Three states in one day

Living in Shreveport puts us close to 3 other states all within about an hour's drive.  We had never been to Arkansas before.  We took a little trip north to Texarkana which is in two states. Being from Texas, we already had a bunch of Texas finds, so we concentrated mostly in Arkansas.

We took our time up an old farm road out of Louisiana through cotton fields and stopped by an old town with a few 100 people and ate lunch at an old general store that dated back to the early 1900's.

I think the coolest part of the entire trip was the Texarkana Post Office/Court House that straddled the Texas-Arkansas state line.  We did the tourist thing and stood in two states at the same time.

It was a nice road trip to Arkansas, Texas, and back to Louisiana.  Check out some more pictures below from Texarkana!

Christmas Caching with Family

Merry Christmas!  Trying to catch up on the blog.  Check out some pics from our Christmas holidays with family in Texas!

Where's the treasure?

Trale and I went searching for caches just north of Bossier City, LA. We hadn't been caching in some time, so we were both looking forward to finding some treasure.

It was a cold, overcast kinda day, perfect for some chili or geocaching. Mmmm....Chili sounds good!
We were off to a great start. We found our first two caches, grabbed two travel bugs. It was looking up... then one after another, we weren't finding the geocaches. Called a "DNF" for -Did Not Find-. One, two... then down the road, three... to another stop... four, and as we were leaving... five! Five DNF's out of the eight treasures we were trying to get.

May of the caches we were trying to find hadn't been found since May. So, I'm thinking maybe they ran off? We were pretty deep in the woods, so no telling what critter may have found them... the last two we "DNF," may have been to the lack of daylight.

Kind of a bummer hunt. What's the saying? "That's why they call it "fishing," not "catching."

Oh well... It was fun to get out driving the jeep with my oldest son looking for treasure. We did find a couple of travel bugs...those are always fun!   Looking forward to some time off in December to travel to a geocaching heavy area. Talk to you soon.

Whoo hoo! Nice weather!

If it wasn't 105 degree weather, than is was a hurricane for a week! Today we finally got some nice weather: cool temperatures and sunshine.   We went geocaching north of Shreveport today near Blanchard and Mooringsport.

I wanted to make the trip to Caddo Lake for one particular cache that used to be an old main road with a sliding jaw bridge. They built a new bridge next to it in 1995 and decommissioned the old jaw bridge into a foot bridge, and a perfect location for a geocache. Can you see Mason at the bottom of the picture?

We only found five for the day, but it was fun just to get out.  Below are more pics from today's treasure hunt.  Happy Caching!

Treasure Hunting in Louisiana

We moved to Louisiana about 4 months ago, and had been geocaching a few times, but not together as a family. In fact, Holli and I (without the boys) broke our one day find record a few months back hitting all the micros downtown Shreveport. We found 10 that day! That was a few months back.

It's been a while since we've all gone out as a family for some treasure, but it's also been 105 degrees for the past month! Today it was cloudy with a cool crisp bite in the air, clouds close to the ground like it was going to rain, but never a drop fell.
Finally! Some relief from the heat and took the first chance to get some treasure boxes. One of stops took us on a half-mile round trip hike on a little island park inside Shreveport near the Red River. It was a big cache full of goods, so it was worth the walk.

One box was hidden near the local YMCA. When we got within 30 feet, we knew it was a possibility that the geocache box was on the other side of the fence. Trale was able to squeeze through the gate nearby to search the other side in the woods. Even after we drove over there to look too, we had no luck finding this treasure today.

Geocaching is ok in Shreveport, but there were only 21 big caches within a 10 mile radius of the house, so we did quite a bit of driving around to get the 4 caches we found today, couldn't find 2.

We had fun and broke our geocaching dry streak! Cache on!

Family time and Alone time

It's been a rainy cold couple of weekends and we finally got a break with some nice spring-like weather perfect for some family time and geocaching! Of course! We made a couple of trips!

We decided to make a trip over to the zoo and find some treasure boxes on the way. There were some new ones in the downtown Pensacola area. I always put more than I think we'll have time for in the GPS, just in case we didn't find a few.... which happened! We were two for four for the day. One of the stops brought us to the nice new Palafox pier. The boys were sleeping in the back of the geo-jeep so Holli went on the hunt for this one by herself.

Along Bayfront Blvd, was an ammo can hidden under one of the water breaking rocks. I had to venture out careful not to break a foot off as I navigated the big rocks. We stopped there since it was getting late and we still haven't made it to the zoo.

There is a wonderful paved trail that runs through the middle of Milton where I decided to make a solo trip today. It's the Blackwater Heritage Trail. 9.2 Miles of paved trail for hikers, bikers, and horse riding. Best of all, it's right by the house!

There were three caches on the agenda this morning. So I loaded up my bike and off I went down the trail. Two were pretty easy. The third, however, was the toughest terrain I've encountered looking for treasure! How the hider found this spot to place the cache was amazing. I should have brought a machete, but that would have done me no good since the brush and thorns were so thick, there was no room to swing the blade. It was near impossible to walk the last 100 feet to reach the cache. I was determined to get this cache today. So I pushed through the thick brush, dead trees, and thorn vines leaving a little my skin behind in the process. Thank goodness the GPS was about 30 feet off, in my favor. I found the box near some old tin roofing. Great, I found it! Now I have to walk back!

The trail had some nice streams as I rode over some of the many bridges. Overall, about a 3 mile round trip today. Back to the geo-jeep with a geocoin in hand from the first cache of the day. I'll be back! I've already scouted a great place to hide my own geocache on the trail.

Cache on!

The Quest for #200

I was starting to get close to 200 geocache finds in the last months of 2007, so I was going to try to hit #200 before the new year. By Christmas, I was short about 17 caches. During my trip to Texas, my Dad and I tried a "power cache." One of the rules of hiding a geocache is that they need to be a minimum of a .10th of a mile apart from one another. A "power cache" abuses the rule some by placing a string of caches placed about a .10th of a mile apart for a mile... 10 caches! Pretty cool! We only found 7 out of 10... there were a few missing in that mile.

By the time we got back home we needed to find 4 caches... and the procrastinator I am waited til New Year's Eve to find them. Before work I grabbed a couple at a rest stop and planned to find the last two on my way home... except I worked late that night and didn't get the final two! So, no 200 for '07.

It's not about the numbers anyway right? What a way to start off the new year by getting number 200. Since I was only two away, I had 12 months to make it happen. I wasn't going to be waiting til next Christmas either. We made a short move closer to Pensacola for my new job and while looking for a new house, we had a new place to find geocaches in the process. Two caches and BAM! #200! We made it! Hard to believe we have signed 200 logs since we started just a little over a year ago.

Happy New Year! Here's to many more geocaching finds with my family and friends!