We Found Excalibur!

What does that mean?

Excalibur is a geocache that is unlike any we have come across before. It mixes regular geocaching with orienteering (working with a compass) and some serious math. This is a marker post that gives you coordinates to follow the trail using a plate-type compass to guide you.

Yeah, it was a hot and 'sun-shiney' day. We teamed up with fellow geocachers, Embargo and Captain Biggins to take on the challenge.

Sometimes, Nature made it tough on us, as can be seen here. It's hard to find a marker when a fallen tree branch is partly obscuring it.

We're still going, but the going is getting tough. The sun is out in full force, and we are sweating mightily.

We came across gopher tortoises all over the place.

You can see how tough it is to navigate for 600 yards when all of this is between you and the next marker. Thank goodness we did some research to help make things a little easier. And the weird thing was that there were prickly pear cactus plants everywhere. Everybody in our party ended up having to stop and pick cactus spines out of a foot or leg.

You see this wood pile? If you choose to take on Excalibur, you had better be ready to pass this thing at least 4 times. We decided to do a group shot by standing a piece of wood on end and placing the camera on it.

After we found all of the markers, we did some quick math and the GPS units said we had to walk 3 miles on a bike path to get to the final container.

Yeah, we walked, and walked, and walked. Man, it was hot!

We came across this doe and a faun by the side of the trail. Nice pose...

Eventually, the coordinates took us to a swamp. We started looking for some way to get to the spot where we think the container should be with out walking through the muck. Unfortunately, after walking around the swamp, we were forced to trudge into the quagmire looking for the Excalibur final container.

After getting as close as 50 feet and getting stuck in deep mud, Embargo and I agreed that this isn't the right place. Time to get out of this mess...

On the way back, we came across this alligator. We sure were glad he wasn't in the swamp where we were slogging around just a couple of minutes ago.

Ah, finally! The legendary Excalibur geocache final container has been located! Ok guys, stop fighting over the container, we will all get a chance to sign our names to the logbook. Also located inside the box was a 10-coin challenge geocoin that both Bigigns and Embargo were competing for. I took our giant geocoin and tossed into the air to see who would be leaving the park with the challenge coin. Up it went, then right back down to Earth...

...And it stabbed end-on into the ground! Can you believe that? It has been weird all day long during this quest, and then this has to happen... Well, let's yank it out of the ground and try again. This time, it landed flat and Biggins won the toss. Now that we finally found all 15 ammo cans and conquered the legendary Excalibur geocache (the toughest one in Tampa Bay) we were ready to go home and just sleep.
We won! Didn't we?