I finally managed to grab a little geocaching time! Real life has been interfering with my play time for a while now but last night I managed to get out and hunt a few caches.
I talked the Island King into going on a cache hunt/date night with me so we left the Island Girl in charge of the little people and off we went.
We started with a new cache on Okaloosa Island called Oh What A View 2. This cache is just down the beach from our Captain Billy Bob's Booty cache but is closer to the highway than ours.
The cache is a small container in a clump of scrub oaks so we parked and followed the GPS to the trees and began our search.
It didn't take long for the Island King to spot the cache tucked up under some roots.
It was just after sunset so we watched the sky turn from one magnificent color to another, signed the cache log and then as it got dark we headed off the find the next cache on our list.
The 2nd cache we were after was Marler Park Cache.
This is another new cache located in Marler Park at the end of Okaloosa Island. The kids and I hunted a cache here back in the spring but apparently that cache was muggled so the owner put out a new one in a different part of the park. This one is near the fishing pier in a stand of palm trees that our kids have played in several times while the Island King fished from the pier.
As soon as we got a read on our GPS we knew where the cache would be and sure enough there it was tucked behind a piece of wood up under the palm trees.
There were some muggles fishing nearby but they weren't paying any attention to us so we grabbed the cache and sat down to see what was inside.
We found a really cool plastic grasshopper in the cache and decided to leave that on top of the cache as a little surprise for the next cachers LOL
It's not so real looking that it will scare the next cache hunters off but it will probably give them a little pause before they stick their hand down under the wood to grab the container. So we signed the log, left the grasshopper and headed off to the next cache.
We drove into Fort Walton and over the Cinco Bayou bridge to find Garnier's Beach Cache.
This cache is in a really neat neighborhood park right on the Bay with a playground and a big beach for swimming. The Island King told me that when he was little he lived just down the road and that he spent hours swimming here.
He said there was a dock with a diving platform at the end that's where he learned to dive. The dock and platform are long gone but you can still see the old pilings.
We're going to bring the kids and spend a day swimming here soon.
We found the cache at the base of an old oak tree surrounded by azalea bushes. There was a spider guarding the cache but he didn't seem to mind us poking around so the Island King reached around him and grabbed the cache.
The cache had a really neat old ceramic thimble in it that he had to have (No, he doesn't sew but he liked the thimble LOL)so we traded a keychain, signed the log and returned the cache to it's hiding place.
Next on our list was Shalimar Playground cache.
This is a cache that we've hunted before and not found. The cache logs have a lot of comments about the coordinates for this cache being off about 40 feet and a lot of other people have had trouble finding it too.
The last time we looked for it we found a HUGE nest of cockroaches in a hole in an oak tree so this time I was a little hesitant to poke around the trees.
We never could get a good reading on our GPS and we did a pretty good canvas search but it was dark and after searching for quite a while we never did find it.
We'll have to come back during the day and try this one again. Reading some of the posts from other cachers makes me think I need to bring all of the kids and search every nook and cranny in the park in order to find it.
We'll be back but for tonight we have another Did Not Find on this one.
After leaving that park we grabbed a burger and debated continuing on with our original plan of driving over to Niceville and hunting a few caches over there.
The Island King asked about the caches I wanted to look for over there and I told him that the next one was at the Eglin golf course.
He got this really surprised look on his face and said "You want to sneak onto Eglin's golf course in the middle of the night? You're out of your mind if you think I'm going to federal prison because you want to hunt a cache on a closed FEDERAL golf course!"
I told him that I don't think the cache is actually on the golf course but more in the woods next to it and that we'd have to drive over there to see.
He didn't seem too pleased with the plan and I teased him a little about getting old and losing his sense of adventure. He laughed and said that he's a wise old dog now and his idea of adventure is making it home safely in Friday night traffic - not wandering around a closed federal golf course hoping he doesn't get caught.
It was starting to get late and we were both tired and we knew that if we drove to Niceville it would be really late when we got home so we decided to call it a night. We finshed our burgers and headed for home.
Just as we came across the bridge onto Okaloosa Island my phone rang and the Youngest Island Boy said "Mom I want you to come home right NOW!"
It turns out that he has a sore throat and wants his mom.
Looks like we made the right decision to come home instead of driving over to Niceville because the Youngest now has a sore throat and fever.
Half an hour later I was sitting on the couch watching a movie with the sick one when the Island King walked through the living room and said "Isn't this better than sitting in an interrogation room at Eglin explaining why you were poking around their closed golf course?"
He's absolutely right - home is much better!Labels: Done
