5,000 Finds! Mexico Adventure!

5,00 Finds!

Arco at Land' End

As I approached my 5,000th find, I wanted to come up with something fun to do for my milestone. My previous thousander milestones included a tough challenge in southern New Mexico, a couple cool caves in Kentucky and in Tennessee, and a mega event, MOGA 2018. Looking back now, I can see that each milestone is in a different state, which is also kind of cool.

1000	Locked	100,000 Foot Challenge
2000	Locked	Cavers Plunge (an extreme cache)
3000	Locked	Confederate Sinkhole Earthcache
4000	Locked	MOGA 2018

I thought about what would make a cool find for my 5000th geocache, and then realized that I had a big international trip coming up, and it would make for a perfect exotic location to get my 5,000th find. My family was traveling to San Jose Del Cabo, Mexico, to attend my sister-in-law's wedding. There aren't a lot of caches down there, but there definitely are some col ones, and I made it a priority to figure out how to get o one of the caches in Mexico.

Our trip got off to a rocky start, with a missed connection in Atlanta resulting in us arriving far later than planned, but we made it ok, and our first day in Mexico we planned an adventure out to Land's End, the southern mos tip of Baja California with an iconic sea arch... and an Earthcache.

We hired a water taxi to take us over to Pelican Rock, and after swimming and snorkeling for a bit, took a walk along the beach to Playa Del Amor, and the two Earthcaches and Traditional that I wanted to target for my 5,000th find. Land's End is a very cool spot, a rocky point with a narrow and very picturesque beach, with a sand walkway that connects from the Sea of Cortez side, over to the Pacific Ocean side. Everyone swims on the Sea of Cortez side, as it is protected from the hard surf, but the Pacific side is just stunning. While the kids ran around and played in the sand, I took off up the arid, rocky slope to see if I could find the traditional geocache here, GC3B92, I was a bit worried about finding the cache, as a previous seeker posted a DNF, but after searching around for a while, and using the generous hint, I spotted the container and yelped for joy. A couple TBs I had with me ended up getting left here, hopefully to be picked up by another tourist, and tey travel far and wide.

The two Earthcaches, GC7HT6P and GC319DN were also fun to do, especially the one about Tafoni, a funny geological term I hadn't heard before. The rock formations along with a nice sandy beach, and an exotic location... it made for an awesome milestone.

Neptune's Finger.. a part of one of the Earthcaces

Looking out at the Pacific

Tafoni on the rocks

Divorce Beach and the Pacific Ocean

Geocache Success!

Water Taxi taking my family to Pelican Beach

It will probably be a few years before I need to think about my 6,000th find, but it will definitely be hard to top this mile stone.

The cache was up there somewhere

Pretty sure I am in this picture somewhere, looking for the geocache on the talus sope

Triumphant Return

Triumphant earthcache Pic

Me and my daughter

Hocking Hills Superbowl Hike

On a rainy dreary Saturday, I joined my friends Tom and Kim, better known as Sequoia and Kim-Possible, for a day of hiking and exploring in the Hocking Hills. This area has been on my radar since we moved to Ohio, it is known for interesting geologic features and beautiful trails. Sequoia was hosting his third annual Superbowl Hike Event out here, but unlike his event in Berea, this one was less focused on finding a lot of geocaches, and more about hiking and exploring some of the hidden places in the Hocking Hills. Sounded good to me.

After a nice early start, and a breakfast of waffles off the interstate, we met several other geocachers at the trailhead to Balanced Rock. The morning was foggy and damp, but not all that cold. There were a few large icicles hanging from some of the cliffs on the hike up, but they were melting fast. Balanced rock was a fun hoodoo like formation that looks like one strong gust o wind could knock it over. It reminded me a lot of rock formations around Los Alamos. We hung around here for a while, taking some pictures and chatting about geocaching. Two of the geocachers had to leave after this short hike (only 1/2 mile!).

Group Picture for the Event

One precarious rock

Doesn't look as precarious from this angle

From the same parking lot, we hiked north to Chapel Cave and Chapel Arch, a bit longer hike, but still pretty short. We visited the Chapel Cave first, which was aptly named, it felt like a wedding service could be held in it. The nearby earthache at Chapel Arch probably would have been overlooked entirely if it wasn't for the geocache listing bringing us there. Compared to the Chapel Cave, it was a pretty small feature tucked away on a small rock bluff, but it was pretty cool in its own way. There were two entrances a small cave chamber, connected by a very narrow fissure. I tried squeezing myself through the fissure without success at first, but then got down on my belly and crawled through a wider gap at floor level. Good fun. A rich reddish iron oxide gave the location some wonderful color contrasts to the vivid green mosses growing around the caves.

Chapel Cave

Chapel Cave from afar

Group picture near Chapel Arch

we completed both of these hikes before lunch, but the real treat was still in store for us. Sequoia had contacted park officials and got us special permits to visit two locations that are not open for regular access by visitors. We gathered up our lunches and headed over to the first spot called the Salt Peter Caves, only a short ways down the road. In my opinion, this was the coolest spot we visited. The rock bluffs here form a series of multi level cave shelters. The caves are deep enough where a flashlight becomes necessary, which also make them suitable for bats to roost in. Makes sense, since Salt peter, which is essentially bat guano, was mined here once. The first cave we came to I immediately went back as far as I could, which required stooping low, and sure enough, there were a few bats hibernating. I counted 7 in that first cave, not a lot by any means, but it was good to see them utilizing the cave. We were careful not to shine lights directly on them or get too close an disturb them.

We were all pretty hungry, so we sat down in the soft dry sand in this first cave and ate lunch. Well, most of us did, two cachers, MetalHead and half of the BoydFamily somehow got split up from our group and while we ate lunch we could see them far below at the edge of the river, trying to figure out how to get to us. The first cave we were at was less obvious to get to then the other caves and the had missed a faint turn off. By the time they got back to us, we had finished most of our lunch and were ready to explore the other 3 caves. I get so giddy exploring caves, at each one I was immediately going as far back as I could, and looking for any tight passages to squeeze through. There were a couple fun little belly crawls that connected different parts of the caves, but none of the caves was deeper than a hundred feet or so from their broad entrances. They were all really nice spots to hang out though. Sequoia set up a few more group photos as we monkeyed around the caves and small waterfalls.

LadyB and LandisB at Cave #1

Group Shot at Cave #4

Exploring the depths

Cave #2

Cool ice stalacmite

Dew covered bat

Our final hike was to Rocky hollow, a spot where there was some old growth hemlock forest. There was a nice trail cut through an area of clear-cut that was thick with small trees and thorny briars, and then a decent trail down into a ravine, but then the trail just stopped, and we were exploring the hollow as if it was virgin territory. We went upstream a short ways to an impressive waterfall, and spent some time scrambling the slippery rocks around its base. Th hemlocks here were massive, and the moss was thick and deeply verdant. A very peaceful place that probably gets few visitors.

A curious rock in the hollow

Curious rock from another view

Zen Moment

While these afternoon hikes had no geocaches on them, they were definitely the highlight for me. I think the rest of the group agreed, although most of them had previously found the earthcaches at the other spots. Hats off to Sequoia for getting us access to such wonderful spots. It was nice to meet som other Ohio cachers too, ones not from the Cincy area. I chatted with Boydfamily, ArmyMom and Metalhead about caching in Dayton, and the possibility of finding some old Weeds19 hides. LadyB and LandisB, from Columbus, I had met before from MOGA events, and there is a chance that we'll team up this year to compete in the 4-man.

The ride home had a couple detours to pick up a few caches that Sequoia needed for a challenge he is working on involving ancient civilization monuments. The most notable stop was at Hopewell Culture National Historic Park, which was a recreation of Hopewell Mound constructions. Stopping there was just the cherry on top of a great day exploring Ohio. It was a day out with geocachers, but it certainly wasn't about geocaching. That said, after this trip I am now sitting at 4,999 finds. Next one is a big milestone, and hopefully I can find an equally big adventure cache to find for it. Maybe international....?

A frigid hike in the Jefferson Memorial Forest

Lost love Letters

My friend Tom invited me on a geocaching hike near Louisville, and I was keen to go as it is an area I haven't explored yet. I also enjoy caching with Tom and Kim, two of the geocachers that I met through MOGA competitions. A few days before our planned hike, the weather forecast was for temperatures in the teens, and a biting wind to make it feel even colder. We could have decided not to spend all day out in the cold, but as my cousin Ali likes to say, "There is no bad weather, only bad clothing." So off we went.

The Jefferson Memorial Forest (JMF) touts itself as being the largest city park in the US, a claim that requires a bunch of caveats. I remember the Franklin Mountain park in El Paso also making this claim, and a quick google search reveals that there are several large city parks that could also make claims to this title. Not that it matters much, as long as we can go geocaching out there. JMF is cache-saturated, meaning that the hiders in that area have placed geocaches in nearly every available space in the forest. This means you can spend a day hiking and easily get 40+ geocaches, which is what we did. Tom and Kim have gecached down there often, but it seems that three are always some areas that have new caches, or spots they had missed previously. They had a list of caches the were targeting, but for me, I was just happy to be out and find whatever caches we happened to pass by.

We pulled up at the trailhead at about 8am, and met two other geocachers there, Bucknuts who is moving to Louisville, and BuffaloBob, from nearby Indiana. Being a party of 5 meant we wouldn't be hiking too fast, but we would also have a much easier time finding geocaches. The more eyes looking the faster things get found. The area we were hiking w a remote corner of the JMF, with no maintained trails. Winter is definitely a good time to geocache this area, as we were usually hiking cross-country and I bet the bushwhacking in the warmer months is pretty brutal. There was some nice ridge-top hiking, and something of a trail along the ridges, but we were only on the ridges part of the time. I was constantly cold though, the layers I chose for the hike were not quite warm enough. I think I was counting on more strenuous hiking to keep me warm.

Earthcache, Errosional Fissures

Most of the hides were pretty average, simple pre-forms on a tree or in a nook. There were a few challenge caches I qualified for, and some I didn't, but those were not interesting hides. The best hides were a letterbox, and some hides requiring climbing up in trees.   GCZM2N, GC83JAB, GC8476R and GC83HM9 all had fun little climbs associated with them, as well as nice page write-ups with a good sense of humor. Most were by the same cache owner, JeepStaff, who the others in our group know well, and who has quite a reputation for fun and creative hides. I'll have to keep an eye out for his hides in the future.

BuckNuts at Oh Deer! not Here!

BuffaloBob at Sky King's Plane

We ended up hiking around 10 miles over the course of 10 hours, and visited 43 geocaches, 40 of which I was able to claim as found. The only DNFs we had were ones where the CO had given permission to leave a replacement, so we left new containers at those spots. Three challenge caches I signed but do not qualify for, and may never qualify for as they require pretty big numbers.

Kim-Possible at a hide in JMF

As for my overall impressions of JMF: There is a ton of geocaching to be done there, and some fun hides, but the hiking was pretty average in my opinion. No real great views, or neat geologic formations. If it weren't fun the geocaching fun, I wouldn't recommend it as a destination. But there is plenty of geocaching fun to be had there, so I might go on another trip or two.

Earworm Multi Cache GC70M9E

One of my favorite hides of all time was GC70M9E.  What made this hide particularly fun was the final contained a digital voice recorder and I encouraged finders to record the earworm song stuck in their head on it. Unlike most of my hides  Santa Fe, decided to archive the cache so I could keep the DVR, and perhaps re-create a multi cache like it in my new home of Cincinnati. I am thikning about how to do that now, but in that process, I have pulled the recordings off of the DVR and compiled them int a Youtube Video. I had over 8 minutes of recorded material and it was fun to hear what people left.

I am looking forward to figuring out how to recreate this hide in some way.