after some back-and-forth, it was agreed to do it the weekend of July 6th.  In total, 11 people “signed up” to go on this trip.  It was then decided that, instead of relying on our personal vehicles, we would rent.  While a costly endeavor, you have the peace-of-mind to know that if something were to happen to the vehicle, the rental company would take care of it and get us a replacement.  Not for nothing, but if my car broke down 1,000+ miles from home, I know I would be freaking out for sure.

As the days passed, more and more details we’re locked in.  We had modified our route to include a trip to Pikes Peak to snag the caches on the summit, as well as have dinner at the infamous Casa Bonita in Denver.  Being a numbers nerd, I started crunching the miles/time to get us an itinerary for caches along our route and to map out a realistic ETA to the caches as well as our return.  Since some of us had to be back at work the following Monday morning, we had to make sure that this trip was even doable.  While Google Maps would tell us the entire trip would only take 38 hours, that was straight driving with no stops at all, not even gas.  Naturally that’s unrealistic so I had to set some goals for each cache as well as map out stops for gas/food.  The only variable I did not take into account was rest stops because how can you expect to force people to go to the bathroom at specific stops…this isn’t Soviet Russia!  I even did a breakdown for what we’d most likely end up paying for gas during the trip, based on the average gas costs along our route during the time leading up to our departure.  I updated these numbers weekly and they maintained a pretty steady price.  Since our leader, Chutch1035, was taking point on car rental, we decided that instead of trying to rent out a large passenger van and paying out the nose in mileage , we would rent two minivans at a very generous rental rate that included unlimited mileage.  Sure, this meant we would have to split the group, but it saved us tremendously.  So at this point we were looking at a total trip time, with stops for gas and food, at just over 43 hours.  Keep that number in mind.

If you’re following at home, you’ll notice I said we were heading to Pikes Peak.  If you keep up with current events, you’ll realize pretty quickly that, during our time frame, there were several major wildfires in Colorado, the largest of which was the Waldo Canyon fire that threatened Colorado Springs and had actually closed Pikes Peak to all visitors.  There was also another very large fire north of Denver that was threatening to close portions of I-25 north, which is the route we’d take into Cheyenne, WY.  Scrambling, we had to quickly come up with backup plans.  We began planning a route that would take us to Mingo, and then we’d divert southwest to the southeastern corner of Colorado, northeastern corner of New Mexico, and then across the Texas panhandle, Oklahoma, Arkansas, into Tennessee, a quick trip across the border to Mississippi, then back north through Missouri, Illinois, and then finally home.  This trip added up to just under 49 hours, still doable, but obviously over the 2-day mark at this point.  Remember, this is a cache run so there’s no stops for sleep.  We’ll be rotating drivers for sleep so the quicker we complete, obviously the better for everyone.

As the days drew closer, we buttoned up the specifics for our revised trip.  One of the toughest tasks ahead of us (that really shouldn’t have been) was what to call ourselves.  Instead of each person signing the log individually, we decided a group name would be most appropriate.  Since there was a good chance that members of our group would be asleep during a stop for a cache, we didn’t want to exclude them from the find all because they needed to grab a couple hours shuteye.  So after much back-and-forth, we settled on Central Indiana Adventurers, or CIA for short.  This group name serves two purposes.  Not only was it fitting for our trip, but we’ve essentially made ourselves a splinter group from the much-larger Indy Area Geocachers group so now ANY cache runs we choose to partake on that involves multiple members of our group can use the moniker.  We’re the Seal Team Six of IAG, so to speak.  And for this run, we dubbed it CIA-MA12, or Central Indiana Adventurers – Mingo Adventure 2012.  So for all log signatures, this is what we used (except for Mingo where we also individually signed since it’s such a historic cache).  We had a planning dinner the week before our trip to collect money, familiarize ourselves with those we had yet to meet, and do a little local caching, just to get a feel for everybody’s caching style.  I won’t lie, there was alcohol involved and some general silliness was achieved, but this ultimately proved that we could hang with each other.

The week of our trip, we got word that the wildfire, which was slated to be not only the worst in Colorado history, but also expected to devastate much of Colorado Springs and burn for weeks, had been almost fully contained.  They had a freak break in the weather that brought much-needed rain.  This, coupled with their containment fire lines, led to the fire stalling and then dying out.  They had announced that the Pikes Peak Highway had been opened as of the Tuesday before our trip.  Quickly we scrambled to reactivate our original trip plans and, by Friday, July 6th, we were ready to go.

To be continued…

I know it’s been awhile since my last post, and I had promised to be better about that, but things have gotten away from me here lately and I apologize for that.  I had originally intended on adding a couple guest contributors to this blog, and that may still happen, but the 2 people I had approached for this have shied away.  So for now it’s still just our family blog and the frequency of posts will be, unfortunately, sporadic.  But as you can see, my posts are never wont for details, so I firmly believe in quality versus quantity.  Now, onto my post.

A few months back, several members in a Geocaching Facebook group had put together a group outing to seek Earthcaches in Kentucky.  I must admit, I have done few of these in the past as I am more into history than geology, and the requirements on several can be rather daunting for someone who has difficulty remembering to bring a pen along with them, let alone pages of notes from the cache description page, and various measuring equipment for some of the more involved Earthcaches.  But the idea of going along with a group of people made it more desirable as we would all find it together and I wouldn’t have to be solely responsible for figuring out the details.  So my brother (Team Duckman) and myself decided to tag along.

As the days grew closer to the outing, it became apparent that the weather might be against us.  Every day that passed brought with it an updated forecast that would fluctuate from partly sunny skies and temps in the upper 60s/lower 70s to showers and thunderstorms.  Since the area we were going to be Earthcaching in was off-trail and most likely treacherous during rainy weather, it was decided the day before the outing to cancel.  But if you know anything about me from this blog, you know I always plan ahead.

My brother and I had talked quite a lot about the possibility of breaking away from the group and doing a cache run of our own if we ended up getting bored with the Earthcaches or couldn’t handle the terrain difficulty (we’re both a bit on the heavy side so anything a normal person can do requires twice as much effort for us to accomplish).  As the conversations started to turn towards the possibility of canceling the outing, I had suggested possibly hitting a Power Trail that is in Kentucky.  For those that don’t know, a Power Trail is a stretch of road/rail trail that has a massive number of caches along the way, usually at the minimum distance of 529 ft between each cache.  There are several well known Power Trails in the United States, the largest and most popular being the Extraterrestrial Highway Power Trail, which will soon have 2,000 caches along the 98-mile stretch of Hwy 327 in Nevada.  These Power Trails are meant for those cachers who ARE about the numbers and are looking for the epic “# of caches in a day” milestones.  If you’re at an event and overhear someone making the bold statement of getting 1,000+ caches in a single 24-hour period, this is how they do it.

The HWY 127 Power Trail in Kentucky is nowhere near this saturated.  Along the ~92-mile stretch of HWY 127 between Glencoe (actually about 10 miles northeast of the town is the northern terminus of the Power Trail) and Danville (about 7 miles north of town for the southern terminus) are, at last official count, 270 caches.  As you can see from the map below, that’s a lot of caches.  The majority of the cache containers are 35mm film canisters, with some pill bottles and other containers of like size interspersed throughout.  These are definitely meant for quick grabs.

Prior to the cancellation of the Earthcache trek, I had decided to spend the night at my brother’s house as the breakfast event/meeting place for the group was in his area and I live about 20 miles away.  This made planning for the new outing much easier as I was able to load all my caches into the GPSr the night before and plot out our best plan of attack.  Our original intent was to grab every cache between I-71 in the north and Danville to the south, leaving about 20 or so north of I-71 not to be found.  We never had any preconceived notions that we’d find all of them (at the time of the trip there was only 262 available).  I spent the better part of two hours trying to figure out which caches were on the northbound side of the highway as the majority were obviously southbound but some caches were denoted as being northbound while others were not.  We had also decided at this point to give ourselves a team name for signing the logs as it would take a lot longer for each of us to write out our full caching names on the logs.  We settled on Team HoBros, which incorporates both our last names and the fact that we’re brothers.  We also agreed that to save even more time we could log finds as THB if we felt so inclined.  As we were taking his vehicle, that left me in the positions of navigator and gopher, so it would really come down to how tired I was of writing our team name.  Feeling comfortable that I had sorted everything out, I went to bed around 1am, anxious for our day ahead.

We awoke at 6am and left shortly thereafter.  We stopped at a convenience store to pick up some caffeine-laden drinks and headed for Kentucky.  It was rather foggy that morning and that gave us an ominous feeling that the day could end up very wet.  It took us about 2 hours to get down to the starting point, and as luck would have it, there was a little hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon right off the exit.  Since neither of us had eaten anything at this point, we figured it would be best to begin on full stomachs rather than hit the trail and get about 30 miles in and start having hunger pangs hit when we’re nowhere near any food options.  Since we’re in what can be considered “The South”, I knew there was a good chance for some old-fashioned biscuits and gravy, so it sounded like a plan to me.

About 20 minutes later, with our bellies full, we headed out.  As luck would have it, the first cache was in the parking lot of the restaurant.  I grabbed it, signed it, and we were off.  About a half-mile down the road was the next cache and it became apparent real quick what type of hides we would come across.  If it wasn’t on a guardrail, it was attached to a sign.  And if it wasn’t attached to a sign, it was hanging in some road-side tree.  Things were easy-going for the first 15 minutes, until I realized that my southbound GPX had northbound caches in them.  When I checked the northbound GPX, I saw that it had the same number of caches as the southbound.  It was then that I realized that all that hard work the night before had been for naught as I had accidentally duplicated the same original GPX and only renamed them, not edited them for cache placement.  So I had basically deprived myself of almost 2 hours of sleep for nothing….oh well, lesson learned.

Over the course of 4 hours we snagged just short of 100 caches along the ~45 mile section of 127 between I-71 and Frankfort.  During this time we both hit milestones, our 600th and his 700th find.

Find #600!!

I also learned something unexpected…Power Trails are hard work.  Looking at it on paper, it sounds like the easiest, most-convoluted method to score a find and pad your numbers.  You’re finding caches that had little thought put into their placement, no real effort put on their cache page descriptions (most are copy/paste from the lead cache page for the trail), and a lack of imagination on the container.  Everything would point to this being the worst caching experience ever, but I had a flipping blast and was tired when it was all said and done.  Not only do you have to work out logistics for the trip, planning out your route and, in this case, making sure you know which side of the road you need to be on, but then there’s the very physical toll this type of caching takes on you.  You don’t realize it when you’re on a normal cache run because you’re not in a rush to leave the GZ and move onto the next.  You’re taking your time, usually tens if not hundreds of feet away from the nearest road, with not a care in the world other than what you’re currently doing.  We wanted to make it so that we spent no more than a minute at each GZ.  That including getting out of the car, locating the cache, signing the log, re-hiding the cache, and getting back into the car.  That leaves very little wiggle room to enjoy the sights, take pictures, or even collect your bearings.  So all that getting in and out really becomes a bit of a workout.

Once we got into Frankfort around 1:30, we were beginning to get a little hungry so we decided to stop for lunch in town and take a break.  We had been on the trail for just over 4 hours and at 92 finds we were making tremendous time.  We figured we could go another 2 hours or so before we needed to make our way back north so we continued south after lunch.  This is where things get dicey.  Up until Frankfort, 127 is a 2-lane highway meandering through the hills of the Ohio Valley.  South of Frankfort and I-64, however, 127 becomes a 4-lane divided highway that gets an awful lot of semi traffic.  The hides were the same, attached to road signs, guardrails, and other roadside landmarks, but with the hustle and bustle of the midday weekend traffic and the increased speed limit, it became decidedly more treacherous.  Also, the entire first half of our trip we saw absolutely no law enforcement at all, lending us to feel comfortable about our caching.  In a 3-mile stretch since leaving Frankfort, we saw 4 police cars, including a pull-over.

We managed to snag 7 finds heading south of town before a run-in with an angry driver decided to make us turn tail and head back north.  The GZ for this particular cache was at the end of a guardrail next to the driveway of a mobile home located on a hill a ways ahead of us.  I had just jumped out, grabbed the log, and had put pen to paper when I heard the blast of a car horn right in front of me.  The owner of the house or a visitor had somehow managed to pull up behind us and laid on the horn as we were unfortunately blocking the entrance to the driveway without us seeing her.  I had left the car door open when I jumped out and watched in horror as my brother quickly pulled away in fright.  I freaked out, replaced the log as quickly as possible, all while hearing the person in the car shout an expletive at me.  I jumped into the car and we quickly left, having a good laugh in the process.  But this left us both shaken and we decided it was just way too busy to continue our trek south.  We knew we had missed a lot of northbound caches on the first leg so we decided we’d grab a few caches in downtown Frankfort before heading back towards home and collecting the balance of northbound caches.

Since I had not planned for this deviation, and because we were finally within good 3G data range, I whipped out my iPhone, pulled up the geocaching app, and began searching for nearby caches.  Because I am unfamiliar with the city, I didn’t want to just chance doing an impromptu cache run that could cause us grief in finding caches down one-way roads we didn’t know about, I decided to look for a park or nature preserve that had several caches within that we could park and walk to.  Leslie Morris Park on Fort Hill fit the bill nicely.  Located on a hill overlooking the Kentucky River and downtown Frankfort, there were 4 caches there just waiting to be found.  So we headed to the park (which is very cumbersome to get to) and grabbed our walking sticks, and headed out.  We ended up grabbing 3 of the 4 caches as one of them was just too far of a walk for us to make as we were running low on time.  Two of the caches made the side trip worth it.  GC1JNWG – Hole in a Hill is located near a sinkhole/cave that provided quite the harrowing view…if it weren’t for the grate covering the hole.

GC1JNWG – Hole in a Hill

About .2 of a mile away from that was another cache overlooking the Kentucky River, GC3051K – Kentucky River View Cache.  While there wasn’t anything remarkable about the cache itself, the surroundings were gorgeous and provided us with a great view.

GC3051K – Kentucky River View Cache

Unfortunately, this park is fairly neglected and there was a lot of trash around.  I tried to perform a little CITO but found out that nowhere in the area of the park we were in was a trashcan to be found.  So I packed in my random bits of trash and we headed back towards 127, picking up another 48 caches as we headed back the way we came.  In the end, we managed to find 140 caches.  We started our run at 9:10am, took our lunch at 1:30pm, and grabbed our last cache at 5:43pm.  Definitely not a record cache run, but it has been our best single-day run yet.  We are short 130 caches from completing the entire trail, and on the leg that we did do, we still managed to leave 46 caches un-found, either because they were located in shrubbery off the road that would have cost us precious minutes, or we blew past them too fast as my GPSr would lock up for a minute before updating our location well past the GZ.  We have both vowed that we would return in the fall to pick up the balance of caches we left behind…I, personally, cannot wait.

Oh, and the weather that day….partly sunny and 72, with a stray sprinkle that lasted about 30 seconds.