Saturday GeoCache Hunt

Had a great day of geocaching on Saturday and here are the highlights. Click on the photos for a larger view.

The first cache I went for was a historical cache. There is a fellow who has registered a bunch of these on the caching website all around Douglas County. I have found a number of them and I found one on this trip. There is no actual cache at the location; rather there is something interesting of a historical nature at the site. This one is the Indian Park School. It is a small schoolhouse with a cemetery out back. In order to claim such caches, you have to email the owner of the cache certain facts about it. In this case, I had to email the information from the building under the bell (school district information and the build date of the building - 1884), information from one of the cemetery headstones, and what is written on a stove that is sitting in a field out back.

The second cache of the day is called Indian Creek Cache. This is near a campground where there is a fee to even park there for a little while ($4). Since I parked along the road, I didn't have to pay. I saw a park ranger there checking on the cars that were parked in the lot. I had a very nice hike to the cache though I was a bit wary of the 12 year old practicing his archery in my general direction at the campsite that I skirted to get to the cache! Don't worry; no arrows came close at all. I got to the cache area and found that there is no visible trail in the immediate vicinity. This made it extra fun. The trees caused some problems with the GPS receiver so I did the usual circling and zeroed in on the cache. Just as I found it, a bee got very interested in me. I did the usual smart thing with a lone bee - gave him a swat! Seemed to work. For a while. He came back. Another swat. Gone.

The next cache was up by the Noddles which are large rock outcroppings out west of Sedalia. The cache is called "Noodle?". I was a bit wary about hiking this trail because it is mainly intended for ATVs. However, I only encountered a single group of 4 off road motorcycles and they were not a problem. They were having a lot of fun - maybe as much as me! I stayed off of their trail for most of the hike where I could examine the plants and wildflowers. This is a really neat area for a cache. It was a little tricky finding it. It was hidden under a huge rock behind a rather prickly shrub. Here is the view from the cache area:



The next cache is called Totally Worth It and it really was totally worth it. This was a hike up a portion of the Colorado Trail about 1/3 mile as the crow flies. But since the elevation gain was about 500 feet, many switchbacks were involved. This made for a much longer and more strenuous hike. Here is a picture from the cache area (the hike started by that road down there):



After this cache, there was another one farther down the same trail. It is called the Quartz Quarry Cache and it is one of my favorite caches so far. The climb to this cache was another 100 feet relative to the previous one making the total climb about 600 feet and the ending elevation about 6635'. I guess the hike was about 1.5 miles one way. The quarries in the vicinity of this cache are very interesting. I have so far been unable to determine when they were last used but it is obvious that it was not any time recent because of the overgrowth on the switchback roads in the area. I guess 40-50 years ago. The area is littered with millions of white rocks. These were quartz quarries so I wonder what the white rocks are. I brought back a few rocks with me. Here is the view from this cache:



Here is a picture of a mushroom I found on the way to the quarry cache. It was right in the middle of the trail and there were quite a few of them along the way.



During my trip up to the quarry cache, I had run out of water. The next cache I planned to find was in Reynolds Park. On the map for that park, there is one cache location that is advertised as having drinking water. The only problem was that it required a hike of about ½ mile uphill. No problem. However, when I got to the pump, it was locked down. So, I found the cache called, Fee-Bee Chickadee Out of Site and then drove into Conifer to quench my thirst.

Another cache I had to hike and climb to is called Raven's Roost. This required a hike of about a mile and another elevation gain of 600 feet. This trail was the steepest of the day but was quite enjoyable nevertheless. I saw only 3 other people on this trail.

For my last cache, I picked a multi cache called Keychain Cache. The first location was up the South Platte river about 2/10 mile where I had to find an altoids tin that was hidden under a rock. There are about a million rocks up there but I found it anyway after checking under quite a few. Inside the tin were new coordinates. I was glad I didn't have to hike all the way to the final location. I had enough hiking for the day already at previous caches. The final was a bit more than 3 miles away but near the road. But it was about 100 feet up a steep hill. I discovered when I got to the location that I didn't pick the easiest route up.

I left home with a goal of finding 16 caches which would have beaten my old record for one day, 12. I ended up skipping 3 altogether for various reasons (too many people around, poison ivy, too far/too tired). There was also one that I couldn’t find. So, I found 12 altogether tying my old record. This day was more fun though even though my feet really hurt today. I hiked about 8 miles altogether and a good portion of the hiking was either up or down fairly steep grades.