adventures with geocaching on the side

Adam and I went geocaching in Louisa this weekend. We had been planning it all week and yet I still forgot that I needed to download the points... until I was already at home on Friday afternoon. I called him to let him know and we decided we would give it a go anyway with some old 'mineral' points that I had downloaded in 2007.

After consulting the map and the GPS we determined they were mostly around the lake which we thought would be no big deal, but in the end is endlessly frustrating. But more on that later.

The first geocache was exciting. Adam determined from cross-referencing the GPS and the map that it must be on a little loop of route 700.. . okay... route 700 is a dirt road. Excitement number one. As we progressed the potholes and mud ruts got bigger and bigger. At one point, Adam and I had to get out of the car to assess the best driving route (or if it was even drivable).

Side note. I would be perfectly at home in a four wheel drive all terrain high clearance vehicle, but I have the junkets mobile (ford focus) and it has to do. I may not be the best highway driver, but I can do a U-turn just about anywhere (as Adam experienced later) and I am pretty good at navigating potholes, tree stumps, big rocks, and creeks. So since it's pretty cold and I knew that underneath the mud was frozen and pretty firm, I decided to cross these perilous mud ruts (twice even bc we had to come back). I had one tire where Adam is standing, and one all the way to the right. So Excitement Two.


We crossed some more dangerous sections and then Excitement Three - a small sign saying "BRIDGE OUT." Excellent. We kept driving. Then at the bottom of the hill I could see a large puddle, or maybe a small lake. Excitement Four. We decided to park (in the road) and trek on foot - we were only 0.08 miles away at this point, and that's negotiable.

We navigated around the small lake and determined that it was probably impassable in the junketsmobile and trekked onward. We found the creek and there was a bridge, but it was obviously homemade because people's names were written in the concrete. We trekked up the next hill and found out we were getting farther away so we headed back down the hill and decided to take the footpath along the creek. The walk was pretty and the creek was nice and burbling. We then noticed an encampment ahead. Several RVs and campers and as we got closer I could see tents. We were deciding whether we actually wanted to walk through this living space. Adam noticed a sign and asked me what it said... it said "Potkids" I think. Excitement Five. Now our better judgement started to kick in and we decided that whatever this was it was not good and we turned around quickly and quietly and headed back to the car. Even though we were 0.4 miles away.

We re-navigated the potholes and mud ruts and everything and decided to see if we could get closer along the other road - turns out that road is longer than it is on my map and we ended up in sub division land. Excitement Six - "End of State Maintenance." We saw many many of these signs as we tried to find the cul de sac that ended close to the cache. Appropriately named "Up a Creek Without a Paddle." We ended up hiking along a peninsula in the back of a subdivision (probably trespassing) along the lake and it was gorgeous. Beautiful. Excitement Seven - It had to be across the lake. Try as we might we could not get closer than 0.01 miles.

We decided to try to drive around and knew we would pass another one. It was titled "Old and New" so I thought it might be at the antique store, but it was actually along the old bridge road on 522 - that Adam didn't even know about it. We walked down to the creek and saw the old supports for the bridge and then determined it was on the other side of the creek - Surprise! We did find it though.

We decided to try to find one more before lunch, but once again we were in a maze of subdivision roads all dead-ending at the lake - and every time we determined that it must be across the lake. That's the frustration with drive-by geocaching... you don't actually know anything about the point you are going after; that is also the excitement. Because I could look up each point on the computer and get the driving directions, but seriously, where is the fun in that?