Geocaching - Yr 1, Day 268

Arcadia, FL

First, woke up to our friendly neighborhood sand crane walking outside the window.  I wonder why my camera makes everything look so far away, even when zoomed in.  I guess because it's a really old, obsolete phone (not even a smartphone)!

What a fun, yet extremely exhausting day.  We are both in a lot of pain from all the walking we did (I think close to 5 miles).

For those of you unfamiliar with geocaching, you can learn more at www.geocaching.com.  Basically, the premise is that it's a treasure hunt using a GPS.  There are a wide variety of different types: some have trackables (coins or tokens that you find in one place and put in another - kind of like "Where's George" with dollar bills), some have little gifts, some have clues and puzzles, some are just there to find (and you leave your name in a box).  It has become a very popular sport and almost every town in the US (probably even the world) has at least 1, if not more, caches.  Go to that site and plug in your zip code to see how many are in your area!  You'd be very surprised.

Anyway, we did a total of 4 today.  One was just down the road from us, and the other 3 were hidden on a trail in a nature center.  The plan was not only to find the caches, but to enjoy a hike in nature.  And that was a success!

This is across the street from our first geocache (which was actually found hidden in a metal guard rail behind a supermarket).  I guess I just want to record the palm trees, which I will miss when we head back north for a while.

The park had a lot of beautiful live oak trees with hanging Spanish moss.  Here is just one:

A little wooden foot bridge we crossed over:

A clue for the first geocache was "look for Wolverine claws."  What do you think of this tree?

The cache was hidden between the 2nd and 3rd claws under a pile of moss

I should have mentioned that this park runs along the Peace River (we took the boat tour last week from the other end -- about 25 miles downstream).  On the way to the 2nd "hide," we passed a cliff overlooking the river and saw a large white sand beach area on the other side, with some folks swimming there.  It was 90 degrees today (still hard to get used to in the middle of March!).  What I wouldn't have given to join them (we weren't prepared for swimming).  Actually, we probably would have gone in with our long pants and clothes if we were able to get down to that area.

The final cache was found inside a hollow tree.  Unfortunately, it was so far down we were unable to remove it.

Tomorrow may be a big day.  The RV techs are scheduled to come out and do all the repairs.  If that does indeed happen, we hope to be hitting the road on Sunday and be in Raleigh by next Thursday.  But we'll see if these plans are made in bubbles or jello or perhaps in stone this time.  Will report tomorrow.....