Yesterday I was in the zone. Geocaching that is. Knew the weather was going to be fine, I had the afternoon free since it was my half day of work, and Steve is out of town so I didn't have to worry about getting home to fix dinner. Go west, Mary. Go west. So towards the Lakeshore I went. Destination Pigeon Creek Park in Ottawa County, home to 10 caches.
Decided to make the most of my trip and pick up a few challenge caches that weren't too far away, and a few caches near those caches. First of the challenge caches was one called Century Challenge - Traditional. For those who have found at least a hundred caches total. I qualified fifteen times over... a challenge because it was hidden "somewhere" in this huge fallen tree. Finally found it. Went back to the car and there was a road commission crew taking out a stump not 10 feet from my car. Of all the places on a rural road to be working, they had to pick that spot at that time. No damage but I decided to get out of there before there was damage. So on to a few more caches (as well as a few before the century challenge) then to a challenge cache called Headstone Milestone. You needed to find 31 cemetery caches in order to qualify for this one, and create a bookmark list. I had met that requirement and created the list last fall and finally got to the cache today. Then on to the main objective, Pigeon Creek Park.
I looked over the possible routes and decided to hit the caches in roughly a clockwise direction. The first was an old cache, Pigeon View. Found a nice little salamander there, took its picture and let it go. On to Fishing's revenge, then had to do a little bushwhacking and hill climbing but made it to Pidge Overlook. Had to go just a bit downhill past the overlook to get to the cache. Had just sat down with the container when who should appear but my caching friend Macho Homemaker! Joe saw me coming from the opposite direction, heading to the same cache he was. We had a nice visit and traded some coordinates. He gave me coords to a puzzle cache in the park that I hadn't been planning to get because I hadn't solved the puzzle. We went off in different directions and I headed for the puzzle cache that he'd given me coords for.
Found that, then went on to "The Hills" which was tucked away in the far corner of the park. I had been debating whether or not to walk out that far, but since the puzzle cache was on the way, decided to go for it. After that, picked up two more caches, for a total of 7 in the park. Of the three left, one is high up in a tree. No way. Another is currently disabled because of a dove building its nest very close to it. The third is the bonus cache for the Pidge series which I can't get until I have all the codes by finding the other caches in the series. Actually Macho left me a note on my car with the other codes but since I didn't have a printout of the bonus cache, it didn't help. Gave me an excuse to come back someday though. Two and a half hours and two miles later, had made the complete circuit and back to the car.
Did three caches along the way home (a total of 19 for the day) and was home just before 7, in time to get to talk to Steve. He had a great day riding in the Smokies, and was in Knoxville, Tennessee for the night.
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