Geocache Adventure

It was supposed to be cooler and less humid today, so after a big brunch of pancakes and sausage, we decided to do a little geocaching.  I had located several geocaches around Brookville, so we packed up some water and set off.

The first were a series of (4) caches along the Yellow Bank trail.

We located the trailhead and parked the truck in a shady spot.

The first cache was supposed to be near the trailhead, so we searched all through the weeds using both our Garmin Nuvi GPS and our handheld GPS.  One of our goals was to determine which GPS worked better.  IT didn’t take long to realize that the handheld does have better accuracy, because it gets you down to within 2 feet.  so, I guess all our previous trouble must be due to operator error.

Today wasn’t starting out too well, and none of the guys were successful in finding this first cache.

Bryce is sure he’s got to be right on top of it!

Nicolas found lots of good hiding places under that old bridge, but no cache!

Tom contemplates where this could possibly be hidden.

We decided to move on to the next three, since there were supposed to be easily accessible from the trail. 

The Yellow Bank trail is an easy 3/4 mile hike (each way) through the woods.

We arrived at the location of the second cache, and everyone was searching for this camouflaged test tube.

Hmmm . . . could it be under this bench?

We looked all around the trail, in hollow trees, under roots, and then I found it!  It was just laying on the ground, covered by a few leaves!  The container was pretty chewed up, like an animal may have gotten to it, but the log was still there and we were able to get it out and sign it.

OK, now we were on a roll – we had found one!!  the next was supposed to be a similar container, and the clue led us to believe that we should be looking in trees this time.

Again, we were successful, with Tom scoring the find this time!  Then it was on to the last.  This time we were looking for a box, so it should have been even easier.  We had an extra clue to go by, but it ended up not being very helpful.  Finally, Bryce made the find, and we were 3 for 4, and at the end of the trail. 

We decided to take another stab at the first one on the way back to the truck, hoping to capitalize on our success so far.  They searched around in the weeds some more, and finally Tom found it!  Yeah!!

Bryce signs the log, making us 4 for 4 on the day!

It was a nice walk in the woods, and a successful day of geocaching!  We decided to push our luck and try for one more at the Franklin County Park & Fairgrounds.

The county fair was a couple of weeks ago, so there was just one RV in the campground today.

This is a really nice park, with some great camping areas – we wouldn’t mind staying here at all!  They even have sites with water & electric.

Nice sites that would even accommodate our big rig!

Bryce took the lead with the GPS, and soon located the cache.

Hey, check out that stump behind you, Bryce!

Before we left, we took the truck up the “hilltop road”, and YIKES!  What a steep climb – up and down – and some crazy switchbacks that we never expected to see in Indiana!

The road was steep, twisty-turny, and BARELY wide enough for our truck!

On the way out, we drove around the 4H barns and the fairgrounds areas.  This is a really nice park!

A nice ball field – with lights, even!

We rewarded ourselves for our 100% geocaching success with a stop at the Dairy Cottage in Brookville for ice cream.  Their sign out front said “homemade orange sherbet”, and that sounded really good on a hot day!  The boys had blizzards, and Tom and I tried the sherbet – it was wonderful!

Only $1.60 for that giant cone – and it was sure good!

With today’s successes under our belt, RVfamilyMI (our geocaching name) is well on their way to being real geocachers!