More Geocaching, With Karen & Kylor!

Karen suggested that we try our hand at geocaching in Spring Hill and we had some fun.

As we were going about our hunting, we were asked if we were geocaching by this trio on bikes. It turned out to be 'Bike and Hike' and they had a cache nearby. After swapping stories for a couple of minutes, we headed out to find some more geocaches, reserving their cache for last.

Kylor was riding with us...

...with Karen, Luann and I making up the rest of our geocaching crew.

Here was our first attempt, with the container being located in a marsh.

This one was very easy to find, as it was just sitting about knee high on the branches of a pine tree.

We found this travelbug hotel so we could drop off a traveler that consisted of a serial-numbered dogtag with a horseshoe attached to it.

For the next cache, we climbed up this limerock tailings pile to see if we can find a cache that was about 150 feet from where we were standing at its base. Luann & Karen stayed at the bottom as Kylor and I scrambled up this trail.

Here's a pulled-back shot as we're almost at the top.

And after another pull-back to the no-zoom level, you can see that I just made the top with Kylor a close second, and it was a bit of a climb.

When we got to the top, we discovered the ridge was only about 18 inches wide but there was sure footing to be found and the view of the area was great.

This may very well be one the highest pieces of natural material for miles...

Hi there! We see you, taking our picture.

Meanwhile, Mr. Park Ranger was patrolling the area on his 4-wheeler.

I found a patch of these confetti flowers up here on the ridge.

Since the ridge was only 18 inches across, it means that the base wasn't as wide as I thought it was. We ended up going down the back side to search for the cache. Kylor discovered it just sititng there, without the rock concealing it. We figured this out by the imprint left in the soil. After looking around a bit, we found this rock about 20 feet away that matched the imprint. Apparently, somebody picked up the rock and threw it, not seeing the cache container that was concealed beneath it.

Next was this cache that was concealed as a bat roost. Nice job.

Yep, just a bat cave on a tree.

When I extracted the container, three big cockroaches came tumbling out. Here's a shot of one of them. Hoo-boy...

While Kylor and I examined the contents of the container, Karen and Luann worked on a 'Tree Hugger' picture.

We put things back together at the bat cave cache, then headed over to the cache recommended by Hike and Bike, the geocachers we met (in the first picture). It only took Karen a moment to find this one that was well hidden, right out in the open.

And here is a shot Luann got of us setting up some pictures of this find for this weblog. We always pause for a couple of moments to take a picture (or two) when we find a cache so you can get a photographic feel of our experiences too.

On the way back to the spot where we started out on the bikes, we stopped by this spot to show Karen the cache under a rock and the 'Jumping Tree' Kylor and I came across when we were looking for the cache.

And here's the 'Jumping Tree' with Karen and Kylor posing for me. We call this a jumping tree because it's located right at the edge of the water, so teenagers will climb up into the branches and jump into the water. The thing is, this tree is about 20-25 feet above the surface of the water, so it would be a thrilling jump/dive from here. I showed it to Karen because when we were kids, we used to swim in rock pits and canals and a 'Jumping Tree' like this by the water's edge was a valuable find.

Well, we had a bunch of fun out here because the weather was perfect with overcast skies and a gentle breeze blowing. We'll be back out here sometime to find the rest of the caches in this spot.